So SO Close!

I found that if I don't use the pre-written prompt, I can come up with much better results from the Microsoft Image Creator...

While still not perfect (I can't get it to do just a goatee), and the turntable is backward, I do like the overall result. This is the best out of about a dozen or so that I ran.

I'm Always Surprised At These

My Top Nine of 2023 from Instagram. (If you want to follow me there you'll need an account and have to request access as I've got the account locked down as private.) I'm always surprised at the photos that are popular, because they're not necessarily my favorites of the year…

Fuck Instagram

I fear the days on my last remaining social media website are numbered. I'm done with this bullshit.

First they tweaked their API so you can no longer use third-party apps to access their content. (GRIDS allowed me to filter out ads completely.) While I can still get online with them using GRIDS, I get knocked off randomly and I'm forced to log in again via a pop-up Instagram window. Once I'm logged in, I automatically get logged out of the native app on my phone, forcing me to log in there again. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

And now this bullshit. Apparently leaving less-than-flattering comments on their imported Chinese crap ads isn't allowed… (That isn't being racist; 90% of what is being advertised on the platform ships from mainland China.)

 

#truth

As I've said before, I lay blame firmly at the feel of AOL. That should've been all the warning we needed.

Annoyed With Instagram

For the past few months I've been having intermittent trouble staying logged into Instagram. Each time I wrote it off as some kind of glitch, but during the last 48 hours or so it's been constant.

I use an app called Grids to view my Instagram feed and save those images I find interesting. I also use something called 4K Downloader to back up my (and to be honest a few of my favorite posters) pictures wholesale. I can no longer use either. I'll log in, get presented with a bunch of verification bullshit, and then after successfully getting in, I get knocked out about three minutes later and the apps are just broken until I go through the whole login process again.

Instagram's web version and the native iOS app work just fine (although after getting knocked out of Grids or 4K, both prompt me to log in again). I did some cursory investigation and apparently Instagram is now blocking all third-party apps.

 

Instagram is the last bit of social media I participate in. (I don't count Tumblr as a part of that, although I suppose technically I should.) I don't know what prompted this draconian lock down of their APIs, but I have a feeling it has something to do with Elon Musk's ongoing destruction of Twitter. I'm sure Zuck looked at what was going on over there, and thought…

Meta needs to fail. Twitter needs to fail. These social media mega corporations in general need to die, but sadly that won't happen as long as people use them.

I left Facebook almost a decade ago; I left Twitter—after having returned a year ago solely for the porn—much more recently. But Instagram is going to prove to be more difficult. I killed my account back in 2012 when it was taken over by Facebook and immediately regretted it, rejoining the service almost immediately.

It's an addiction, I know.

Thankfully I had the foresight to back up my photos from all the years leading up to 2012, and I have backups of everything since, but where to post them? Right now I have about 5200 images from 2012 onward, and probably a third of that prior for the years I was on prior to that. Should I post them here? Innundate my tumblr? What do you guys think? Would you be interested in seeing any of it?

Well That's Disappointing

My Instagram Top Nine for 2022.

I remember when I used to actually post photos I'd taken on Instagram.

THIS IS WHAT TRUMP AND THE LAST SIX YEARS HAVE DONE TO ME.

In Case Anyone Cares…

Since Space Karen has successfully killed Twitter, you can now find me on Mastodon. If you're on there stop by and say hello because I didn't save any of my Twitter contacts before I left.

How To Have a Good Internet Experience in 8 Easy Steps

#1 – Stop having a bad faith interpretation of every thing you read

If you think something someone said might have been something you disagree with, instead of starting an argument, ask them to clarify or ask them specific questions about what they said

You will be so surprised to find that half the people you assume are being shitty or negative just didn't phrase what they meant very well

#2 – Learn to block people

It's free, it's easy, and it will save your life. Tired of someone tagging your stuff with characters from a fandom you don't like? Don't try to control them by telling them not to, just fucking block them. Less upsetting to them, less work for you, less inflammatory, more effective.

#3 – Don't share your entire backstory with strangers on the internet

No one is entitled to your information – not your pronouns, your age, your sexuality, your location, nothing.

Share the things that you're comfortable with, but remember that the more you share, the more vulnerable you make yourself to attacks. Like, do not share your triggers in your bio. You are giving abusers and harassers a to do list. Keep that shit private for your own safety.

You can get harassed, you can get stalked, you can get doxxed. Internet safety is real and necessary and the less we care about it, the more we set up future generations to get hurt through the internet

#4 – Learn to say, "It's none of my business."

Don't understand someone's desire to use neo pronouns? None of your business. Can't understand why someone is a furry? None of your business. Curious about how someone who talks about being poor can have a Starbucks in that last selfie they posted? None of your damn business.

If you don't like certain things on your dash, unfollow or block people. If you don't understand how someone can identify a certain way or do a certain thing or like a certain thing or feel a certain way or literally anything, just remember, it's none of your business.

If you have genuine questions from a place of good faith (i.e. what inspired you to use neopronouns?/what do you pronouns mean to you?) Go for it. But if you're only asking questions to draw negative attention to someone or make them feel bad or to other them, you're just being a nosy asshole.

Minding your own business is also good for you because – and I mean this genuinely – feeling entitled and superior is fucking exhausting. I know, because I've been 20 before. You will have a way better time online if you just stop caring about shit that doesn't concern you

#5 – Learn to lurk

Lurking is frequently seen as a bad thing, like someone who's lurking is somehow being creepy. The truth is, lurking is a great way to learn. More people should do it.

For example, if you're new to a community, spend some time consuming content and information from that community without saying anything. This goes for fandoms, queer spaces, disabled spaces, cultural spaces, etc.

Nothing is worse than being in a community for years and someone popping in for the first time in their life and airing their opinions loudly and with zero respect for the space. A great example of this is that post someone made about the leather pride flag. You know the one.

(If you don't, basically, someone said that the leather pride flag is embarrassing and insulting to the queer community and has no place at pride and then got schooled by hundreds of people about how the leather pride flag is one of the oldest flags in the queer community and leather daddies and leather dykes were the people on the front lines protecting other queer people from cops back in the 80s and 90s)

So basically, learn the history of a community, research your opinions before you decide they're your opinions, and keep your ignorance to yourself until you're not ignorant anymore. Not only is this better for community spaces, you won't have 9000 notifications of people telling you to shut the fuck up

Learning to lurk to educate yourself about a space also makes actually speaking in that space a lot easier

#6 – Stop believing everything you read

I'm not talking about stupid funny stories. Believe them – it's not hurting anything to get a laugh out of something that may or may not have happened.

I'm talking about news and current events. If you hear that some celebrity did something and there are no receipts, go and find the receipts or discard it. People spread misinformation on here all the damn time. It's like a game of telephone and, unfortunately, a lot of small creators end up getting slandered and canceled because of it.

#7 – Quit wasting energy on hating random shit

Being annoyed by a certain fandom is one thing, but actively hating things that other people do just because you're not into it is such a waste of your energy. Not only are you actively putting more negativity into the world, you're wasting your own time on things that upset you.

Focus your time and energy on the things you do like and quit scrolling through Tumblr user AnimeIReallyHate7648's discourse blog. You might think it's fun, but there comes a point where hating something goes from kind of fun to actually obsessive and unhealthy for you as a person.

#8 – Unlearn purity culture

This is a big one guys. What is purity culture? It's referenced a lot, but I think a lot of you don't know what it is.

In short, purity culture is when people take many nuanced situations and try to divide them into black and white categories. There's the Good category and the Bad category. The problem is, life is not in black and white. You can't put a neat line down the middle between good and bad. This kind of thinking is extremely regressive. Ask any therapist alive and they will tell you that black and white thinking is unhealthy and often a Symptom of Something.

So, what happens is, someone sees something on the good side and spots something they think is morally objectionable in it and says, "this can't be here, it needs to go to the Bad side." (Cancel culture). The problem is, people are always on the lookout for anything wrong in the Good – constantly looking for impurities so that they can completely sanitize things and therefore be free of sin. So they will look harder and harder and harder and keep moving things to the Bad side of the line until there's basically nothing left on the Good side.

This ends up meaning that perfectly good media is canceled because every character in it didn't make the perfect, right choice every time. It damages media in that it demands characters be completely flawless – something no human is. When a character does something that's actually problematic, even if the media doesn't condone the behavior, instead of engaging with it and using it as an opportunity to learn and teach other people why that wasn't okay, people who subscribe to purity culture throw the baby out with the bathwater, saying the entire piece of media should be canceled because its creators support the problematic action of that character (even if they don't).

This entire line of thinking is extremely unhealthy, heavily informed by Christianity, infantilizes adults, assumes no one can distinguish fiction from reality, and promotes censorship, which has a long and sordid history.

I could go on about this at length, so if anyone wants a full post, just let me know. But the point is, purity culture is bad for community, it's bad for media, it's bad for healthy emotional and intellectual development, it's bad for interpersonal understanding and empathy, and it's bad for you.

Unlearn purity culture and you will be a happier person. If all else fails, remember step #4.

[Source]

In Case Anyone's Interested…

I just set up an account on Tribel.

I'm not sure how long I'll be around, but I'm willing to give it a go.

If it degenerates into another Facebook Facefuck or Twitter I won't be long, but for now, there seem to be a lot of like-minded, liberal voices on the platform, which is a nice change from other sites.