reblogs have always been in short supply for artists, sadly, but it's hitting the shitposts and even the cat pictures lately.

Gotta keep getting the word out that reblogs are good and keep people posting new material that will be passed around for the next 12 years

They’re used to other social media sites, where the only equivalent of reblogging is straight-up content theft; so the idea that you can put someone else’s stuff on your page and have it not be a bad thing is a strange experience for them.

They’re likely also used to an algorithm recommending content based on what they hit “like” on, so they probably think that that’s how this works, too.

I've been on this hellsite since around 2010, and was somewhat active on this very blog around 2016-2017, posting video game fanart.

I had maybe 10% of today's following, back then.

So, since it's my day off, I decided to compare the like to reblog ratio from then and now, between exclusively fanarts with comparable number of likes, behold:

2016:

aaand... 2022:

Well, okay, might be a fluke. Let's see another example then! Notes below fanart from 2016-2017 with around 800-1000 likes:

Now, let's see notes below fanart (similar number of likes, much bigger fandom) in 2022-2023:

....yeah....

Cool.

There is NO algorithm. YOU, the users, are the algorithm. Without you, even the coolest art or writing or meme posted here is dead in the water in a matter of two hours.

I sharpened my skills making psshaw.neocities.org and it’s still made up of mainly basic code like <img> and <table> tags. It’s only in the later pages that I’ve decided to try advanced stuff like responsive CSS.

naalbraxusmazkelix.neocities.org is even simpler, to resemble something built in the late nineties.

I feel like there’s so much personality that’s just waiting to be brought back into Web 1.0. It’s a whole sandbox you can learn how to wrangle, and shockingly fast. I want to see what everyone can do!

Okay, I’ve been on the internet since before the great Y2K scare and *old person voice* Back in my day, everyone had websites like this. I had several. It was normal, everyone’s websites were a reflection of themselves and their interests, and it was beautiful. I’ve been lamenting a lot lately missing this era because of how badly social media has distilled and homogenized the internet experience

Your sites remind me so much of web 1.0 and it’s beautiful. I love this. Please keep doing this. Please keep expressing yourself.

Please everyone bring this back. Bring back personality, bring back individuality, bring back fun

And if you’d like to have a fine pairing to go with your website, I suggest going to proboards.com and setting one up. Still want social media, but want a smaller and more close-knit community without the same constant fear of some rando finding you and sending you threats, or something accidentally going viral and giving you a panic attack? Individual forum communities. You make your own rules, you can make your own aesthetic, and if you use add-ons or know CSS you can get a lot of customization. Also, forum signatures! They’re a great quick little way of expressing yourself! Use imgur.com to host your images! 

Seriously, Forums are AMAZING for sharing both long and shortform content, shitposts, art and writing, everything! Love roleplaying? They’re the best and most organized way to do that and be able to have everything tidily archived and easy to search for!

And best of all, you don’t have shit like twitter’s algorithm breathing down your neck or promoted shit being shoved in your face!

Please please please if you hate all this corporate homogenizing bullshit and attempts to do shit like manufacture fandom, this is a way you can fight back and express yourself!

I’m seeing people in the notes going “that sounds nice and all but I don’t know how to code.”

Friends!

There are resources to make it easier!!

And you don’t have to make a website that looks like a shining, professional corporate product. You can just kind of slap some colours and images on a webpage and add to it from there, as you learn. I learned to build basic websites when I was 10. It’s a little more work than just signing up for a social media profile and filling out a few forms, but it’s so incredibly rewarding when you start to see your idea taking shape.

And there’s a whole community of people out there who want to see you succeed and would be happy to help. Check out the Yesterweb, they’ve got a Discord community and a Mastodon instance and even a Minecraft server. Sadgrl/Sadness, who runs the community, is super sweet and helpful. They’ve got a ton of manifestos from community members about why it’s so important to bring back the spirit of the old web. Oh, and they hate crypto, so you know they’re not just a bunch of tech bros.

I’ve also seen people in the notes saying “But nobody’s going to follow me there.” That is always a concern when it comes to moving to any new space on the web, especially if it’s outside the big social media platforms, but even though I’m a huge supporter of reducing and/or entirely removing your presence on the big platforms, there’s no one saying you can’t stay on them in order to keep in touch with the people who matter to you — or even to use those platforms to promote your site! I’ve distanced myself from Facebook, for example, but I still have an account there and keep the Messenger app open. I’ve set it so I appear offline to everyone, but I’ve told the people I care about that I’m still there and they can reach me any time, I just won’t look like I’m online. You can use status updates/tweets/posts/whatever to tell people “Hey, I added an art gallery to my website!”, “Hey, I added my latest fic to my website!”, “Hey, if you’ve ever wanted to learn everything there is to know about snow leopards, they’re my special interest and I’ve built a web shrine to them now, so check it out at this link.” You can set up a guestbook or a forum on your website to keep the lines of communication open. And Neocities is set up in such a way that you can make new connections with other people in the community. So not only can you still keep in touch with everyone you still want to keep up with, but you can also make new friends and follow new people!

Really, the only big drawback is that you’d have to accept that it’s a bit of a slower space. The old web wasn’t about a constant deluge of new content from one source — it was about exploration. It was about going down rabbit holes and finding all the weird content that makes you happy in a bunch of different places, and keeping those sites bookmarked for whenever you want to check them out again rather than following their feed. But you even can follow them on a feed — even if they’re not on Neocities — if you use RSS. And with RSS, there’s no algorithm and no advertising. It’s just simple, chronological updates.

There’s a bit of an extra learning curve if you want to get in on this stuff, but it is so, so worthwhile, and honestly so much better for your mental health. A slower web built around your specific interests means less algorithmic outrage culture: you’re not constantly being shot with a firehose of all the most controversial content to keep you angry and clicking. You’re just having a nice time building your little dedication to nice things that you like, or expressing yourself, or learning new things, and meeting new people who are interested in those things. It’s lovely and especially if you were never around for the old web, you deserve to experience it.

Her power is cutting “social power lines”, which are the conceptual connections between people in power and the people they have power over. It’s like a curse— if she cuts a politician’s line, for example, they will soon have a scandal that removes them from office and causes their base to abandon them. A billionaire suffers a series of misfortunes that leaves them penniless and publicly shamed. An abuser’s victim finds her way to make a clean break.

She can bring down anyone she can get close enough to— and not just bad people.

The story I’m working on for her is gleeful ruin and schadenfreude with her girlfriend, a small time criminal who uses her powers almost exclusively for shoplifting. I love them both immediately.

“Abby, why is this character classed as a villain?”

reason one: in-universe, there is a legal definition for a supervillain that sums up to “anyone who uses a superpower to harm members of the public, be that harm physical, financial, political, or social”, and is broadly applied to a number of vigilantes that are objectively doing more good than harm

reason two: her powers can have some killer collateral damage on other people’s lives, and a few people she’s used her powers on have died from it

reason three: bites people

But biting is nice :(

Her girlfriend agrees with you!

Also add more salt to your diet lol. With or without the POTS unless you have hypertension in which case I’d be more cautious.

Actually, it’s not just that you can reblog this. I want people to reblog this.

My poor mom went by years without knowing why the fuck she was having all these debilitating symptoms.

All it took was me making her add some more salt to her diet and have an isotonic drink daily and she IMMEDIATELY (as in, less than an hour) stopped feeling faint whenever she got up from kneeling down and her hair is slowly falling off less and less.

She used to need at least 5 minutes to recover from kneeling down and now she kneels down and stands up like it’s nothing. Even her joint pain from EDS and brain fog have improved tremendously and she has much more energy.

It’s not normal to always get dizzy when you kneel down and then get up, or when you get up from bed or a chair.

It’s not normal for any of that to make you light-headed or nauseous, or get blurry vision, headaches or palpitations.

POTS can develop in previous healthy people after a Covid infection. If you have had Covid recently or know someone who has, please keep this in mind.

ya boy had Covid and my Doctor thinks I may have POTS as part of my Post-Covid Syndrome. He has me drinking pedialyte to help with it because of the sodium content and I gotta say, it’s expensive but at least it fucking works.

No wait, it’s really not normal to feel lightheaded and see everything in a blur for a minute when you stand from being laid down ????

Nope, it’s very much NOT supposed to happen.

The whole ‘salt is bad’ stigma is from the campaign during the boomer generation when there was too much salt in people’s diets and caused blood pressure issues etc. So now the entire population has gone to the other extreme with ‘low sodium’ and ‘no added salt!!’ as if its a health benefit and THATS JUST SIMPLY NOT TRUE.

With this fear of salt, people all over are developing POTS- salt deficiency disorder for the laymen. Some other symptoms include partial or total blackouts and what i refer to as heat sickness. Salt regulates your hydration and body temperature. If you DON’T SWEAT you have POTS. If summer months are almost impossible for you to enjoy because of the heat and sun, you probably have POTS and need more salt. If salty foods like puckles, fries, and chips taste absurdly good and/or addictive and/or SALTLESS, YOU NEED MORE SALT. Your tastebuds are literally telling you that you arent getting enough salt for your body. How do you know enough is enough? When your tastebuds go ‘ew thats TOO much salt’. Thats your sign you finally have enough in you for now. Yes, you can literally eat a teaspoon of salt and it STILL NOT BE TOO SALTY if you are very salt deficient.

Stop being afraid of salt, its a VITAL MINERAL TO OUR BODIES, WD NEED IT TO FUNCTION AND REGULATE OURSELVES.

*flapping hard* Iiiii gotta talk to my doctors again. I keep forgetting how many adults in my Cerebral Palsy support group have these issues.

You can also read a FREE copy of Transgender Liberation: a Movement Whose Time Has Come here

You can also get a FREE copy of Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman here

And here’s a bunch of hir articles for FREE about any number of things really

And you can get a FREE copy of Drag King Dreams here <3

Watching the first one: Yes, my brain that is used to Atlantic coastal dolphins registers that as the size that orcas probably are.

Watching the second one: OH LAWD HE COMIN'

thanks guys while im here PLEASE put an acne option on your picrews