the unbreakable connection between me and a song I heard in a fanvid over ten years ago

the older I get, the more the technological changes I've lived through as a millennial feel bizarre to me. we had computers in my primary school classroom; I first learned to type on a typewriter. I had a cellphone as a teenager, but still needed a physical train timetable. my parents listened to LP records when I was growing up; meanwhile, my childhood cassette tape collection became a CD collection, until I started downloading mp3s on kazaa over our 56k modem internet connection to play in winamp on my desktop computer, and now my laptop doesn't even have a disc tray. I used to save my word documents on floppy discs. I grew up using the rotary phone at my grandparents' house and our wall-connected landline; my mother's first cellphone was so big, we called it The Brick. I once took my desktop computer - monitor, tower and all - on the train to attend a LAN party at a friend's house where we had to connect to the internet with physical cables to play together, and where one friend's massive CRT monitor wouldn't fit on any available table. as kids, we used to make concertina caterpillars in class with the punctured and perforated paper strips that were left over whenever anything was printed on the room's dot matrix printer, which was outdated by the time I was in high school. VHS tapes became DVDs, and you could still rent both at the local video store when I was first married, but those shops all died out within the next six years. my facebook account predates the iphone camera - I used to carry around a separate digital camera and manually upload photos to the computer in order to post them; there are rolls of undeveloped film from my childhood still in envelopes from the chemist's in my childhood photo albums. I have a photo album from my wedding, but no physical albums of my child; by then, we were all posting online, and now that's a decade's worth of pictures I'd have to sort through manually in order to create one. there are video games I tell my son about but can't ever show him because the consoles they used to run on are all obsolete and the games were never remastered for the new ones that don't have the requisite backwards compatibility. I used to have a walkman for car trips as a kid; then I had a discman and a plastic hardshell case of CDs to carry around as a teenager; later, a friend gave my husband and I engraved matching ipods as a wedding present, and we used them both until they stopped working; now they're obsolete. today I texted my mother, who was born in 1950, a tiktok upload of an instructional video for girls from 1956 on how to look after their hair and nails and fold their clothes. my father was born four years after the invention of colour televison; he worked in radio and print journalism, and in the years before his health declined, even though he logically understood that newspapers existed online, he would clip out articles from the physical paper, put them in an envelope and mail them to me overseas if he wanted me to read them. and now I hold the world in a glass-faced rectangle, and I have access to everything and ownership of nothing, and everything I write online can potentially be wiped out at the drop of a hat by the ego of an idiot manchild billionaire. as a child, I wore a watch, but like most of my generation, I stopped when cellphones started telling us the time and they became redundant. now, my son wears a smartwatch so we can call him home from playing in the neighbourhood park, and there's a tanline on his wrist ike the one I haven't had since the age of fifteen. and I wonder: what will 2030 look like?

My grandfather, who is 100, remembers his dad’s accountant doing math on an abacus. Now he texts me “<3” on his flip phone.

i think abt lohn and redd more than any other person ever has i think.

that's exactly what i've been telling people about ME for two years

YOU AND ME NEED TO TALK

No doesn't exist digitally anymore. It's been replaced by Not Now or Maybe Later or Snooze Tumblr Live for the next 7 days or Sign In To Continue or We'll show you less like this (lie) or Schedule your restart otherwise we force it in 10 minutes. And I hate it all with the heat of the sun.

projecting on characters is awesome [recognizes myself through the other] what the fuck is this shit

nightly spiral

this is my favorite fuckin comic ever I have never seen something capture the experience so well

realizing you’re on the ace spectrum like

“I’d hit that.” “You… you don’t even know them though??”

“Oh come on, everyone has a list of celebrities they’d totally have sex with if they had a chance.” “Haha yeah ok” *internally* what

“Ya so like for the past few years I’ve felt zero attraction to people I wasn’t friends with first?? Lol what’s up with that”

Why did you have to have sex with them?? Couldn’t you just hold it?? Like pee??

“You’ll meet someone who makes you feel like that someday, don’t worry” “……sounds fake but ok”

“Sex is an important part of a relationship! Everyone has sexual needs!” “….sounds fake but ok”

“Dude that girl is so hot” “I know right?? Look at her fucking eyeliner. Goals. The fuck.” “No I meant like… look at that ass” “Are we looking at the same person are you really focussing on her ass look at how visually appealing her outfit is and dont you dare fuckin tell me that eyeliner isnt fierce as hell”

“Aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction are two different things” *puzzle pieces vERY RAPIDLY FALLING INTO PLACE*

*staring at the ceiling at two-thirty in the morning* i could die a virgin and i would regret absolutely nothing

“What’s your ideal girl like?” “Uh… my best friend?” “Oh cute, you want your girlfriend to be the one who knows you best!” “No I meant I am literally only attracted to my best friend she is my ideal girl please help I am dying”

“We’ve been dating for six months and we still haven’t had sex!!” “Have you marathoned Star Wars together yet?” “Yeah we did that like two weeks ago” “Well what more do you want”

*thinking about an attractive woman* *dissecting my entire personality and sexuality to figure out why I’m attracted to her this time* is it the muscles. Oh my god is this a sex thing. Oh my god what the hell is this. Oh my god what the fuck is the wtf the fuck the fUCK

*Next day* Zarya could punch me in the face while eating me out and I’d let her but only because she’s a fictional character and therefore could literally never do that

*writing fanfic* ONLY CLOSE FRIENDS HAVE SEX BC ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE MAKES SENSE TO ME

(why is that tho. maybe i should look into that *doesnt look into it*)

“What do you find most attractive in a girl?” “Gotta love those strong emotional bonds” “No I meant like what’s a turn-on for you?” “DID I McFUCKING STUTTER”

*staring at the ceiling at two-thirty in the morning again* sexual attraction should be added to the cryptid wikia

“Yeah sex sounds like a great stress reliever and a nice way to strengthen the bonds between you and your partner(s)” “Well there’s more to it than that…” *The Arctic Monkey’s Do I Wanna Know starts playing in my head* “Haha ok buddy”

“There’s more to being ace than just not being interested in having sex or not feeling sexual attraction. In fact there’s a whole spectrum. You may even feel sexual attraction sometimes but still be ace. You can also be gay and ace at the same time.” “…bro.” “Also it’s totally normal.” *sobbing* “…bro. Bro there are words for it there’s an entire list oh my god-”

“-finally.”

themes commonly found in international friendships

- ‘u dont have (insert food/music/restaurant here) over there??’ - ‘wait what time is it. shouldnt u be asleep’ - alternatively: timezoned/clockblocked again - ‘do u need a hug. have a virtual hug’ - weird slang terms - ‘i will fight everyone thats mean to u. i will fight them rn’ - vague embarrassment regarding ur accent - ‘dont maKE ME COME OVER THERE’ - ‘oh yeah i have a friend who lives in (insert country here) and apparently’ - no real hugs :(( - suffering - fahrenheit vs celsius - the measuring of things in feet fucks one of u up, probably

AND DONT FORGET

“i made food do you want some”

“yes”

@pookie-pie-12 @cuddlycharlotty

@mikeyaftonz

why are all the bestest ships between a sad sarcastic dark haired person and a steadfast blonde with goals

i love tumblr because sometimes i get an urge to rb posts about something nobody likes and everyone just politely ignores me. everyone's like oh he's fallen into madness again, he'll be fine later i guess

One reason I think it’s important that tumblr understands that AO3 emails spark dopamine and not serotonin other than the fact that I’m a neuroscientist who is very tired is because dopamine is part of the reward system.

I honestly think that emails from AO3 affect the reward system very similarly to gambling. When you get a sudden, random reward (AKA a comment on your fic), it feels great, and you want that again. But as the gambler writer, you have very little control over when the rewards come in or how many. There are games fandoms where you might have a higher chance of getting a response, or tropes, pairings, etc, but in the end, the reward is up to fickle fate (or possibly fantastic marketing on your part if you know how).

Randomly received rewards are incredibly addicting.

Similarly, not receiving a reward when you think you should get one feels very, very bad.

People who are more satisfied in their lives are less susceptible to the highs and lows of gambling and other addictive behaviors. If you are finding your relationship with you AO3 stats page or AO3 emails is unhealthy, it might be worth it to 1. turn off email notifications (so the randomness of the reward is removed) 2. Pick a time each week to check for comments (now it’s on a schedule) and 3. See if there are ways to improve your life elsewhere so that your mental health does not fluctuate with the whims of strangers sending you comments.

It’s not a moral failing to like attention. I have no judgment for people who get into a negative cycle with these things. This is for your mental health. Writing can be so rewarding for so many reasons, and I really just want to see other people find the joy in it.

This post has been going around again, and the question you should ask yourself is not, “am I addicted to emails/comments/AO3?” But “does posting fic put me in a bad mood? Do I get anxious waiting for emails? Is my relationship with AO3 causing me mental pain?”

The problem isn’t whether you are “addicted,” the problem is whether you are experiencing painful emotions in response to a hobby that should be fun. That’s what needs evaluation.

@fairycosmos / Comic by @shhhitsfine / Comic by @incendavery

The feminine desire to be a man

The masculine desire to be a woman

The nonbinary desire to be asleep

I would be unstoppable if not for the problems

the best part of experiencing november 5th 2020 was watching tumblr attempt to describe what it was like to experience november 5th 2020