I loved when AI art could never be anything but AI art. the dreams of a computer. now it's all boobs and photorealistic women doing bad kink. but I remember you. I miss you. I love you, Secret Horses.
People who try to analyze what happened on Tumblr on November 5th, 2020, often really overstate how much it was actually “about” Supernatural. As someone who has never been in the supernatural fandom ever but dID join in on the hysterical destielposting—it was really more about the stress of the pandemic and the 2020 presidential election.
The two biggest Youtubers I’ve seen try to dissect “what happened that November 5th” in video essays both weren’t American—- and I think that explains why they both tried to explain the hysteria primarily via analyzing the Supernatural fandom/the original show, rather than through the lens of the election. And while those videos are cool, valid, informational, and make lots of really well-considered interesting points— I can tell you that me and almost all my mutuals had literally no knowledge or interest in the fact that “oh supernatural had made nods at the ship in the past but the creators were adamant that I wouldn’t be canon” or etc etc etc etc. the first time I learned about any of that context was way later, watching videos where people claimed that fandom history context (that I did not know anything about) was the actual reason for the hysteria.
But the reality is that people latched on to the Destiel stuff because it was a piece of big useless inane zero-stakes fandom news in a time when we were desperately waiting for serious high stakes election news. We were latching onto a “positive “ piece of inane stupid fandom news in a time of great stress, with all the desperation of a drowning man who latches onto whatever piece of wood will keep him afloat.
The core of the hysteria was that Americans (who make up a huge chunk of tumblr’s userbase) were currently glued to their laptops watching the live presidential election vote counts come in. These vote counts were taking an extended amount of time due to the pandemic causing high numbers of mail-in ballots, resulting in a constant state of Election Day Stress for multiple days straight.
This was also during the height of the Pandemic. People had predicted Trump’s presidency would be bad; no one had predicted it would be this apocalyptically bad. No one had predicted pandemics and lockdowns and hospitals overflowing with bodybags. remember Trump spreading Covid lies and conspiracies?? There were so many Qanon conspiracies about democrats being Satanic child traffickers who had to be put to death, and coup threats were mounting from the right wing side. It seemed like this election was a choice between ‘centrist democrat’ and “apocalyptic right wing conspiracy theory authoritarianism,” in the midst of pandemic conditions that people feared would never ever improve— and it seemed like a close election.
Another major point was that Trump voters were more likely to be antimaskers/Covid deniers, while Biden voters were more likely to take the pandemic seriously— so Biden voters were more likely to send in mail-in ballots instead of risking the in-person voting crowds, which meant their ballots would take much longer to count. And so, in many state electoral vote counts, it would initially seem like Trump was very far in the lead— only for Biden to slooooowly build up an agonizingly small lead as the mail in ballots came in, and then defeat Trump at the very end.
So you’re just watching these news sites giving live election updates, refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see if you’re going to live under a spineless centrist democrat or a literal Qanon Dictatorship. And then you go on tumblr to distract yourself, and there’s more election posting, and more agonizing over the votes, and more stress and despair—-
And then it’s been days and we’re right at the crucial tipping point where it’s anyone’s game and the next few hours will determine whether Trump will win, so you need to keep your eye on the vote count, because the next hours will determine the future of the pandemic and your country and your plans for your entire life—
And then stupid Destiel becomes canon! And it becomes canon in the silliest way possible!
If Destiel had become canon at any other time, it would have been a big goofy tumblr celebration? But we wouldn’t have gotten the insane explosion of hysterical interaction.
The entire core of it was the contrast between the inane meaningless stupidity of fandom news vs the actual stressful election news you wanted to hear! It really is best conveyed in that meme where Castiel says “I love you” and Dean indifferently responds with a piece of important election news.
It’s about the contrast between the low-stakes inanity of fandom and the massive life-destroying stakes of a terrifying election. There really was no reason it had be Supernatural specifically, except that Supernatural was a thing everyone knew basic things about from dashboard osmosis— it could’ve been any other equally huge silly fandom ship news about a ship everyone *knew of* but might not necessarily be invested in (ex. Stucky becoming canon, Johnlock becoming canon, Kirk/Spock becoming more canon somehow, etc etc etc.)
I think it’s true that people who weren’t paying agonizingly close attention to the American election news got swept up in it, and that non American Supernatural fans also were extremely excited for purely fandom reasons — but the entire reason it blew up to an unprecedented degree was because of that core of stressed out terrified Americans glued to their computers watching election results and suddenly receiving stupid fandom news instead, and deciding to just hysterically parodically hyper-celebrate this absurd useless zero-stakes news.
ALTI think it was also all elevated by the fact that, as I said before, this happened at the crucial “tipping point” of the election where the next few hours would determine the winner. The fact that Biden began to slowly develop a lead in the hours after made it feel, hysterically, as if the hours after Destiel became canon was somehow the turning point where he began to win; so celebrating Destiel felt like celebrating that slow turn towards victory.
The tl,dr is that it’s so important to Remember the Fifth of November …..in preparation the inevitable hysteria that will happen in the presidential election on November 5th of next year. XD. Personally I’m rooting for Johnlock or Frodo/Sam to somehow become canon in the eleventh hour right before the democrats win
There was also just like, an insane amount of weird news proliferation that night. It was like someone opened the castle door and all the bats flew out. Poll results were coming in haphazardly. States that seemed like they would take five minutes to count took days. States that were historically Republican were turning before our eyes. This was all happening very late at night for most, keeping people glued to tumblr later than many of us had been in years (hearkening back to the era of "nightblogging"). In the middle of all this the New York Post started a rumor that Putin was stepping down. And then. THEN. Destiel dropped, the most unexpected news on top of a day full of unexpected news stories. It was like the most beautiful icing on the loony cake.
Hey friends 🫂
Be nice with staff today, folks
Ok I wasn't planning to share anything about this because I was waiting for any official comms, but I'm seeing people from outside of Automattic sharing this screenshot in a WordPress-related public discord server, so I guess the cat is out of the bag:
TLDR: most of the current staff is being moved to other automattic divisions and Tumblr will be run by an skeleton crew
hi everyone!
if you've never paid attention to one of my posts, start now.
or you can look at the reblog before from @dualumina
i work in technology, specifically surrounding supporting enterprise software.
this is bad.
this is death knell bad.
this is "end of life" for a product bad.
tumblr has basically said: this website is not a revenue vehicle, and thus, it may perish naturally. we won't pull support from it. we won't force people to move off of projects surrounding it. but we will do the bare minimum moving forward to maintain it's existence and one day, when no one else wants to take responsibility for the decaying infrastructure and literally endless backlog of defects and code rewrites, the website will sunset.
you should start building a different online community today if you want one. there are options. or, hell, if you're savvy enough, you could start your own and open source it.
but you should start building a different, queer, inclusive online community yesterday if you want one.
Well, fuck.
*sigh* Welp.
being an adult is just saying to yourself “this is the weekend i’ll clean my [x]” and then proceeding to not do that because it’s the weekend and you deserve to relax, goddamnit
why does this have 85K notes
because we reblogged it instead of cleaning our [x]
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, “Untitled (Lover Boys)” / James Crews, “15. (Fan Letter)”, The Book of What Stays
please read the best twitter story i’ve seen all week
bringing this back because it becomes possibly funnier the second (third forth) time around
oh my god
Carmen amaya 1943
Carmen Amaya ( 1913 – 1963) was a Spanish Romani flamenco dancer and singer
@whatthewhenjustmighthavebeen !!!
(She was also a pioneer as a woman for this type of footwork which is usually reserved for men, and the first we know of to perform in trousers!)
Google is going to start scraping all of their platforms to use for AI training. So, here are some alternatives for common Google tools!
Google Chrome -> Firefox
If you’re on tumblr, you’ve probably already been told this a thousand times. But FireFox is an open-source browser which is safe, fast and secure. Basically all other browsers are Chrome reskins. Try Firefox Profilemaker, Arkenfox and Librewolf! Alternatively, vanilla Firefox is alright, but get Ublock Origin, turn off pocket, and get Tabliss.
Google Search -> DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo very rarely tracks or stores your browsing data (though they have only been known to sell this info to Microsoft). Don’t use their browser; only their search engine. Domain visits in their browser get shared. Alternatively, you can also use Ecosia, which is a safe search engine that uses its income to plant trees! 🌲
Google Reverse Image Search -> Tineye
Tineye uses image identification tech rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks to find you the source of your image!
Gmail -> ProtonMail
All data stored on ProtonMail is encrypted, and it boasts self-destructing emails, text search, and a commitment to user privacy. Tutanota is also a good alternative!
Google Docs -> LibreOffice
LibreOffice is free and open-source software, which includes functions like writing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, formula editing and more.
Google Translate -> DeepL
DeepL is notable for its accuracy of translation, and is much better that Google Translate in this regard. It does cost money for unlimited usage, but it will let you translate 500,000 characters per month for free. If this is a dealbreaker, consider checking out the iTranslate app.
Google Forms -> ClickUp
ClickUp comes with a built-in form view, and also has a documents feature, which could make it a good option to take out two birds with one stone.
Google Drive -> Mega
Mega offers a better encryption method than Google Drive, which means it’s more secure.
YouTube -> PeerTube
YouTube is the most difficult to account for, because it has a functional monopoly on long-form video-sharing. That being said, PeerTube is open-source and decentralized. The Internet Archive also has a video section!
However, if you still want access to YouTube’s library, check out NewPipe and LibreTube! NewPipe scrapes YouTube’s API so you can watch YouTube videos without Google collecting your info. LibreTube does the same thing, but instead of using YouTube servers, it uses piped servers, so Google doesn’t even get your IP address. Both of these are free, don’t require sign-ins, and are open source!
Please feel free to drop your favorite alternatives to Google-owned products, too! And, if this topic interests you, consider checking out Glaze as well! It alters your artwork and photos so that it’s more difficult to use to train AI with! ⭐️
