A thread for updates on the various ways the internet is destroying everything and the undying hellsites of social media. Let's all laugh at the abyss.
Again. How have we ever let any of these people call anyone else an NPC?
A boot has never, ever been licked with as much zeal as this.
This man would source the materials for the boot, manufacture it himself, to the exact wants of the wearer, personally deliver it to that person and slip it on their foot before licking it vigorously.
Heh, that is another one sentence wonder for what is wrong with the world today:
The richest person in the world doesn't have any time for his kids.
His kids want nothing to do with him.
fangblackbone wrote:Heh, that is another one sentence wonder for what is wrong with the world today:
The richest person in the world doesn't have any time for his kids.His kids want nothing to do with him.
Which REALLY says something; most rich monsters who have more than a few kids manage to pop out at least one who's willing to put up with them just enough to have some hope of being put in the will.
Yeah as someone who works on M&A deals, an accelerator clause is a no-brainer, thus I'm not surprised he had to fall on a sword once that was pointed out. Given his companies must have experience with these deal structures I'm surprised it didn't dawn on him earlier. Anyway, this is Exhibit A as to why keeping your client's trigger finger firmly away from the trigger until they've had a reasonable opportunity to take a deep breath and assess.
Given his companies must have experience with these deal structures I'm surprised it didn't dawn on him earlier.
My nephew recently introduced me to the concept of "LOLcow" which he describes as the intersection between developmental disadvantage and actual, pure sh*ttiness being punished by consequence. He said livestreams of autistic kids playing League of Legends and melting down calling people the N word, for instance was an example of LOLcowing.
I feel the practice of witnessing this for entertainment is pretty sh*tty and occasionally wonder if I am guilty of this when I laugh at f*ckwits like Elon Musk, Kanye West, and Ben Shapiro getting clowned on so hard it would make a normal, self aware person hide in a smoking hole in the ground.
Then I realize that they really are sh*tty f*cking excuses for human tissue.
Might be a new use of an existing term, or an identical term independently arising with a different usage, but the Know Your Meme page (always a useful resource when I encounter new slang that I'm not sure if I'm using correctly) defines "lolcow" very differently, and more simply, as someone so gullible or easily griefed that they make a tempting target. Like "a cash cow, but for lols." Importantly, there's no mention of autism or any developmental disadvantage.
I think the key question to ask is whether the joke is that they're an autistic piece of sh*t, or whether the joke is that they're a piece of sh*t, and the fact that they happen to have an autism diagnosis is incidental.
I have my doubts about Musk's supposed Asperger's diagnosis. Almost anyone can get a diagnosis with almost anything if they try hard enough, and that's without billions to throw at the problem. Certainly his behavior has far more in common with the stereotypical self-diagnosed Internet kid using "I have Asperger's" as shorthand for "I want to act like a piece of sh*t without consequence" than anyone I've ever known IRL with an autism diagnosis. And even if he DOES have a legit condition and it IS a contributing factor to his piece-of-sh*t behavior, Lord knows he's got the resources to get professional help at doing a better job managing his condition than he is.
But the Occam's razor explanation is, "nah, just a garden-variety narcissist with extreme systemic advantages that have thus far prevented him from facing many consequences for his behavior or having to confront his many and varied personal character flaws in any meaningful way."
This is a repeated source of discourse online, but I am emphatically team "You can have Autism and be a gigantic sh*thead, independent of that."
"Kiwifarms" is famous for their discovery & persecution of "lolcows". I think they invented the term. They're the dregs of humanity over there.
Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content
I've seen interviews with some kids who, being native to this, are perfectly fine with essentially having been made into content since they were toddlers.
But I think it doesn't take a lot of imagination to say that there will be plenty of unhappy stories too.
How Did Two Unknown Latin Music Operators Make $23 Million From YouTube? The IRS Says They Stole It
It was hard to miss Jose “Chenel” Medina Teran driving a lime-green Lamborghini Aventador around West Phoenix. With its butterfly doors and leather interior, the garish sports car, which costs upward of $390,000 new, could often be spotted parked outside nightclubs, restaurants and even Walmart. For locals, it served as a quasi-tracking device for Teran’s whereabouts and was a neon reminder of his sudden, outsize wealth. “You knew where he was eating [by where] he was parked,” says Ricardo (a pseudonym to protect his identity), an accomplished entrepreneur in the Arizona city’s growing Latin music business.
Teran’s rise from middle-class comfort to Lamborghini-level luxury represented a stark shift for those who knew him as a small-time music producer, engineer and the owner of Digitlog, a local recording studio. They thought the same about his business partner, Dominican Republic-born Webster “Yenddi” Batista Fernandez. Like Teran, Batista went from getting by as a local bachata artist and music video director to driving his own Lamborghini — albeit a comparatively subdued gray model — and sporting diamond-encrusted chains made by Bad Bunny’s jeweler du jour, El Russo.
Their newfound flashy lifestyles understandably sparked considerable gossip among those who work in Phoenix’s music business, like Ricardo, who couldn’t fathom why Teran and Batista were suddenly living so much larger than everyone else. “Phoenix is one of the main points for drug smuggling. So my first thought was, ‘Oh, they’re doing something like that,’ or maybe they won the lottery and they’re not telling people,” Ricardo remembers. “It just didn’t make any sense to me.”
In November 2021, the source of the duo’s newfound wealth was revealed: according to the government, Teran and Batista had been running what is now one of the largest – if not the largest – known YouTube music royalty scams in history, one that led to an investigation by the IRS and their indictment that month on 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft.
According to documents filed in Arizona federal court, over about a four-year period, Teran and Batista (along with a number of alleged conspirators) devised a company they called MediaMuv to siphon off $23 million in master and publishing royalties for Latin music copyrights they did not control. Much of these royalties were claimed through the popular rights management company AdRev, which is owned by Downtown Music Holdings. Teran, whose attorneys did not respond to requests for comment, pleaded not guilty and awaits trial in November. Batista, on the other hand, took a plea deal on April 21, admitting guilt to one count of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. As part of the plea agreement, he revealed key insights to the court as to how the MediaMuv scam was committed. Batista’s attorney and an IRS representative declined to comment on this story because the case is still ongoing.
Also, the TikTok-ification of everything continues apace.
Spotify is launching a TikTok-like vertical-swiped homepage to its mobile app. Though Bloomberg leaked the news last week, the new homepage was officially unveiled by company executives at Spotify’s Stream On event Wednesday (March 8).
The new homepage — unveiled during the demonstration led by Spotify co-president/chief product officer/chief technology officer Gustav Soderstrom — will trade Spotify’s formerly static carousels of playlist and song recommendations in favor of a vertical, swipeable, video-based interactive feed which will automatically play previews of music, podcasts and audiobooks for users in hopes of helping them discover new content.
The top of the homepage will continue to boast a few quick links to help users instantly find their favorite podcasts, audiobooks and playlists.
“When I open my home screen, I won’t have to choose what I might be interested in just based on a cover art that I’ve never seen before, or an episode name I’ve never heard of,” said Soderstrom. “Instead, I can instantly hear the most interesting part of a song or an episode.”
The new video-centric feed, as well as other announcements at Stream On, represent a move away from positioning Spotify as a solely audio-focused company and toward creating a more audiovisual platform. As Spotify CEO Daniel Ek noted in his introduction, “In the past few years, people likely thought of Spotify as being the best destination for listening. But today, this evolution is really about bringing Spotify to life.”
“Instead, I can instantly hear the most interesting part of a song or an episode.”
:barf:
Yeah, these new ways of engaging with art.... no likey.
Microsoft Teams will let you transform into a 3D avatar in May
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Microsoft is finally adding its 3D avatars for all Microsoft Teams users starting in May, according to an update to its Microsoft 365 roadmap. Microsoft originally announced the avatars feature in 2021 and has been testing it privately in recent months.
Avatars in Microsoft Teams are designed to let people avoid appearing on camera during meetings. If you don’t feel for video or you need a break from constant calls then you can swap in a 3D avatar that will animate based on your vocal cues alone — no camera needed at all.
Bullsh*t. Either let me show up to a work meeting with the avatar of a pastel-colored shark/wolf hybrid with a colossal rack/hog or GTFO.
Good.
First meeting in like 2 years I was forced to be on camera last week and it sucked.
With TTs, facial and bodily masking could now be dispensed with altogether and replaced with the video-transmitted image of what was essentially a heavily doctored still-photograph, one of an incredibly attractive and well-turned-out human being, someone who actually resembled you the caller only in such limited respects as like race and limb-number, the photo's face focused attentively in the direction of the video-phonic camera from amid the sumptuous but not ostentatious appointments of the sort of room that best reflected the image of yourself you wanted to transmit, etc
Avatars in Microsoft Teams are designed to let people avoid appearing on camera during meetings. If you don’t feel for video or you need a break from constant calls then you can swap in a 3D avatar that will animate based on your vocal cues alone — no camera needed at all.
This is absolutely not going to work.
I am curious to see if it can catch the subtlety of my "was it sarcasm or not" comments.
I spent an ungodly amount of hours playing Final Fantasy XI Online between 2005 to 2011. I'm sure many others did too, or were on WOW servers.
Let's just say, even those graphics do more justice to your in-game avatars than the Metaverse.
Undoubtedly FB wanted to set the device requirements at the bare minimum. However I can only assume that would have driven away VR early adopters. Now it looks like something my daughter might play on Roblox.
I spent an ungodly amount of hours playing Final Fantasy XI Online between 2005 to 2011. I'm sure many others did too, or were on WOW servers.
Let's just say, even those graphics do more justice to your in-game avatars than the Metaverse.
Undoubtedly FB wanted to set the device requirements at the bare minimum. However I can only assume that would have driven away VR early adopters. Now it looks like something my daughter might play on Roblox.
Also, to be fair, Facebook isn't a company known for attracting the highest-quality talent, especially when it comes to graphic designers. Square Enix and Blizzard understand how important good visuals are. I would bet that they poured a lot more money into their graphics design division, hiring a larger and more skilled crew than Zuck and his people bothered to.
Honestly, I was only half-kidding with that "pastel-colored shark/wolf hybrid."
Because individual furries have shown themselves to be far, far more capable and creative than the literal billions of dollars of investment Meta spent.
My mother, the troll: ‘I think she lost sight of the McCanns’ humanity’
“There was this entire part of Mum that I never knew about,” Ben Leyland says. Brenda Leyland was a stylish, well-spoken and rather private woman who lived in a picturesque village in Leicestershire. He knew she told stories, and that some of them may have been on the tall side. He also knew that she spent a lot of time on her laptop and was increasingly living online. What he didn’t know was that his mother had become a Twitter troll who spent the final years of her life relentlessly attacking the parents of Madeleine McCann, the girl who disappeared in Portugal in 2007 at the age of three and hasn’t been seen since.
In 2014, Brenda was approached by a Sky News journalist who asked her why she was trolling the McCanns on Twitter. She was about to get into a car with her friend to visit a garden centre, and declined to comment. The journalist then told her that she had been reported to Scotland Yard and her tweets were being investigated as part of a larger campaign of abuse against the McCanns. “Well, that’s fair enough,” she said calmly. But Brenda’s face gave her away. Her eyes blinked and her cheek twitched anxiously. Four days later, on 4 October 2014, Brenda killed herself.
This is a FASCINATING story. I have looked into some of my own online harassers and found their very depressing backstories. Lots of people in their 50s and beyond are using social media to hurt and harass others like it’s a pastime, an obsession, a calling
“Don’t feed the trolls” may be good advice but the number of so-called “trolls” continues to multiply and there are real people behind many of those accounts! Parents, grandparents, doctors, teachers, your friends, your neighbors… they’re harassing people on the internet
And you might think they’re a troll, but to these people, their harassment is noble. They don’t view themselves as trolls and increasingly I don’t think we should either. What’s trollish about believing yourself to be an investigative journalist and trying to ruin people’s lives?
~mod~
Please do not make light of suicide, regardless of who it is directed toward.
mudbunny
Sex Worker-Led Payment Platform Shuts Down After Being Cut Off by Processor
Adult industry cryptocurrency payment platform SpankPay announced on Monday that it is closing down, after facing the same banking discrimination it aimed to help sex workers avoid.
“After a long and difficult consideration, we have decided to close down SpankPay, our crypto payment processor that we built as a safe haven for our community,” SpankPay tweeted. “Rest assured your money is safe and we’ll get it to you as soon as possible.”
SpankPay is the payments side of the blockchain Spankchain, a sex worker-led alternative to more mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges. Spankchain started development around 2017, and SpankPay launched in 2019.
Wyre Payments, the company’s upstream payment processor, terminated SpankPay’s account because Wyre’s new payment processor, Checkout.com, doesn’t allow processing for payments related to sexual businesses, SpankPay said.
In February, payments through SpankPay were suspended because Wyre indefinitely terminated Spankpay, alleging it was in violation of “third-party payment processor or network rules,” according to a legal letter sent from Wyre that SpankPay posted to Twitter.
“Operating SpankPay in a hostile banking environment has always been challenging, but the escalating attacks have become untenable for our small team and the niche market we serve,” SpankPay tweeted in February.
I thought cryptocurrency was supposed to eliminate all the middlemen. What happened to, "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", as the original whitepaper was titled?
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