Spitballing with the fellas on discord and we’ve come up with a Star Trek character we want to see: A 200-year-old top Vulcan diplomat attending a function and laughing boisterously and slapping backs with everyone and then just relaxing into resting bitch face the moment nobody is watching him. He takes his job deadly seriously and studied parties extensively in the diplomatic academy. Every year he’s brushing up on new developments in party theory. He knows every party nuance you could possibly think of, for the sake of intergalactic relations. Peace in the galaxy depends on it. It’s weird but you gotta meet people where they’re at, he thinks.
Sarek fucking hates this guy and it’s 100% envy
human diplomat: [laughs at joke]
vulcan diplomat (to himself): this is great. I’m going to get a good grade in Party, something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve,
me making sure i shake my head in disgust as i walk past booktok tables in bookshops
wow look at you!!!
you are so very edgy and Not Like Everyone Else!!!
keep acting pretentious and judgy about what other people read!!! it’s not insufferable i promise!!! good job on winning at being a dick!!!
feels like my silly little post hit a nerve lol
There. The last one.
I don’t give a fuck about “cringe.” I truly don’t. I give a massive fuck about the algorithimification of art.
A sing-song audio of “everything is content” being used to encourage creators to record their entire life into tiny videos day after day just for the privilege of being seen.
People referring to “feeding the algorithm” on sites that do not even function on algorithms.
Jump on this trending sound!
“X meets Y” descriptors going from a “don’t use this in your elevator pitch” to “literally it’s the only way anyone is gonna pick up your book.”
Training up-and-coming authors to describe their book by tropes and aesthetics that are, golly, awfully easy to feed into ChatGPT.
It’s the “Tok” of “BookTok” that is worrying. Not the types of books being read. Not the “cringe” (whatever that means for you). Not the people making the videos. I am a huge proponent of talking about books you love early and often. But the nature and landscape of TikTok - the things it pushes to the top - the way it encourages long-time users to think - looks and smells awfully similar to machine learning optimization.
To the point that reviews and recommendations sound more and more like prompts. To the point that we become more and more comfortable with viewing the worth of things based on what is shown to us, when, and how often.
Because what your FYP shows you is so easy to tamper with. What trends is so easy to game. Leaning into the fact that trending is a signifier of worth is just shooting ourselves, both as readers and as writers, in the foot.
One of the paradoxes of the modern internet is that I genuinely understand sites need to get revenue somewhere, and while I don’t love ads I’m actually okay seeing relatively unintrusive ads on a free site, hearing words from sponsors, etc.
But the modern internet is so full of modal popups and video ads on autoplay and trackers that using it without an adblocker is basically impossible, so everything gets blocked.
people on this website will really write the most reactionary nonsense known to man
lmao holy shit sounds like a personal problem actually! sorry you can’t grasp the beauty of an infinitely expanding and changing view of the universe and life
Got briefly nerd sniped as to suicide rates among scientists. For the US, at least, CDC data don’t put them in one of the high-risk groups, which are primarily construction and other trades, healthcare, and creative professions.
While we’re picking at this: how many scientists DO convert? Do we have numbers? Could that person name a single one?
At a party and a guy was telling me about how one of his coworkers was complaining about how he thought his dealer was lacing his heroin with cocaine and then the party guy was like “but his dealer was his brother” and I said “that’s some cocaine and abel shit” and the joke flopped so hard but I stand by it so I had to share it somewhere
