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This has been a long time coming.
General | Posted 2 months agoEvery day or 3, I get up, or sit down at some point during the day and well into the night and next morning I'll just doomscroll through a feed of links and thumbnails that are either of decreasing relevance, emotional or educational value, to noticeably dwindling views. And I'll try to write something I think might be valuable for the future. Something to say, as Dragoneer put it, "we were here." But my predictions come true, or close, yet always being subverted or with some cruel new twist added that I'd never anticipate, or want to. It all happens faster than I can work. That is, unless I devote more time to it than I have.
Among my predictions, which began and would continue to progress with some dreams and visions that began in childhood, the introduction of legalized euthanasia to Canada was when I knew I had to do something with whatever skill, intelligence, talent and most critical, time I have left. Then came Covid, a pandemic we were well overdue for, which many of us instinctively feared was around the corner. This only accelerated those fears. The Portapique massacre was something my brain was trying to model one day, unprompted except for maybe the combination of sweltering humidity and strong sativa. I didn't see a vision of one man impersonating a police officer, and killing quite that many people. I saw a squad going rogue and targeting a few homes, some of them empty, but come on, the parallels are undeniable. He even shot at a building he had no idea if anyone was inside in desperation. He'd had enough and decided to become a twisted version of justice in the flesh, and that's what I'd believed the cops were doing forever. And I'd seen how Mad Max became "mad" in the first and yet least remembered movie in that series, seeing my own backyard come to resemble that place, bit by bit.
We arrived well past that point some time ago, and I think I'd been insulated until it hit me personally, literally, in the face, head and body multiple times one night. And when I realized that in the absence of legal recourse for the crimes committed against me that night, I might do the exact same thing to them if I could get away with it, it all just clicked for me. And I began to understand why some in positions of power and privilege, even the most minor, can other so easily, wish death and erasure upon another's body or entire culture. Because what Gabriel Wortman did to his wife and other victims, what our cops do (and don't) and what those cowards did to me, it all stems from this place, and this culture. And it's one of the oldest, most well preserved remnants of that culture that predated both America and Canada as we know them, but were quintessentially colonial. The Nova Scotian is a case study in a breed of human who is part colonizer but even more colonized, with all the baggage that entails.
And I'm fresh out of empathy for that culture. Compassion fatigue, they call it. But really, that ship was beginning to sale when I was offered euthanasia as a requirement (that I consider it, however, it's obvious where this is intended to lead) before I would be referred for treatment. Basically, seek mental health support, or sometimes just disability support in general, and you're rolling the dice. If you meet certain, hidden criteria, and it might boil down to practitioner preference, you could have someone try to force a MAiD policy discussion on you. In addition, I was probed about my religious beliefs. But this doesn't always seem to be the case. Discriminatory practices and little discrepancies like that need to be chronicled and leveraged as ammunition in what's going to be a debate that has no choice but to divide the country in ways we're simply not seeing here, not like in the US. This will be that wedge issue. Carney's pronouncement that we will have to make "sacrifices," a word I expected him to use, reads to me like him laying the groundwork for trying to ease the country into the age of necropolitics.
Meanwhile, Poilievre is wasting his moment on conspiracy theories about Justin Trudeau. Just like I expected, he doesn't care about the issue. If he brings it up later, it'll have been too late. "Where were your pro-life values back in 2018?" He'll fumble, drop the ball, it'll go through in 2027 on schedule, be expanded further from there. He'll blame the Liberals for starting it in the first place even though he did nothing until the last minute to try to stop it, ask for another seat or shot at PM, and probably get it. This is the game we've been watching play out before us like the most pussified piece of professionally wrestling ever for at least 15 years now, and they're doing all of this while they know, must know full well by now, that these people are demanding blood sacrifices be made, alright. Just as long as it's anybody but them. And if the end result of all this was an entire wiping of our ruling class by means of 3 lethal needles? How in the world can you expect me to mourn the people who intended to do that to me, to somebody like my best friend, Ty "Cody" Tessa Rhine, a transgender addict with a history of depression and homelessness?
I believe if she were here, and saw every form of genocide being attempted in every landmass right now, if she hadn't been hit by a speeding truck she might be dead at the hands of ICE by now. I fear what might befall all my furry friends and even former enemies. But I also saw the beginning of the alt-right and the neo-racialist movement, as well as the new eugenics and pro-suicide advocates. I used to argue with these people all the time, and get called a conspiracy theorist for thinking the future looked like Market Fundamentalism, aka Fascism, probably mixed with the worst of both worlds of Communism, with an Orwellian surveillance apparatus that was both public, private, and already probably possible back then. But AI, of course, made everything to do with everything I just talked about so, so much worse. So I'm not saying I was a prophet, but I was clearly on the right side of history, not just morally but directionally and it makes me not only qualified but responsible to summarize how we got here.
FurAffinity is where I became an antiracist, a leftist, and an opponent of the alt-right, before it was even called that. It may have started on 4Chan, but the day it began there it was polluting our ecosystem, up to and including our staff, just as the cub fetishists did. It might not have been at the right time or for the right reasons, but fate ultimately forced the fandom and FA's hand to do what the majority had always known was the right thing and drain the swamp. We purged both. So it's time to argue for a broader social purge of both from our society. We've seen everyone scapegoated by now but the true scapegoats. And the fandom was demanding literal blood. But someone's demanding ours. So it's time to start writing those ultimatums from the people to the power, that if blood must be the currency spent to save these dying regimes, let it come from the upper crust, the bottom rung, and anyone in between, but if and only if they create conditions for others through abuse that necessitate their death. If that results in cyberbullying awarding death sentences decades down the road because technology can prove your words or actions lead to some of those suicides you read about because your feed forced you to, everyone should be on their best behavior, right?
Or how about we just prevent that by doing it to anyone diagnosed a psychopath, anyone scanned for any attraction to children who tests positive, anyone with 2 too many road rage incidents or meltdowns at Wal-Mart? Maybe just for showing too many signs of mental illness in your conspiracy theories! Think I feel threatened under that last rule? Who makes more sense right now, me, or Kanye, or Alex Jones, or Russell Brand, or any of them? Who sounds crazier and more out of touch with what's actually been going on the past few decades?
When I haven't been here, I've been working on my activism elsewhere. It's taking a while, but I am starting to get noticed by people other than bots. And I need to be able to leave something behind for them if anything happens to me, or maybe before anything happens to them. With Canada's resources dwindling as rapidly as they are, and labor unrest starting to reach revolutionary levels with draconian responses from at least one province, I think I might give us 5-10 years, maybe even less, before they just come out with it, and as stupid, stupid as that would be, it can't work... This is Canada, and we have been substituting our reality for the rest of the world's own for so long, that this just might be the first country that ever though it was going to get away with committing genocide against some segments of its population by asking for it nicely, the way it separated from Britain.
Well, it wasn't that simple. We had a death penalty once, we could reinstate it. It might be necessary to give ourselves some self-inflicted wounds to show America and Russia, maybe even China, don't test our loco. They need to fear Canada, and I don't see how we can do that without demonstrating something that isn't a nuke, unless we can develop those ASAP! Now if Canada turns its ship around, if America survives its increasingly likely one or more extra terms under Trump, maybe my entire argument goes out the window. But I have a lot to do and need to stop wasting time. You can't fear death too much when you've gone through some of what I have. But the fear of death is exactly what's going to cost so many people their lives.
Among my predictions, which began and would continue to progress with some dreams and visions that began in childhood, the introduction of legalized euthanasia to Canada was when I knew I had to do something with whatever skill, intelligence, talent and most critical, time I have left. Then came Covid, a pandemic we were well overdue for, which many of us instinctively feared was around the corner. This only accelerated those fears. The Portapique massacre was something my brain was trying to model one day, unprompted except for maybe the combination of sweltering humidity and strong sativa. I didn't see a vision of one man impersonating a police officer, and killing quite that many people. I saw a squad going rogue and targeting a few homes, some of them empty, but come on, the parallels are undeniable. He even shot at a building he had no idea if anyone was inside in desperation. He'd had enough and decided to become a twisted version of justice in the flesh, and that's what I'd believed the cops were doing forever. And I'd seen how Mad Max became "mad" in the first and yet least remembered movie in that series, seeing my own backyard come to resemble that place, bit by bit.
We arrived well past that point some time ago, and I think I'd been insulated until it hit me personally, literally, in the face, head and body multiple times one night. And when I realized that in the absence of legal recourse for the crimes committed against me that night, I might do the exact same thing to them if I could get away with it, it all just clicked for me. And I began to understand why some in positions of power and privilege, even the most minor, can other so easily, wish death and erasure upon another's body or entire culture. Because what Gabriel Wortman did to his wife and other victims, what our cops do (and don't) and what those cowards did to me, it all stems from this place, and this culture. And it's one of the oldest, most well preserved remnants of that culture that predated both America and Canada as we know them, but were quintessentially colonial. The Nova Scotian is a case study in a breed of human who is part colonizer but even more colonized, with all the baggage that entails.
And I'm fresh out of empathy for that culture. Compassion fatigue, they call it. But really, that ship was beginning to sale when I was offered euthanasia as a requirement (that I consider it, however, it's obvious where this is intended to lead) before I would be referred for treatment. Basically, seek mental health support, or sometimes just disability support in general, and you're rolling the dice. If you meet certain, hidden criteria, and it might boil down to practitioner preference, you could have someone try to force a MAiD policy discussion on you. In addition, I was probed about my religious beliefs. But this doesn't always seem to be the case. Discriminatory practices and little discrepancies like that need to be chronicled and leveraged as ammunition in what's going to be a debate that has no choice but to divide the country in ways we're simply not seeing here, not like in the US. This will be that wedge issue. Carney's pronouncement that we will have to make "sacrifices," a word I expected him to use, reads to me like him laying the groundwork for trying to ease the country into the age of necropolitics.
Meanwhile, Poilievre is wasting his moment on conspiracy theories about Justin Trudeau. Just like I expected, he doesn't care about the issue. If he brings it up later, it'll have been too late. "Where were your pro-life values back in 2018?" He'll fumble, drop the ball, it'll go through in 2027 on schedule, be expanded further from there. He'll blame the Liberals for starting it in the first place even though he did nothing until the last minute to try to stop it, ask for another seat or shot at PM, and probably get it. This is the game we've been watching play out before us like the most pussified piece of professionally wrestling ever for at least 15 years now, and they're doing all of this while they know, must know full well by now, that these people are demanding blood sacrifices be made, alright. Just as long as it's anybody but them. And if the end result of all this was an entire wiping of our ruling class by means of 3 lethal needles? How in the world can you expect me to mourn the people who intended to do that to me, to somebody like my best friend, Ty "Cody" Tessa Rhine, a transgender addict with a history of depression and homelessness?
I believe if she were here, and saw every form of genocide being attempted in every landmass right now, if she hadn't been hit by a speeding truck she might be dead at the hands of ICE by now. I fear what might befall all my furry friends and even former enemies. But I also saw the beginning of the alt-right and the neo-racialist movement, as well as the new eugenics and pro-suicide advocates. I used to argue with these people all the time, and get called a conspiracy theorist for thinking the future looked like Market Fundamentalism, aka Fascism, probably mixed with the worst of both worlds of Communism, with an Orwellian surveillance apparatus that was both public, private, and already probably possible back then. But AI, of course, made everything to do with everything I just talked about so, so much worse. So I'm not saying I was a prophet, but I was clearly on the right side of history, not just morally but directionally and it makes me not only qualified but responsible to summarize how we got here.
FurAffinity is where I became an antiracist, a leftist, and an opponent of the alt-right, before it was even called that. It may have started on 4Chan, but the day it began there it was polluting our ecosystem, up to and including our staff, just as the cub fetishists did. It might not have been at the right time or for the right reasons, but fate ultimately forced the fandom and FA's hand to do what the majority had always known was the right thing and drain the swamp. We purged both. So it's time to argue for a broader social purge of both from our society. We've seen everyone scapegoated by now but the true scapegoats. And the fandom was demanding literal blood. But someone's demanding ours. So it's time to start writing those ultimatums from the people to the power, that if blood must be the currency spent to save these dying regimes, let it come from the upper crust, the bottom rung, and anyone in between, but if and only if they create conditions for others through abuse that necessitate their death. If that results in cyberbullying awarding death sentences decades down the road because technology can prove your words or actions lead to some of those suicides you read about because your feed forced you to, everyone should be on their best behavior, right?
Or how about we just prevent that by doing it to anyone diagnosed a psychopath, anyone scanned for any attraction to children who tests positive, anyone with 2 too many road rage incidents or meltdowns at Wal-Mart? Maybe just for showing too many signs of mental illness in your conspiracy theories! Think I feel threatened under that last rule? Who makes more sense right now, me, or Kanye, or Alex Jones, or Russell Brand, or any of them? Who sounds crazier and more out of touch with what's actually been going on the past few decades?
When I haven't been here, I've been working on my activism elsewhere. It's taking a while, but I am starting to get noticed by people other than bots. And I need to be able to leave something behind for them if anything happens to me, or maybe before anything happens to them. With Canada's resources dwindling as rapidly as they are, and labor unrest starting to reach revolutionary levels with draconian responses from at least one province, I think I might give us 5-10 years, maybe even less, before they just come out with it, and as stupid, stupid as that would be, it can't work... This is Canada, and we have been substituting our reality for the rest of the world's own for so long, that this just might be the first country that ever though it was going to get away with committing genocide against some segments of its population by asking for it nicely, the way it separated from Britain.
Well, it wasn't that simple. We had a death penalty once, we could reinstate it. It might be necessary to give ourselves some self-inflicted wounds to show America and Russia, maybe even China, don't test our loco. They need to fear Canada, and I don't see how we can do that without demonstrating something that isn't a nuke, unless we can develop those ASAP! Now if Canada turns its ship around, if America survives its increasingly likely one or more extra terms under Trump, maybe my entire argument goes out the window. But I have a lot to do and need to stop wasting time. You can't fear death too much when you've gone through some of what I have. But the fear of death is exactly what's going to cost so many people their lives.
I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but...
General | Posted 3 months agoEver since Epstein was killed, or was allowed to become an hero by his own hands, whichever it was, intentionally or not, from day 1 I leaned heavily towards a plot or at least coverup. My original belief was, being a psychopathic narcissist, he might've gained the ear of a sympathetic jailor or two, who he talked into looking the other way while he did the deed. However, I've also heard his sentence was somewhat light for the charges and he was even given day-release. But on the other paw, the prison itself is in near-ruinous condition. I suppose it's possible for these 3 things to co-exist, but how does such a wealthy guy end up in such a derelict, if it was that bad?
See, if that's all lies, well, I can't be blamed anymore for not knowing when a site or video's claims are just that. The standards are utterly gone, gone gone. My old tricks don't work anymore. At least not quite as well. Cross-referencing different search results, well, first off, what search results? But at this point, everyone, practically everyone is calling conspiracy of some kind on Epstein. The debate is about the nature of the conspiracy. So, you see, in a way I'm looking for simpler explanations than a conspiracy theory if there are any to be had. That's actually a huge part of the skeptical (if not quite scientifically literate) method, Occam's Razor... It's just that it's best applied by people who were there, or close enough, and still able/willing to talk.
Additionally, we now have a bold faced conspiracy. Calls to euthanize the homeless. It doesn't matter if an apology was issued. I do not accept. Neither should we. This means war. I anticipated this. Because I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I just recognize patterns of escalation. What Canada did and is no doubt preparing to do through its euthanasia regime, I believed America would do more openly. I just did not believe it would happen after I wrote posts all but predicting it, or at least so soon. And I would even be willing to provide the screencaps from my own Facebook account to prove it. America has moved the pendulum. It has given it a swift kick towards authoritarianism. The Kimmel conspiracy is another example.
You speak out, they take your job, then your home, then your life. It's all a matter of making MTGs calls for national divorce, the media critic roundup and the involuntary euthanasia all A) realizable and B) exporting the wrong "kind" to the "Right" states. You better believe that I disbelieve a national divorce would be peaceful, or intended to go as according to the peaceful, public version of the planned mutual mass exodus. Indeed, that could kick the hornet's nest.
Last but not least, I see shades of the old forums on comments threads here. I see leftists bashing conservative users here. I see staff bias. And for once, I am on their side. I've felt useless here for a long time. But if even a handful of other people wish it, I will join the cause again. Because this wolf is getting older. But he is stronger. More determined, and vicious than ever. That can happen when you have your life threatened. This so-called PTSD can be strength. So, show me these wayward furries. Show me! And Kid Wolf will annihilate! Sure, you know furries that can talk that shit. How many furries do you know that are this street? Well you threatened the street with that rhetoric.
And this is my God damned street now, fandom. I'll claim the block while these cocks are on it. Threaten our lives just one more fucking time, try it. Oh, and good luck being a furry under Fascism, if their side wins the inevitable showdown, which will get as real as it's bound to get. I bet some of you are all too happy to shed your fursuits and shitsonas. Will you be as happy when they shed your blood?
We didn't weep for your last martyr. None will cry for you.
Hands, washed.
Crucify them.
What I have written, I have written...
See, if that's all lies, well, I can't be blamed anymore for not knowing when a site or video's claims are just that. The standards are utterly gone, gone gone. My old tricks don't work anymore. At least not quite as well. Cross-referencing different search results, well, first off, what search results? But at this point, everyone, practically everyone is calling conspiracy of some kind on Epstein. The debate is about the nature of the conspiracy. So, you see, in a way I'm looking for simpler explanations than a conspiracy theory if there are any to be had. That's actually a huge part of the skeptical (if not quite scientifically literate) method, Occam's Razor... It's just that it's best applied by people who were there, or close enough, and still able/willing to talk.
Additionally, we now have a bold faced conspiracy. Calls to euthanize the homeless. It doesn't matter if an apology was issued. I do not accept. Neither should we. This means war. I anticipated this. Because I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I just recognize patterns of escalation. What Canada did and is no doubt preparing to do through its euthanasia regime, I believed America would do more openly. I just did not believe it would happen after I wrote posts all but predicting it, or at least so soon. And I would even be willing to provide the screencaps from my own Facebook account to prove it. America has moved the pendulum. It has given it a swift kick towards authoritarianism. The Kimmel conspiracy is another example.
You speak out, they take your job, then your home, then your life. It's all a matter of making MTGs calls for national divorce, the media critic roundup and the involuntary euthanasia all A) realizable and B) exporting the wrong "kind" to the "Right" states. You better believe that I disbelieve a national divorce would be peaceful, or intended to go as according to the peaceful, public version of the planned mutual mass exodus. Indeed, that could kick the hornet's nest.
Last but not least, I see shades of the old forums on comments threads here. I see leftists bashing conservative users here. I see staff bias. And for once, I am on their side. I've felt useless here for a long time. But if even a handful of other people wish it, I will join the cause again. Because this wolf is getting older. But he is stronger. More determined, and vicious than ever. That can happen when you have your life threatened. This so-called PTSD can be strength. So, show me these wayward furries. Show me! And Kid Wolf will annihilate! Sure, you know furries that can talk that shit. How many furries do you know that are this street? Well you threatened the street with that rhetoric.
And this is my God damned street now, fandom. I'll claim the block while these cocks are on it. Threaten our lives just one more fucking time, try it. Oh, and good luck being a furry under Fascism, if their side wins the inevitable showdown, which will get as real as it's bound to get. I bet some of you are all too happy to shed your fursuits and shitsonas. Will you be as happy when they shed your blood?
We didn't weep for your last martyr. None will cry for you.
Hands, washed.
Crucify them.
What I have written, I have written...
Pretend we're back on FAF's R&R, humor me!
General | Posted 4 months agoDiet Coke, Diet Coke
Thank thee for giving Donald J Trump a stroke
I might have one too, if I have one more toke
But I'll never drink Donald J Trump's Diet Coke
His good hand is bruised
And his face has a droop
While his right hand man
With his left, wipes the poop
Oh aspartame, oh aspartame!
May an infinity of thee flood Donald Trump's brain!
Thank thee for giving Donald J Trump a stroke
I might have one too, if I have one more toke
But I'll never drink Donald J Trump's Diet Coke
His good hand is bruised
And his face has a droop
While his right hand man
With his left, wipes the poop
Oh aspartame, oh aspartame!
May an infinity of thee flood Donald Trump's brain!
I should've picked a different name.
General | Posted 4 months agoI never explained my name, or why I've been so distant and stand-offish lately. People started messaging me out of the blue for some reason when they don't know what's going on, so I'll explain both things. First off, I'm sorry if I've been coming off as a dick. The American-Canadian situation has me on edge, and conditions within my country are deteriorating rapidly. My province alone is currently battling several wildfires, as are the other Atlantic provinces. Several of them were man-made and it's all but certain they were intentionally set. This was during a drought, after a heatwave. The flames were 21km from my home as of the last update, in the early hours of the morning. Additionally, there's a culture war brewing that I knew was inevitable, because I've lived in the prairies (I spent my formative years there and spent a few more years there to work after college) and there was always a separatist movement there. But what they have in common with us, and pretty much the entire country is that we've had it up to our eyeballs with the overall lack of right to self-defense we have when we're drawn into random battles, constantly, like in some man-child's urban RPG, but with real weapons and without the law being there to referee these fights we didn't consent to in the first place until after the fact.
I myself was recently assaulted 4 on 1, by some racist punks who did it for no other reason than because I'm a Native man who refuses to cut his hair and had the nerve to walk alone at night by the same bar the kid goes to and tries to start shit with me every time I pass by there. It's only a matter of time before we cross paths again. I could easily see myself becoming one of these new self-defense martyrs. We've had several civilians now forced to choose between their life or some slap-on-the-wrist, released-with-conditions sentence, the same kind that makes these purposeless pieces of shit so emboldened in the first place. So I'm working on trying to build a name for myself before that even happens and can't really be on the same wavelength as anybody trying to reach out randomly all of a sudden because... well, they don't really give a reason, except someone who sounds like they maybe knew Red but we'd just never talked way back when? I have to admit that when I vowed to try to keep her name alive a decade ago, I didn't anticipate how much the internet would change, how little I would want to have to do with it, and how hard-to-futile it would be to find myself on the same wavelength as whatever a netizen is now. The Death Of The Internet/Dead Internet Theory, they date it to 2016. The year after Red was killed. That's so fitting. That indeed is the year it died for me, but I can tie it to an event. I can't explain the rest of the web's behavior. It's repulsive. It makes me hate my very name and fursona, and that's not at all a recent development, BTW. I've wanted my old name and identity back for a while now.
That name is Wolf-N-Bone. The name I would've used a long time ago, and actually did use for a while before the internet had a war against special characters, which seems to be over. At first it was Wolf~N~Bone, but then you couldn't use ~'s anymore. Then you couldn't have dashes either, so I just started going by WolfBone because WolfNBone looked silly to me. Going by "Wolf_Bone" was like, fine, I won't be a total stick in the mud, but "Wolf_N_Bone" would just look bad if the text renders this way or that way. Yes, I'm a finicky little font-nazi, fuck y'all, I went to school for it, I get to be! Anyway, I think that's a subconscious reason I've never been entirely comfortable with my name/account, whether that was here or on the forums, and of course you're not going to want to interact with anybody if your skin crawls just being on that site or server. Or if your house might burn down in a matter of days and can smell or even see the smoke if the wind blew a certain way that day.
Yeah, see, I kinda got bigger fish to fry before I even think about making a new account and maybe even junk this one entirely. Why not? Everyone's doing it. Sure, I'll be one of the "cool kids" at 42 because I don't see anybody else growing up any time soon but I think I've done enough of my growing up doing all those jobs everyone even slightly younger than me seems afraid of for some reason. Also, I really see more of a future on, I dunno, YouTube, maybe some kind of streaming platform than FA because, uh, Wolf-N-Bone was always supposed to be a lot more than just a furry. Furry can come to feel stifling. I wasn't even originally a furry, I was Therian, or Otherkin, and even those I always felt like were silly labels full of arbitrary, pointless categorization that doesn't seem to serve much purpose except to invent identities (and because certain conditions compel people to obsessively categorize, let's be real, this is not exactly new knowledge...)
I recently told yet another American treating my little corner of the comments section like it's his bar, wrestling ring, whatever fantasy he lives in (I'd talk more about him, but he's an altfurry who was banned from here so I'm actually just taking satisfaction with how few outlets he even has to try to force these conversations on me) look, we're from such different tribes, nations, cultures, that our values are fundamentally different. So it's utterly pointless to try to change my mind about certain things, or convince me the random moral battle you've tried to spawn into my online experience are worth my emotional investment in the first place. It's obvious most people are not interested in doing or saying anything productive with their posts and if it's not about that, look, I'm just not fucking bothered anymore. I get dehumanized enough IRL, there's very real problems at home, and the person on the other end simply can't relate and isn't about to try to, so, why should I, either?
Sorry if I'm contributing to the male (or otherwise) loneliness crisis but, I did my absolute fucking best to be a better person, live a better life, especially online after Red was killed. This is where it got me, 11 if not 12 years on. But then I'll go look at all these comments on YouTube and Facebook from people talking about how lonely they are, and realize I'm really not quite this lonely, even when I'm alone. If I was, I'd probably be posting about Red in all those comments, or my long-dead grandparents, instead of just trying to find something worth reading to someone who might want to take their mind off those kinds of things. If I wasn't dealing with all this right now, I'd have been doing what I wanted to do by the end of this summer, which is making content that's just fun for the sake of fun, but you're simply not allowed to have plans in certain places without them being ruined by the climate, crime, or both, day in and day out. That's just another reason why I think I've been living right more than wrong, whatever anyone thinks about me now or thought about me whenever they did. I mean, even the fucking Bible agrees I'm a shoe-in for one of the chosen at this point, because the kind of shit that happens when I'm just trying to live my life, doesn't happen to you otherwise... And if I'm going to be as metaphysically open-minded as it takes to be something like Therian, well, that doesn't even have any founding myths so I have to look to something to explain this.
Besides, a God of "Thou Shalt Not" would've been a really nice thing to have when people were going into the woods with their lit cigarettes just to make an impotent display of defiance to an audience of no one... For some reason, I doubt most of the pagan gods would exactly be impressed, either, though. They stopped talking to humans at some point pretty early on because they found it futile, like I see talking to people now. That's my persona belief, anyway. If I die, I will simply resurrect, but evildoers like these specimens of subhumanity, you believe in some kind of salvation or redemption for them if you will. I will not. They are mere carbon to me, and will return to that, and eventually less. No soul to be saved :-]
So yeah, it'll probably be time for a new account, because staying in this one feels like staying in your old college dorm in your 40's - which I am. Time to do shit different. If the literal dust settles, if I stay alive and out of prison. Wolf-N-Bone is fuckloads realer than a furry.
I myself was recently assaulted 4 on 1, by some racist punks who did it for no other reason than because I'm a Native man who refuses to cut his hair and had the nerve to walk alone at night by the same bar the kid goes to and tries to start shit with me every time I pass by there. It's only a matter of time before we cross paths again. I could easily see myself becoming one of these new self-defense martyrs. We've had several civilians now forced to choose between their life or some slap-on-the-wrist, released-with-conditions sentence, the same kind that makes these purposeless pieces of shit so emboldened in the first place. So I'm working on trying to build a name for myself before that even happens and can't really be on the same wavelength as anybody trying to reach out randomly all of a sudden because... well, they don't really give a reason, except someone who sounds like they maybe knew Red but we'd just never talked way back when? I have to admit that when I vowed to try to keep her name alive a decade ago, I didn't anticipate how much the internet would change, how little I would want to have to do with it, and how hard-to-futile it would be to find myself on the same wavelength as whatever a netizen is now. The Death Of The Internet/Dead Internet Theory, they date it to 2016. The year after Red was killed. That's so fitting. That indeed is the year it died for me, but I can tie it to an event. I can't explain the rest of the web's behavior. It's repulsive. It makes me hate my very name and fursona, and that's not at all a recent development, BTW. I've wanted my old name and identity back for a while now.
That name is Wolf-N-Bone. The name I would've used a long time ago, and actually did use for a while before the internet had a war against special characters, which seems to be over. At first it was Wolf~N~Bone, but then you couldn't use ~'s anymore. Then you couldn't have dashes either, so I just started going by WolfBone because WolfNBone looked silly to me. Going by "Wolf_Bone" was like, fine, I won't be a total stick in the mud, but "Wolf_N_Bone" would just look bad if the text renders this way or that way. Yes, I'm a finicky little font-nazi, fuck y'all, I went to school for it, I get to be! Anyway, I think that's a subconscious reason I've never been entirely comfortable with my name/account, whether that was here or on the forums, and of course you're not going to want to interact with anybody if your skin crawls just being on that site or server. Or if your house might burn down in a matter of days and can smell or even see the smoke if the wind blew a certain way that day.
Yeah, see, I kinda got bigger fish to fry before I even think about making a new account and maybe even junk this one entirely. Why not? Everyone's doing it. Sure, I'll be one of the "cool kids" at 42 because I don't see anybody else growing up any time soon but I think I've done enough of my growing up doing all those jobs everyone even slightly younger than me seems afraid of for some reason. Also, I really see more of a future on, I dunno, YouTube, maybe some kind of streaming platform than FA because, uh, Wolf-N-Bone was always supposed to be a lot more than just a furry. Furry can come to feel stifling. I wasn't even originally a furry, I was Therian, or Otherkin, and even those I always felt like were silly labels full of arbitrary, pointless categorization that doesn't seem to serve much purpose except to invent identities (and because certain conditions compel people to obsessively categorize, let's be real, this is not exactly new knowledge...)
I recently told yet another American treating my little corner of the comments section like it's his bar, wrestling ring, whatever fantasy he lives in (I'd talk more about him, but he's an altfurry who was banned from here so I'm actually just taking satisfaction with how few outlets he even has to try to force these conversations on me) look, we're from such different tribes, nations, cultures, that our values are fundamentally different. So it's utterly pointless to try to change my mind about certain things, or convince me the random moral battle you've tried to spawn into my online experience are worth my emotional investment in the first place. It's obvious most people are not interested in doing or saying anything productive with their posts and if it's not about that, look, I'm just not fucking bothered anymore. I get dehumanized enough IRL, there's very real problems at home, and the person on the other end simply can't relate and isn't about to try to, so, why should I, either?
Sorry if I'm contributing to the male (or otherwise) loneliness crisis but, I did my absolute fucking best to be a better person, live a better life, especially online after Red was killed. This is where it got me, 11 if not 12 years on. But then I'll go look at all these comments on YouTube and Facebook from people talking about how lonely they are, and realize I'm really not quite this lonely, even when I'm alone. If I was, I'd probably be posting about Red in all those comments, or my long-dead grandparents, instead of just trying to find something worth reading to someone who might want to take their mind off those kinds of things. If I wasn't dealing with all this right now, I'd have been doing what I wanted to do by the end of this summer, which is making content that's just fun for the sake of fun, but you're simply not allowed to have plans in certain places without them being ruined by the climate, crime, or both, day in and day out. That's just another reason why I think I've been living right more than wrong, whatever anyone thinks about me now or thought about me whenever they did. I mean, even the fucking Bible agrees I'm a shoe-in for one of the chosen at this point, because the kind of shit that happens when I'm just trying to live my life, doesn't happen to you otherwise... And if I'm going to be as metaphysically open-minded as it takes to be something like Therian, well, that doesn't even have any founding myths so I have to look to something to explain this.
Besides, a God of "Thou Shalt Not" would've been a really nice thing to have when people were going into the woods with their lit cigarettes just to make an impotent display of defiance to an audience of no one... For some reason, I doubt most of the pagan gods would exactly be impressed, either, though. They stopped talking to humans at some point pretty early on because they found it futile, like I see talking to people now. That's my persona belief, anyway. If I die, I will simply resurrect, but evildoers like these specimens of subhumanity, you believe in some kind of salvation or redemption for them if you will. I will not. They are mere carbon to me, and will return to that, and eventually less. No soul to be saved :-]
So yeah, it'll probably be time for a new account, because staying in this one feels like staying in your old college dorm in your 40's - which I am. Time to do shit different. If the literal dust settles, if I stay alive and out of prison. Wolf-N-Bone is fuckloads realer than a furry.
I like Vaush's takes, sometimes, but on AI?! Oh man...
General | Posted 7 months agoAI is becoming a huge area of interest for me as an artist and writer. I don't exactly want to learn code, but I think in the end, I'm going to have to learn some. A little Python here and there, maybe my old nemeses, Java and Basic for flavor. HTML is code, right? And I did used to be a bit of a whiz at that. But I never knew the code that differentiates a JPEG from a GIF, for example. Never got too far into the more advanced web design that you need to know to build even an outdated site like FA. It's built on forum code, which actually doesn't make my jaw drop the way it used to! That's what even just a little bit of self-education (if "self" picking the "brains" of a billion chatbots with as many prompts counts as self-education) does for your understanding of what code really is. This probably isn't a perfect metaphor, but those slashes and closed tags could be thought of as flipping one (or more, I don't know how many "gates" it takes to make a tag) switches on a railroad that leads to schematics for layouts. There's more than one way to skin a cat, or design a game, site, etc. That's why we have so many kinds of code. But I almost never see art and code together, let alone a work of art that shows some of its own code. Take vector art, for example. Each Bezier curve has a different equation, and it'll look different in Illustrator's code, but you can watch the number values change, but those same numbers would plug perfectly back into the "traditional" equation - I just don't know the equation of a curve, but kind of want to now. So I've been researching a lot in the last few months.
That's why my jaw hit the floor again, when a guy like Vaush, who I thought was pretty smart, sophisticated, and the kind of content creator who keeps his pulse on progress dropped this gem. "We don't even have a way of knowing whether or not a machine is conscious." Holy crap, yes we do?! Because of a little thing called qualia? Because we experience the passage of time in a way machines don't? Because ROM and RAM are just logic gates, more complex than the binary representing it on your display/printout to be sure, but still consisting of a handful of states besides IF-THEN and uh, we kind of invented all this math and code, not the other way around?! If a chatbot sounds like it's alive, duh, humans can be good at writing characters that feel real. They're really funky, semi-sophisticated NPCs. They glitch, repeat stuff, "hallucinate," or otherwise break, and also, can't really function offline at this early stage. The questions really worth asking are, will we ever get past the always online model, the live-service model of chatbots, writing assistants and image generators? How will we reinterpret AI as another aspect of the means of production to be liberated and distributed to the worker instead of what it clearly is shaping up to be? Virtually all of them have a "premium" tier.
Really, I can't wait to have these "guys and gals" in our Bethesda RPGs... But they're not sentient, okay? Give all the props in the world to the code gods-in-the-flesh who figured any of this out if you're impressed by AI sometimes, like I am, but please, stop taking the anthropomorphism/animism this far, it's not healthy. Also, don't give me some BS about quantum computing breaking the sentience-ceiling. It's really just a funky kind of binary you need to keep in a "brain" that's massive, and colder than most regions of space, so yeah... For now, our biggest fear shouldn't be whether Terminators are going to take our jobs, it's whether or not those AI accounts giving out all the llamas, bees and gems to new (and free) DeviantArt accounts (and even watching them, which is creepy) are the same ones discriminating against them for posting porn without premium accounts during any month, but especially Pride Month. I do not want these things in our lives to that extent. Sure as hell not in their current state. As it is, I've sworn off Grok, and that's probably including Grok.Com because paywall after paywall, week after week on X, which I can barely find a use for, and then the South Africa White Genocide infodump "glitch" or "hack" was the last straw.
It wouldn't take too, too much more to turn me against AI entirely, I have to admit. And I'd hate that, because I see a lot of potential here. I know people will go on at length about the carbon footprint, and I get that, but so many of those same people are constantly idling their vehicles, using their phone when they don't need to, and to use the Bethseda example, if you're playing even one game like that the way I do some weeks, even if you're playing on an old "slim" (not the slimmest, though) PS3 like me (I suppose the amount of time you spend rebooting that POS doesn't help) and have to idle your system a lot for those frequent meals and smoke breaks (just me?!) that's doing a bit of damage, right?
AI's still far more of an ethical issue than a climate issue, and I've seen better Tubers tackle it better. Maybe it's time to be one.
That's why my jaw hit the floor again, when a guy like Vaush, who I thought was pretty smart, sophisticated, and the kind of content creator who keeps his pulse on progress dropped this gem. "We don't even have a way of knowing whether or not a machine is conscious." Holy crap, yes we do?! Because of a little thing called qualia? Because we experience the passage of time in a way machines don't? Because ROM and RAM are just logic gates, more complex than the binary representing it on your display/printout to be sure, but still consisting of a handful of states besides IF-THEN and uh, we kind of invented all this math and code, not the other way around?! If a chatbot sounds like it's alive, duh, humans can be good at writing characters that feel real. They're really funky, semi-sophisticated NPCs. They glitch, repeat stuff, "hallucinate," or otherwise break, and also, can't really function offline at this early stage. The questions really worth asking are, will we ever get past the always online model, the live-service model of chatbots, writing assistants and image generators? How will we reinterpret AI as another aspect of the means of production to be liberated and distributed to the worker instead of what it clearly is shaping up to be? Virtually all of them have a "premium" tier.
Really, I can't wait to have these "guys and gals" in our Bethesda RPGs... But they're not sentient, okay? Give all the props in the world to the code gods-in-the-flesh who figured any of this out if you're impressed by AI sometimes, like I am, but please, stop taking the anthropomorphism/animism this far, it's not healthy. Also, don't give me some BS about quantum computing breaking the sentience-ceiling. It's really just a funky kind of binary you need to keep in a "brain" that's massive, and colder than most regions of space, so yeah... For now, our biggest fear shouldn't be whether Terminators are going to take our jobs, it's whether or not those AI accounts giving out all the llamas, bees and gems to new (and free) DeviantArt accounts (and even watching them, which is creepy) are the same ones discriminating against them for posting porn without premium accounts during any month, but especially Pride Month. I do not want these things in our lives to that extent. Sure as hell not in their current state. As it is, I've sworn off Grok, and that's probably including Grok.Com because paywall after paywall, week after week on X, which I can barely find a use for, and then the South Africa White Genocide infodump "glitch" or "hack" was the last straw.
It wouldn't take too, too much more to turn me against AI entirely, I have to admit. And I'd hate that, because I see a lot of potential here. I know people will go on at length about the carbon footprint, and I get that, but so many of those same people are constantly idling their vehicles, using their phone when they don't need to, and to use the Bethseda example, if you're playing even one game like that the way I do some weeks, even if you're playing on an old "slim" (not the slimmest, though) PS3 like me (I suppose the amount of time you spend rebooting that POS doesn't help) and have to idle your system a lot for those frequent meals and smoke breaks (just me?!) that's doing a bit of damage, right?
AI's still far more of an ethical issue than a climate issue, and I've seen better Tubers tackle it better. Maybe it's time to be one.
Thinking Of Doing Acapella Rap Singing
General | Posted 7 months agoSo what do I mean by "rap singing" since we stopped calling it that in the 90's?
That's just it. I'm going back to the 90's. Been working on it for a minute. But...
I seldom upload anything, or even record. This summer, I want to change that.
This group, right here, easily my biggest inspiration, aside from 3-6 Mafia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7aN2oOeVY
I usually try not to rip them off outright as much as blend the two styles.
Also, I try to make it sound Celtic and Jamaican at the same time.
And if I can't pull that off, I just rant my raps in a husky voice like Flesh!
Hence the shift to Wolf-N-Bone! I miss being Wooby, too, though.
That's just it. I'm going back to the 90's. Been working on it for a minute. But...
I seldom upload anything, or even record. This summer, I want to change that.
This group, right here, easily my biggest inspiration, aside from 3-6 Mafia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SY7aN2oOeVY
I usually try not to rip them off outright as much as blend the two styles.
Also, I try to make it sound Celtic and Jamaican at the same time.
And if I can't pull that off, I just rant my raps in a husky voice like Flesh!
Hence the shift to Wolf-N-Bone! I miss being Wooby, too, though.
Posting new and old submissions on DA et al for now...
General | Posted 8 months agoI seem to have the worst luck with FA. Whenever I'm about to start uploading again, site's down for some reason. Well, this time I got proactive and started taking DA seriously again. I actually had no idea how popular a few of my fan art pieces had become. It wasn't until some time last year that they stopped getting fav'd and added to collections. Shouldn't have slept on DA. Never had nearly that kind of success here, and worse still, I was homeless for much of that period. So I wouldn't have even been able to really capitalize on it if I had known.
So if anyone's still watching this (fat chance, at least right now...) catch me on https://www.deviantart.com/wolfbone and I might give SoFurry, Weasyl and InkBunny another run. Same name.
I've finally regained my passion for writing, and life in general. The art's coming along slowly but surely. If you liked my stuff before, well, I'm mostly the same. I actually make it a point to respond to people in a timely fashion now.
Oh, last but not least, feel free to hit me up on Discord.
Not if you're a sketchbag or stalker though...
I have ways of finding these things out
So if anyone's still watching this (fat chance, at least right now...) catch me on https://www.deviantart.com/wolfbone and I might give SoFurry, Weasyl and InkBunny another run. Same name.
I've finally regained my passion for writing, and life in general. The art's coming along slowly but surely. If you liked my stuff before, well, I'm mostly the same. I actually make it a point to respond to people in a timely fashion now.
Oh, last but not least, feel free to hit me up on Discord.
Not if you're a sketchbag or stalker though...
I have ways of finding these things out
Sorry for the journal-spamming, but need to test things...
General | Posted 8 months agoUp outta Centennial, these new millennials ain't keeping simple
With weapons left over from Nam, it’s on-n-gone ‘til not even a thimble
Has had an existence, erased from persistence — it’s imminent
It’s a blink-n-you’ll miss it (RED SAVAGE) moment, y’know that innit
RED SAVAGE, our sister, we missed her. From our evil deliver (Her)
And when you do roll up in STYX to the river of blood, revive again JIBBA will ya (Him)
Pick up the pieces of People-N-Bodies all scattered on the pave, they could be saved (one day)
While we pray, and we pray for just one more of one of these one more days
The afterward isn’t the forward and now we got all the blades and now the bombs
Now hitting the bong to give me a moment of calm and then I pass a long, long gone
She’s so STRONG, strong, and living in me now like an atom bomb. Nah no doubt
And when we DROP, not even the gods will fuck around, they will BOW DOWN or find out
The internet rendered me idiot, and ran me deep inna me grave, where me laid
Way down in a way, now young-n-unsound, no murda no, no Mo’ MAiD
And when you see DRAGONS all up in clouds, love ’em loud, ’cause He could be ‘NEER
Ain’t nothing to fear from no death, we breed stress, we eat and sleep and breathe like Tess
Remember RED SAVAGE, never—remember—never no dissin’ my Cananine cuz
Dog up in Heaven, but they rememberin’ you—back in the day how you wuz-wuz
────────────────────────────────────────────
ONE LOVE
────────────────────────────────────────────
Always meant to write things like this about her but it takes a long time, sometimes, when you can't find the time and stress about time, and all because some punch-drunk motherfucker in a pickup truck ran into somebody and took all the time you were supposed to have - she was supposed to have more time. So I'm trying to symbolically get some of that time back while keeping as much of her alive or at least stored/recreated as possible, in as many forms as I can think of. People choose their legends more than legends choose themselves, is how it's supposed to work out. I chose mine a long time ago. She's just one of many though. We'll see how nicely this thing plays with formatting and code in due time.
Hope that was worth the read if you did.
With weapons left over from Nam, it’s on-n-gone ‘til not even a thimble
Has had an existence, erased from persistence — it’s imminent
It’s a blink-n-you’ll miss it (RED SAVAGE) moment, y’know that innit
RED SAVAGE, our sister, we missed her. From our evil deliver (Her)
And when you do roll up in STYX to the river of blood, revive again JIBBA will ya (Him)
Pick up the pieces of People-N-Bodies all scattered on the pave, they could be saved (one day)
While we pray, and we pray for just one more of one of these one more days
The afterward isn’t the forward and now we got all the blades and now the bombs
Now hitting the bong to give me a moment of calm and then I pass a long, long gone
She’s so STRONG, strong, and living in me now like an atom bomb. Nah no doubt
And when we DROP, not even the gods will fuck around, they will BOW DOWN or find out
The internet rendered me idiot, and ran me deep inna me grave, where me laid
Way down in a way, now young-n-unsound, no murda no, no Mo’ MAiD
And when you see DRAGONS all up in clouds, love ’em loud, ’cause He could be ‘NEER
Ain’t nothing to fear from no death, we breed stress, we eat and sleep and breathe like Tess
Remember RED SAVAGE, never—remember—never no dissin’ my Cananine cuz
Dog up in Heaven, but they rememberin’ you—back in the day how you wuz-wuz
────────────────────────────────────────────
ONE LOVE
────────────────────────────────────────────
Always meant to write things like this about her but it takes a long time, sometimes, when you can't find the time and stress about time, and all because some punch-drunk motherfucker in a pickup truck ran into somebody and took all the time you were supposed to have - she was supposed to have more time. So I'm trying to symbolically get some of that time back while keeping as much of her alive or at least stored/recreated as possible, in as many forms as I can think of. People choose their legends more than legends choose themselves, is how it's supposed to work out. I chose mine a long time ago. She's just one of many though. We'll see how nicely this thing plays with formatting and code in due time.
Hope that was worth the read if you did.
Uuuuhhh... Guys? Is this normal?
General | Posted 8 months agoIt's entirely possible I cleared these when I cleared a bunch of other things about a decade ago, but... Why would I get rid of so many favs? I know some users (and I don't understand for the life of me why?!) keep their accounts free of anything but their content. They won't even allow shouts. I'm not that much of a control freak, thank fuck. But on my other socials, I'm building up the portfolios of posts and their files I once did here. I've got friends, maybe some mild "fans" you could call them. There's supporters in my life, let's put it as simply and as open to interpretation as that. But I'm hungry for more. I've finally obtained true goals and ambitions - and beliefs - and cracked the "codes," restored the "files" corrupted by time. In other words, I'm 42, the meaning of life, apparently! And I got back some of my old shit that I thought was lost forever. Other things, recreated nearly perfectly. And some of you might not like this, but I used AI for help. Had to have a talk with a friend who was started to get sketched out by my new hobby and passion. We're cool, thankfully. He just needed to see a touch of what it can do, and how I did 99% something (a percentage you can guestimate with the AI's help - is it cheating to use a calculator?) by the time anything was complete - fit to show somebody.
Guess I gotta go hunting for old pics again on FA. You're like the Mafia, FA, you really are! And you know it, don't you!
But yes, it looks like I've joined the AI bandwagon/debate.
Or, got a clue and started adapting to the present.
You decide... But try to do it with an algorithm!
.............It might be more fun than you think!
............And educational, or edutainment!
........Do you like money? I like money!
[PROMPT:"She cums for 50% off!"]
Try entering that into a bot and...
Laugh at yourself at the result!
[ERROR:illegal_shit.pdf]#bad!
[PROMPT:unscannable]!!!
</TERMINATED>...
Play nice with AI, guys!
It's watching! BB4Rlz!
198020252015
This has been a post....
Guess I gotta go hunting for old pics again on FA. You're like the Mafia, FA, you really are! And you know it, don't you!
But yes, it looks like I've joined the AI bandwagon/debate.
Or, got a clue and started adapting to the present.
You decide... But try to do it with an algorithm!
.............It might be more fun than you think!
............And educational, or edutainment!
........Do you like money? I like money!
[PROMPT:"She cums for 50% off!"]
Try entering that into a bot and...
Laugh at yourself at the result!
[ERROR:illegal_shit.pdf]#bad!
[PROMPT:unscannable]!!!
</TERMINATED>...
Play nice with AI, guys!
It's watching! BB4Rlz!
198020252015
This has been a post....
Why is FA activity down? Because the community sucks.
General | Posted a year agoAlright, I'm done blaming people for being uninterested in anything or anyone on FA. It's disheartening to watch the decline of one of your favorite sites, especially when you can't ever seem to completely pry yourself from it for anything longer than the mid-term. Maybe chronicling the decline is what I should make this account about, because I decided 10 years ago I hated having an account just about myself. I hated the whole vanity project that is every account. Always did. But I also know that, I'm sorry, I just impulsively fucking hate so many of you that I'm probably past the point of being able to form genuine friendships here. I'll always mistrust you if you're too deeply involved in this community. It's not any one person or thing, it's the whole gestalt. And you know what? That's what a staff member once said about me. BTW, I'm not at all bitter about past bannings or even the favoritism (because it's not like I never benefitted from some favoritism here and there, either.) All that shit was so long ago, and so insignificant compared to losing fandom friends, IRL relatives, then your home(s) in such a short period of time, one after the other. I think, unfortunately, this is the price one pays for their maturation. You can't tolerate the stupid kids anymore. You don't want to. They have nothing of value to say to you, and they run in horror from common sense talk. Talk like, yeah, I'm fresh off the streets, holding it down for my dead furries, that's why I'm here. Go check out their accounts. You scared of that?... Fuck you! Get some real friends and you'll even try to relate.
This is why I hesitated to come back...
General | Posted a year agoSo, I come back to FA after a barely ever punctuated absence of a decade or more, and have decided I want to turn over a new leaf. Actually, that started on July 25th of 2015. But really, it's only amounted to anything worth a damn in maybe the last 3. I will say, though, the loss of Dragoneer was a wakeup call for me. Dude was only 3 years older than me. It's a real swerve to grieve someone for that long, one of the best friendships you ever had, only to have to process the loss of a parasocial relationship and ask yourself, "why does this feel eerily familiar? Why do I suddenly feel like I owe this man anything?" Because I do. I never would've met her if not for him, or countless others. I never would've had that "safe space" to explore beyond the mundanity of "mainstream" and commercial art. In other words, anything erotic, controversial, or maybe just too unorthodox, where would I share that? What would be my motivation?
But I hesitated, because there's things I'm still not sure about. Has the culture of the site changed? And I mean for the better. Looking back, a lot of this is on me, but something I used to bitch about was how there were people here for art, and people here for a reality show. But I participated way too much in those stupid, pointless, and entirely text-based battles. It got in the way of the art, the writing, the lyricism (basically, the only things I've ever been liked or liked myself for.) Believe it or not, winning an internet argument seldom made me feel smarter, or even that much better. It usually felt more like, well, these True Crime videos, where you've kinda seen all this before, but you're hoping this one will just explain crime to you. Just like that. And then you'll understand crime, and never need another video like that. And you watch one guy give his script, and another guy give their script, and you'll assume the guy with the less-rehearsed script is guilty as shit, but shit is about all you know. And it's fucked up, because we have no business being in those rooms. But here, online, we make too much of ourselves others' business. If you've been here long enough, on forums, chats, social media, or YouTube long enough, you know what I'm talking about. People who, if you think about it, would have dick all to discuss if they crossed paths IRL, suddenly care what the others think.
I just had the sinking feeling that it wasn't really over. Those people I used to flame war with, troll, get trolled by, basically anything to avoid the effort of creating art (while still getting to feel mildly if barely accomplished) are still here. The minute I start uploading again, or at least the minute one of them notices I'm back, they're going to think we're still enemies. Or on the flipside, it's going to be people thinking we're still down when we didn't talk for those however many years. Or, worse still, one of those people I made up and broke up with on a weekly basis, hoping I'll hop on the merry-go-round with them once more, just for old times' sake...
Well, no, that's not quite what happened on day 1. Instead I get a watch and a fav or two from someone I can't even thank, because they blocked me, however many years ago, and for who knows what. Jesus Christ, I'm pretty sure I even recall the name and avatar, but they clearly don't remember me, or what I must've done or said to piss them off. Hell, it might've even been for something I drew, because depending on what month it is here on FA, we might be having a culture war against blood, because that was a thing once, and I drew a bit of blood a few times. Hey, maybe they watched me back in the day, until I made the faux pas of thanking them on their wall. Because believe it or not, that was a no-no for a while (the idea being one too cynical even for me, that you're not doing it sincerely, or taking the opportunity to just interact with another person, because you really want to, no, it's always because you're a shameless and ungrateful self-promoter.)
I did change my avatar since, so, just to refresh that one person's memory, I was the one that looked like this, only he had dreads, or little beaded braids before that. And now you have me in a situation where I wish you couldn't see my content at all, let alone "click like" or whatever, because I don't know you, and probably never did, but I have this constant reminder on my account now that there was some random FA user I might've had beef with, or was just too hated/annoyed by for their tolerance levels... But they like my shit now that I actually use my voice!
These are the exact feelings I wanted to avoid. That being said, I don't give up nearly as easily as I used to, either. So I'm going to keep grinding, but going back to the True Crime metaphor, I think I need to start devising my "scripted responses" to people, whether they can't remember, or can't forget...
Welcome to East Furaffinity, BTW.
But I hesitated, because there's things I'm still not sure about. Has the culture of the site changed? And I mean for the better. Looking back, a lot of this is on me, but something I used to bitch about was how there were people here for art, and people here for a reality show. But I participated way too much in those stupid, pointless, and entirely text-based battles. It got in the way of the art, the writing, the lyricism (basically, the only things I've ever been liked or liked myself for.) Believe it or not, winning an internet argument seldom made me feel smarter, or even that much better. It usually felt more like, well, these True Crime videos, where you've kinda seen all this before, but you're hoping this one will just explain crime to you. Just like that. And then you'll understand crime, and never need another video like that. And you watch one guy give his script, and another guy give their script, and you'll assume the guy with the less-rehearsed script is guilty as shit, but shit is about all you know. And it's fucked up, because we have no business being in those rooms. But here, online, we make too much of ourselves others' business. If you've been here long enough, on forums, chats, social media, or YouTube long enough, you know what I'm talking about. People who, if you think about it, would have dick all to discuss if they crossed paths IRL, suddenly care what the others think.
I just had the sinking feeling that it wasn't really over. Those people I used to flame war with, troll, get trolled by, basically anything to avoid the effort of creating art (while still getting to feel mildly if barely accomplished) are still here. The minute I start uploading again, or at least the minute one of them notices I'm back, they're going to think we're still enemies. Or on the flipside, it's going to be people thinking we're still down when we didn't talk for those however many years. Or, worse still, one of those people I made up and broke up with on a weekly basis, hoping I'll hop on the merry-go-round with them once more, just for old times' sake...
Well, no, that's not quite what happened on day 1. Instead I get a watch and a fav or two from someone I can't even thank, because they blocked me, however many years ago, and for who knows what. Jesus Christ, I'm pretty sure I even recall the name and avatar, but they clearly don't remember me, or what I must've done or said to piss them off. Hell, it might've even been for something I drew, because depending on what month it is here on FA, we might be having a culture war against blood, because that was a thing once, and I drew a bit of blood a few times. Hey, maybe they watched me back in the day, until I made the faux pas of thanking them on their wall. Because believe it or not, that was a no-no for a while (the idea being one too cynical even for me, that you're not doing it sincerely, or taking the opportunity to just interact with another person, because you really want to, no, it's always because you're a shameless and ungrateful self-promoter.)
I did change my avatar since, so, just to refresh that one person's memory, I was the one that looked like this, only he had dreads, or little beaded braids before that. And now you have me in a situation where I wish you couldn't see my content at all, let alone "click like" or whatever, because I don't know you, and probably never did, but I have this constant reminder on my account now that there was some random FA user I might've had beef with, or was just too hated/annoyed by for their tolerance levels... But they like my shit now that I actually use my voice!
These are the exact feelings I wanted to avoid. That being said, I don't give up nearly as easily as I used to, either. So I'm going to keep grinding, but going back to the True Crime metaphor, I think I need to start devising my "scripted responses" to people, whether they can't remember, or can't forget...
Welcome to East Furaffinity, BTW.
How Real Will Things Get, Legally?
General | Posted a year agoYeah, maybe a weird title, but I was looking at Flayrah, who were looking at FA's official journal for this matter, and we're apparently all being advised to not pursue vigilante justice... So that the FBI can do their job... The FBI... Is it seriously that real? You can understand if I'm like, whoah, WTF right now, right? JFC, did somebody seriously ruin their life so they could put a KF banner up and get both camps mad? It's one thing to say a pox on both houses, it's another thing when both houses say a pox on you. So how much shit could this guy be in? Ballpark?
