Jack Werner

“Before the class begins, you must put your hands together and pray to Jesus Christ, and accept that you are sinners and that he is your lord and savior”

At this moment, an enlightened, euphoric, and intelligent atheist, who had spent some time making quotes and was immersed in the teachings of Darwin stood up, and took off his fedora.

“How old is this fedora?”

The narrow-minded professor sneered rather in a republican manner and cockily replied “5000 years, you bigoted atheist”
“Wrong. It’s 4.6 billion years old. If it was 5000 years old, as you say, is real, than that means that God is real and I wouldn’t have failed my biology midterm.”

The professor was visibly shaken and dropped his copy of the Bible. He stormed out of the room sobbing uncontrollably, partly because of him being proven wrong, and partly because a priest molested him as a kid and those memories were resurfacing.

The student’s applauded and all registered democrat that day and renounced all phony religions. A cat named “Mao Tse-tsung” ran into the room and sat on a copy of Darwin’s Origin of The Species and shed a tear. Several biology text-books were read, and Neil Degrasse Tyson showed up and was elected president.

The professor later quit to spend more time at his favorite gun range, where his gun accidently shot backwards and killed him because guns are dangerous.

”

- Redditor maanu123 satirizes your average online atheist storyteller.

"To give some background the creator, Bill Watterson, rarely gave permission to licence this IP and..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:41:00 -0400

“

To give some background the creator, Bill Watterson, rarely gave permission to licence this IP and this “Calvin peeing on ‘x’” drawing is an unauthorized depiction lifted from one of the Calvin and Hobbes strips. In the original Calvin is filling up a water balloon.

The problem I have with it is not the idea that Calvin would want to destroy or deface something, it’s that doing it in this way is so far beneath him as to be an insult to his very character.

Calvin is an artist, an ideologue. His destruction of something is a statement, not wanton careless destruction. If he throws a snowball at Susie it is a finely crafted masterpiece or the snowball becomes Yorick’s skull, a prop that he uses to opine over the morals of such an act. In this way he mirrors the artist, who could have made a boatload of super easy cash selling Hobbes plush dolls, but he didn’t and he stuck (some might say arrogantly) to his ideals as an artist.

This takes all that away and makes him look like a mere deviant. It is a bastardization of a character that is one of the best in its genre and I hate it.

”

- Redditor JonBanes replying to a thread where the infamous “Calvin peeing on ‘x’” drawing is used to heckle gaming company EA for fucking up the Sim City release. I’m thankful for JonBanes way of eloquently putting words on what I’ve been feelings for this drawing since I first saw it. He also finished his comment off with a quite cunning reference:

“Also, here’s what Calvin would be doing in SimCity.”

"Every idea about prehistoric man in the public sphere is at best inaccurate, at worse nonsense. I..."

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 04:51:40 -0500

“

Every idea about prehistoric man in the public sphere is at best inaccurate, at worse nonsense. I wouldn’t be surprised if all the other prehistory flairs came in here to say the same thing; we’re not a very well publicised field and we’re usually quite bitter about it.

Anyway, here are some big ones, off the top of my head (not repeating Pachacamac’s well made point about ‘caveman’ intelligence, and mostly focusing on Europe because that’s the only area I really know):

- That life was “nasty, brutish, and short”. We really have no reason to think that prehistoric life was really, really bad in any prehistoric period. Hunting and gathering (the economic strategy pursued by all humans until roughly 10,000 years ago, i.e. the vast majority of our history) has been famously described as “the original affluent society”. Typical modern hunter-gatherers spend just a few hours a day foraging for food which is easily accessible. They needn’t worry about starvation and their low population densities and flat social structures mean disease or violence aren’t big concerns either. And they occupy some of the most marginal environments on the planet – prehistoric hunter-gatherers, with their pick of where to live, will have had it even better. Prehistoric farming was also pretty laid back: it had a relatively light environmental footprint leaving people comfortable and with little reason to go to war or set up oppressive political regimes. In both cases the trope about prehistoric people “dying before they’re thirty” from disease, injuries, etc. is untrue: obviously lacking modern medicine they did have a lower average life expectancy than us, but it was comparable to that of premodern Europe, and largely a function of high infant mortality; if you lived to adulthood, you could comfortably count on reaching your fifties. That image of bleak drudgery, disease, being at the mercy of some armed group breezing through and taking everything you’ve got, really belongs to the age of cities, states and empires, not prehistory.

- That life was all sunshine and roses. The other most common misconception about prehistory is the exact reverse of the above: the idea of “the noble savage”. It goes something like: prehistoric people lived simple, fulfilling lives in harmony with their environment, free from the cares of the modern world, enlightened by traditional ways of knowing that we’ve shunned at our peril. Notwithstanding what I said on the last point, this is a fiction. While not worthless, “folk” medicine and ethnoscience is no substitute for modern biomedicine and science-science. People were almost certainly slaves to superstition, couldn’t hope to have anything approaching the diversity of experience you and I have access to, and commonly died deaths that could be trivially prevented today. We have evidence of low-level but endemic violence right back into the Palaeolithic. Significant differences in wealth and political power within societies start developing early (around 6000 BP in Europe) and although they did reach their crescendo in urban civilizations, there was plenty of time for prehistoric societies to develop warrior aristocracies and elites many times richer than the lower classes they exploited. Gender inequality, too, seems to have long roots, and intensified through time. And of course, if you happened to live in a technically-prehistoric society adjacent to one that wasn’t, there was always the chance that a massively superior force of professional soldiers in silly hats might turn up to impose civilisation on you.

- That prehistory is a story of monolithic “peoples” or “races” careening around the globe like billiard balls. In its worse form, these peoples are seen to be the direct ancestors of classically-derived macro-ethnic groups from later European history: the Germans, the Slavs, the Indo-Europeans, etc. Admittedly, archaeologists laboured under this misconception for a long time before it was realised to be nonsense, and personally I put the blame for the popular discourse not catching up on that score squarely on our shoulders. We also struggle to provide a convincing alternative narrative for explaining things like large scale language shift (the spread of Indo-European) or apparent population movements (the ‘barbarian invasions’ of the migration period). But we really are quite certain that things just didn’t work that way. In the types of societies we see in prehistory ethnicity is an convoluted, ephemeral phenomenon. People will have identified first and foremost with people they knew or were closely related to, and had only a vague, highly relative sense of a connection to groups beyond that. Borders between different cultural forms, languages, and so on, will have been hazy and prone to change, and people will have moved freely across them (to marry, for example). Larger entities (like the named barbarian groups that appear on the historical stage in the classical era) were probably ad hoc federations of disparate groups which, if they hadn’t been enshrined in the records of their influential ‘civilised’ neighbours, would have faded as quickly as they appeared.

- Prehistory is full of exotic “mysteries” and “lost civilisations” waiting to be “unearthed”. This is my particular pet peeve. I like to think of prehistory as a science. Some of my colleagues would disagree and pursue it as more of a humanistic endeavour. Either way, it is a systematic field of study, not an action film. We gain knowledge incrementally through painstaking empirical research and grappling with immensely difficult theoretical and interpretive problems. It is not simply a case of falling into an old ruin and finding some spectacular artefact that “changes everything”. The nature of our evidence is very limiting, and there’s much we’ll never know as a result, but that doesn’t mean it’s plausible that we’ve missed something huge like a lost civilisation or Atlantean aliens (and we certainly have no reason to ‘cover up’ such things). We also try not to just blithely assume things without evidence, so every time I read a newspaper report saying that a new find or theory has overturned what archaeologists have “previously assumed” I want to shoot myself in the face.

”

- Redditor brigantus answers the question What’s one glaring historical inaccuracy about prehistoric man that has entered the public consciousness?

(Referring to the earlier answer of Redditor Pachacamac)

Bakjour: Vi har #bakjour

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:31:34 -0500

Bakjour: Vi har #bakjour:

bakjour:

#Bakjour är en kran i Göteborgs frihamn en disig morgon.

#Bakjour är en kyrkbåt vid Siljans strand.

#Bakjour är figuren @MRosenbom i flottans Karlskrona.

#Bakjour är Bohusläns karga stenar och sand.

#Bakjour är Riddarfjärdens klarblå vatten.

#Bakjour är busstationen på torget i…

Bakgrundshistorien här.

"This was in the late 90’s, during the Clinton administration. I was working at Oakland Center,..."

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 09:06:50 -0500

“

This was in the late 90’s, during the Clinton administration. I was working at Oakland Center, around 4pm in the afternoon. Conditions were clear, with visibility 10+ statue miles. Bill Clinton had just flown through our airspace in Air Force One, leaving from a trip he had made to San Francisco. Now, when special aircraft such as Air Force One travel through our airspace, they’re given special treatment. This mainly means that we aren’t allowed to give them delays, or vector them around other traffic. Bill Clinton had traveled through our airspace, and we had handed him off to the next controlling agency.

Now, since we had been controlling Air Force One, Secret Service had visited our facility to ensure everything was running smoothly, and there was no interruption of service. I get a situation report from an aircraft saying he had close proximity traffic. I check his position and see no traffic around him for at least 10 mines, despite his announcement saying unknown type aircraft, same altitude, 3 miles, speed greater than 400 knots. Again, nothing was showing on the scope. I ask other aircraft in the area to make position reports on the UFO. We get various reports of UFOs traveling faster, and making wild climb/descents within a close proximity of the aircraft. I call my supervisor over, as protocol. All the other controllers start shifting eyes towards my area to see what is going on. We continue to get reports of unknown aircraft (never described as flying saucers or even having wings).

10 minutes later, we have every off duty controller around my scope, and have my frequency playing out the speaker. I don’t know what to do, because my scope isn’t showing anything moving like the numerous pilots are reporting. We have pilots start asking for lower/higher altitudes to stay away from the traffic. I approve their requests, and they state the traffic is following. We aren’t clear how many UFOs are spotted, but there were more than 4. At this point, all radio etiquette is out the door. We have pilots talking to other pilots (which NEVER happens, EVER) trying to verify the number of UFOs. The secret service checks with all military bases to verify they aren’t running missions outside of MOAs (Military operating areas) thinking they were stealth aircraft. There were no stealth aircraft in the skies of California that day, as most military aircraft were dealing with the President and maintaining TFRs (temporary flight restriction radiuses around important events, such as presidential visits, the super bowl, etc.)

When the pilots start breaking the chat etiquette, people start to freak out, and start making humor of the situation to ease some of the tension. We had a couple pilots ask me to tell their wifes they love them, should something happen, although they wouldn’t identify themselves. One man said “You are now entering a world of imagination, next stop: the Twilight Zone.” 35 minutes after the first UFO appeared, the reports stopped coming in. Every pilot lost sight of their aircraft and reported no problems. Not one of the pilots, when asked, wanted to file a report.

Now, when a pilot makes a call for a UFO, the controller has to check for traffic, and verify whether it is or isn’t a controlled aircraft. If it is confirmed as a UFO, the pilot has the right to either make a report, or not make a report. When you make a report, it has the obvious implications that all UFO reports have; it makes you look crazy. For a pilot, the exceptional consequence to making a report, is you have to file paperwork with the FAA, and subject yourself to hours or even days of interviews. Everything you say on the radio is recorded on the controllers side. This brings scrutiny to every move you made while flying your aircraft. If you did something against FAA regulations, by bending a rule even the slightest, such as not reading back a clearance correctly or descending/climbing 100 feet past your assigned altitude, you’ll be interrogated by it. Your flight license can be revoked or suspended, and you can lose your job. There is so much risk in pilots filing UFO reports that they are so very uncommon.

While I wasn’t interviewed for this event, my supervisor made me sign a paper the next day verifying that I was told the tapes were being submitted to the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) for investigation. I wish I was able to get a copy of those tapes, this event made me a believer. It truly would take a UFO to make so many adult pilots, who have nothing in common, act frightened the way they were.

”

- Redditor alexinedh describing an event he could not explain from his career as air traffic controller. From his AMA thread.

Q&A with David Firth, the man behind Salad Fingers etc

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 04:58:50 -0500

This is the interview I did with David Firth, the man behind web series such as Salad Fingers and Devvo. This is the whole thing, straight from the transcription, so bear with me if its badly spelled. I hope you’ll understand anyways. A vastly shorter adapted swedish version of this interview can be found on Nyheter24.

Who are you?
I’m an animator, I make animations. Trying to discoverer and explore some of the dark sides of my mind, as well as comedy. I try to experiment in any way I can. I have always been interested in animation, as a kid I was obsessed with it. First opportunity I had when I was younger to play around with cameras I took and moved straight into animations. Trying everything I could, you know, animating toys, animating people. And until I eventually I got a computer. I was about 13, 14, and it wasn’t long before I discovered animations software, and that I could do my own cartoons with audio. Previously I had used a camcorder so I couldn’t use any audio track. It was generally silent before that.

How did you start animating?
It appeared early on, yeah. I used to do a lot of gory animations, I was quite obsessed with Mortal Kombat as a child, and then South Park came along just about the time I started animating so that was a big inspiration for me. And, yeah, I suppose it kinda just got darker since then but there has always been a slightly sort of horrific angle that I’ve gone for.

What do your parents think about your work?
My parents like my work, and they always have done.

So, you started off on Newgrounds?
Yeah, I mean it wasnt quite as easy to get stuff online back then, because you didnt really have much webspace, there was no Youtube or Google video or any kind of video posting site. You had to make them as small as possible in some kind of format, like RealMedia or WindowsMedia. They looked awful, and usually, the free websites I used to sign up for, the free web space, you’d only get ten mb max, so it was very hard to get cartoons or distribute stuff online back then. But then I discovered Newgrounds, which would host Flash, so that was a reason for me to learn Flash so I could host them on Newgrounds.

How new was Newgrounds when you ended up there?
Yeah, well, I think Newgrounds started in about 2000, 99-2000 it went online, and I started out doing stuff in 2004 so it had already established itself. It was already leading the way in Flash, by the time I signed in. I didnt really watch anything on Newgrounds, I didnt actually watch much on the internet, I used to watch South Park and Simpsons and stuff like that. I watched a few things on Newgrounds and I thought: this is impressive, but not really my cup of tea. So I didnt see anything dark or strange or abstract really on Newgrounds, mostly video game parodies.

Did you get inspired by others on Newgrounds?
I mean, I didnt come across much that was that strange online. When I first started putting things out, people had nothing to compare it to. But I found things since, based on peoples recommendations based on what they’ve seen on my work. Back then I found it difficult to find quite surreal stuff. As soon as I started to post on Newgrounds, really. Before that I hadn’t much of an audience, and it was Newgrounds that changed all that. I post all the Flash stuff on Newgrounds, because it’s still good, it’s still a good way to get an audience. Youtube is better for video based stuff, but if it’s Flash then Newgrounds is the best place for it.

There is a difference in comments between the two sites also, right?
The same comments pop up over and over again. I just tend to ignore the comments. I don’t really know if people are saying that in a good way or not, but, you know, it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. I think Newgrounds comment system is more constructive, you’re supposed to write a review in it. So I think people generally has a higher quality of comments, and are more original, also because they are creators as well as viewers. Whereas Youtube attracts a much wider audience and therefor is open for more ignorant comments or throwaway comments. It’s not always the case, but I often feel that Newgrounds comments are more judged rather then Youtube comments.

So basically, Youtube is more mainstream?
Youtube is definitely more mainstream, and it also have a system of high-ranked comments. And people seem to see that as some kind of achievement, to get there, and the most likely way of getting a high ranked comment is to post something that someone else has posted that was funny or something. That’s why you see the same comments popping up again and again, because they just want to be on that high-ranked comments. On Newgrounds, on the other hand, it seems that every comment is original. Not always, but I think Youtube would be better if they removed that high-ranked system.

What do you think about people who don’t like your stuff?
I like it when people that aren’t used to see stuff like mine stumble upon it, even if they don’t like it. Because I’m happen for them that they’ve seen it. Even if they don’t like it, they may be ready for something similar or something else later on. Even if people aren’t enjoying it, they still might be effected by it in some way. The mainstream entertainment just bores me. I find it very predictable, so it’s an inspiration to not be like that. If my stuff can stand out in a different way, that’s a good thing really. I do take inspiration from how banal, dull and saney and unoriginal american mainstream media is.

It just seems to me that the most annoying videos get popular. I don’t get why, but it has always seen that way to me. If someone makes something that’s so annoying, it tends to get popular just for the fact that it’s annoying. Everytime I see something that I think is really unbelievably terrible, it always seems to have hundreds of millions of views. I don’t understand it, is people showing this around because they don’t like it? Or maybe it’s an ironic thing, or maybe I’m just missing it every time. For me, I absolutely cannot see why Gangnam Style has nearly a billion views on Youtube. Maybe I’m missing something.

Yeah well, the first episode of Salad Fingers has over 16 million views - so its not only that kind of stuff that gets popular.
That’s huge number of views, and I really can’t understand why it has so many views. I mean, I wouldn’t make something like that again. The series has progressed, and it’s very different from how it was then. For me, it seems odd that that’s the most popular of all of my videos because it really is the worst. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen it so many times, or maybe it’s because it’s been so long since I made it, but it’s the one that requires the lest thought, I think, of all my videos.

I guess people don’t like to think?
Yeah, well, that’s the answer really. But I didn’t want to have such little faith in the masses. It’s a good thing that that’s got many views, because then people go and watch other stuff based on there. They see episode 2 isn’t quite so innocent, and from there it gets worse and worse – well, not worse as in quality but worse as in nightmarish – but it was just an introduction really. I can kind of understand it at the time, but I can’t understand why it still continues to get to people. I still don’t understand why it got popular.

On the latest episode of Salad Fingers, you collaborate with Marcus Fjellström, a swedish musician. How did that happen?
He sent me some samples some years back, and I used them for a different cartoon – Men from up the stairs – and he said he preferred to actually compose something for me. So I made the stop frame animation ”Crooked Rot” without any sound at all, and I sent him that. And he composed the soundtrack over the top, set to my video. And I set the music to the video, and was really impressed, so I asked him to do an episode of Salad Fingers. I just thought I wanted a different approach to the sound, it was getting a bit samey.

Is that the way you find the music you use?
Yeah, I mean a lot of composers contact me, and say ”I’d like to compose something for you”, and sometimes I don’t really need any music so I don’t have time to listen to anything sent to me. Occasionally I’ll search through all my e-mails and find composers that contacted me, and just give’em a try. I don’t think it’s any harm in it. He found me, and I liked what I heard, so we worked together. I asked him to compose a sound track for my film. The Medow Man. But it’s so far in the future, it’s not really worth thinking about yet. I don’t very often contact people. I did contact a dark, ambient musician to ask for permission to use of his music in one of the Salad Fingers episodes. It proved to be a bit difficult though, so in general I try to work with either someone I know or make my own music. I don’t like the whole copyright-licensing thing, I prefer to just use my own music so that I own every part of my video. So I can sell it if I want to.

What do you think about the memes that originated on Newgrounds?
A lot of those is kinda mysterius, like I don’t know who did All your base, or I don’t see any name attached to that. I guess thats was during the same time as the Numa Numa, or Charlie the Unicorn, but they’ve gone on to bigger things. Apart from that, no, I didn’t really get absorbed by the Newgrounds culture, I enjoyed a few videos when I used to be there regularly. But ordinarily, I used to feel like an outsider. I think it’s because those things only came along once in a while. Mostly, it was video game parodies or anime things, so I didn’t really fit in to any part of the Newgrounds scene. I didn’t have much contact with the other Newgrounds animators.

Do you never do videos and stuff anonymously?
I realized early on that it’s probably a good idea to attach my name to it, so it’s not just lost in a sea of anonymous internet memes. So I always attached my name to everything, so people were able to find more. I think just because I’ve seen things online without names attached, and thought ”well, how am I supposed to find any more?”. So I always like the idea of being able to (connect yourself to your stuff), even though it’d be more interesting if I was some mysterious unknown person. I did always make sure to credit myself, so my work wouldn’t be passed around, forgotten, lost or escaped me.

I think, in the first place back 10 years ago on the internet, my main goal was to people on my web site, and I realized the way to do that was to post stuff on other web sites and direct back to my own. I didn’t know why, I just wanted people to be on my web site. That was it, really.

So, no anonymous stuff then?
I’ve done that loads of times, but I’ve found that it’s much harder to make it anonymously, or as a fake name. It’s to tempting to link in from a site that already has traffic, rather than have one sitting there, building an audience on its own. Because building an audience takes years. People always think you might be able to just randomly and luckily pull in a brand new audience, but it’s not really the case.

Is there any other things you’re watching online for inspiration?
Charlie the unicorn. And there was a guy called Al in the box, who did a few quite strange animations, much less violence- and action based then the usual Newgrounds animations. It was stuff that actually seemed to have a plot, and quite much dialouge. And I found that very refreshing. But it didn’t get very popular. Also Jim Ether, his stuff was very bizarre. I’ve always liked the bizarre, arty stuff that wasn’t quite explainable. Adam Phillips, his stuff is high quality animations. He used to be an animator för Disney. And his stuff was always sort of topping the Newgrounds charts when I was on there. A few interesting artists I found on there. There’s loads more, I just can’t think of their names.

What do you think about 4chan?
I never really went on there, but I am familiar with the name and what originated there.

When I see Dolan comics, I think about your stuff. Do you know them?
No, but I often find with those things that the original creation is the funny one, and then the ones that it spawns just kinda becomes the bad replicas. Turning into something that is annonying, from something that started off quite funny. Like the lolcats, I’m sure the first one was funny but it got annoying when people started seeing a formula. As if there was a comedy formula. I don’t believe it, I believe the element of surprise and originality is fun. If anyone stumbles upon a comedy formula, they wear it out quite quickly. The internet is so aware of how things (utvecklas?). It used to be that something would last longer, now it seems that something can be around for a week, and then it’ll be old and there’ll be a new one. I think sites like Reddit speeds up the process. On the other hand, if the process is sped up things aren’t around long enough to get boring, so it’s a good thing really. Maybe the concept of a meme is just a meme, and it’s gonna fade out. I don’t know.

Where do you get the Salad Fingers surroundings from?
I like to make places that don’t particularly look very nice, but it’s not hell either. I always draw places that I’d like to explore – not particularly be in, but explore – and the way it seems like an alien planet is because I try not to have any obious references to where it is or what time it’s in. I don’t like to have any cultural references in there, so it’s timeless. If I make something that has no indication of where or what age it’s in, then it’s my own world. That’s how it feels like it’s a foreign planet. I think its the same way I try to avoid any fashion at all.

He has a number 22 on his house, why?
It could be that he found the number, it’s always open to interpretation. (hostar, dricker vatten) I don’t even have an answer for why he has a number 22 on his house, but I think he’s a collector who wanders around digging things up. He might have found it on a scrap yard or something, but you don’t see a scrap yard because that would be an indication that there be people around. Who knows? Certain things I’ll leave oute. It’s quite important that he’s alone, cause his mind then can create friends and people to talk to. It’s never clear whether he talks to an actual person or it’s all in his head, and I like that as well. Loneliness is the main theme, really.

And what about the way Salad Finger talks?
He’s supposed to sound like, I take influence from old english. Aiming for sort of wartime language, I don’t like it to be too slangy. I feel he’s kind of an old character, so the last links he would have to communication would be a long time ago, so I try to keep it old fashioned I guess. It’s kinda poetic and metaforical, but I don’t really put to much thought in that.

How’s your work process?
I try to come up with an idea before I come up with the reason for the idea, I just decide when I’m writing the script that this or that would be an interesting thing for him to say. I just like to find different ways for him to talk, really. It’s just until it interests me, what I’m writing, then it goes in. It doesn’t matter what it means. I prefer people to come up with it themselves, I try not to read the analysises too much. I don’t want to be influenced, I don’t want to say ”yeah, that’s probably what happened”. I think the whole idea would be destroyed if it was explained, but there’s definitly images in his head from wars. Apart from that nothing is decided, it’s like I don’t know. I’m working it out myself. Putting it into fiction myself.

So, you’re never gonna tell the story behind Salad Fingers?
No, that’d be dull. That would bore me. I like having every episode expand the mystery, rather than explaining it. People find it interesting, and so do I. As long as I find it interesting, its worth continuing.

Why do you think people do find it interesting?
Because they’ve never seen anything like it, and because they’re interested in the character and what he does. I think they might want to know what happened, but don’t realize that if it was explained, it would ruin the mystery.

If youve got an image of a stick man, walking down the street, you don’t need to know where he came from, how he managed to be a stick man, or who his stick parents were or anything like that. It doesn’t really matter, it’s just that you can take from it what you can take from it. The most interesting art and visual things are just enterily one’s way to wonder about it. I don’t want to put people off, and not try to lead them on saying ”there’s gonna be an explanation” and then just keep cheating them out of it. I just want to keep make it interesting, and if there’s a mystery its open and people will always see it as interesting.

As a kid I used to watch a cartoon, ”Dungeons and Dragons”, it was just a cartoon of it really, and they never ever got out of the place they were in. They were stuck in this world and they never got out. And I found it depressing as a child, that there never were an episode where they got out. But after a while it felt fruitless, because it felt like they would never get out of it and why was I watching it? So I don’t want to make people feel like they have to give up on something because it haven’t been explained. I want, you know, the story to unfold even further. Even if stuff is explained, there is more mystery to think about. And I think the reason people like it is because they have to think. If people don’t like it, they might just not like it. Or it might be the fact that they don’t enjoy having to think or work anything out themselves.

So everything about Salad Finger could be a lie?
He might never have had a brother, he might just have found a dead body, he might have had a brother, buried him, and dug him up againg. There’s so many possibilities. I’m never gonna do an episode that explaines the childhood, or the history, because I just think it would ruin it completely.

The girl in episode 5 interests me - she’s the only one who talks with another, own, voice.
Yeah, he usually provide the voice for all the charachters. He likes to be in control, and when someone else… He also has a problem with the crow, he’s scared of the crow because there seems to be another being that makes sound that isn’t him. I think he likes to control his world, and also… It was something I wrote when it wasn’t enterily apparant what had happened. But I always thought he was so freaked out by another humans voice, because he’d never heard one before.

Where do you get most of your inspiration from?
That’s the question people always ask. The mind, I think? The brain. I think thats where most of it comes from. Some of it, I guess, is observed but changed. My mind just invents possibilites of stuff that could happen to me, or to someone else, and sometimes I get into a spiral of bad thoughts and they’ll get worse and worse. Sometimes I write that down, because rather then dwell on it I could put it into some kind of positive form, some art, and some times I just think what I’m writing is just exactly what I want to happen. If i’m in control I could decide, you know, what will happen. I make a lot of notes over time, dreams and so, and it might fit in in some other thing I’ve written or thought about. It’s almost like a template for a story.

How much do you think that your work inspired other flash animators into doing something similar?
I see occasional things that look like they might have been inspired by my stuff, usually more visually more than anything else. Dark themes and strange things have always been around, but when I see inspiration from – visually and sometimes in the voices or the esthetic elements I add - I see it now and again. But the problem is with animation that it takes so long to learn. You get inspired by something, like I was from South Park, but you can’t really tell I guess because it took me so long to learn animation that once I’d learn it I had already moved on being inspired by South Park to being inspired by so many other things.

Have you seen Rusty Spoons, a web comic that’s inspired by Salad Fingers?
Sometimes I google Salad Fingers, just to find out where it’s mentioned, but I havent seen that before. I like to see something I havent seen before, so if I saw something that was inspired by me I probably wouldnt be too… If it so obviosly inspired by me, it wouldnt be very new to me.

You don’t google yourself much, then. You don’t like criticism?
I’m find with it, I just dont want to get too caught up in it. Usually its badly spelled, and thats all right, cause then I just think someones just trying to be offensive. When its really well written critizism, thats the worst cause you think ”aw, someones intelligent enough to understand it but still dont like it”. Thats the most hurting really. But I dont generally care about it that much, because if people do like it they’ll watch it. And otherwise, they’ve learned not to watch my stuff by now.

This is a comment of the Jerry Jackson parody of Salad Fingers: ”I’m glad to see that my assumption about how David must feel about the typical Salad Fingers “fan” is correct. They really don’t get it, do they? So, they make ”tributes” and call it “fucked up” or “creepy” instead of seeing the art for what it is.”

What do you think it says that even the pretentious ones can’t tell the difference from your stuff, and bad fan stuff?
Maybe people take it a bit too seriously some times. Jerry Jackson was a joke, really, and it wasnt making fun of bad animators or fans. It was meant to be a fun character, a little kid whos got animations aspirations and hes putting stuff on Newgrounds. It was slightly inspired by bad monotonous voices, but I never saw anything that actually seemed like a Jerry Jackson cartoon. It was just a character me and Christian came up with. We used to do monoton voices to eachother – it’s supposed to be when people type in all caps. It be a fun idea to make a salad fingers parody, but it wasnt much thought put into it. Its not having a digg at anyone. I just think some people take it much more seriously than others, and the idea is that its something I made and people can take it however they want. People can take it seriously, they can take it funny, sad, just nonsense, it doesnt matter because everyone takes something different from it. When we made Salad Fingers, me and Christian ”Chrust” Pickup, we were laughin about the dialoge for the first few episodes. But then in the episode, it seemed more serious, but it was still just comedy to us. The character whilst comedy at the same time was kind of tragic, so you know, it had different levels to it. If people wants to think its creepy, then that’s fine. But I don’t understand why this commenter were so angry, to think they were the only interpretor who saw it correctly.

Theres no pretentiosness in Salad Fingers, its meant to be entertainment and I think people often… You see these arty videos that arent very entertaining, I think maybe theres something about my stuff. They assume, because its dark and weird, that its some of that stuff that for a lot of people would have no entertainment value. The fact is that Salad Fingers is kinda entertaining, because its kinda funny and silly at the same time, I think maybe people think it’s a bit of elitism. The wrong type of people are viewing the arty videos, and I think its just elitism to say that there is only one way of interpreting it.

Are you a dark person?
No, I express myself through my animations. I think people that have to make it visually obvious that they’re dark its their way of expressing it, but my way is animations and art and music and writing. So I think its just a way of getting an emotion out of you. The fact that I can express it through my art saves me from having to express it through how I look.

Do you feel that your work has a purpose in terms of political and social commentaries? If yes, in which way?
There’s never a whole, overall, point that Id like to make, because there are philosofers and writers that makes these points every day. I think it chepens a piece of art if its got a purpose. I think its up to the people watching it to determ what its about. If I do have a point to make, I might be subtle about it, I might just throw it in there, but its never the main focus. If am angry about something I might express it but I might not be so obvious about it. I dont like preaching.

Could you imagine doing other stuff than animations about your characters?
I could image writing a story about Salad Fingers, I think that might be interesting, but apart from that I have no intention to making it into video or just audio. Maybe written, because then you can build the whole image in your head. I think it could be equally as disturbing, if people knew about the salad fingers cartoon they could build an image similar in their head, and if they hadnt heard of them I would have to try and describe an athmosphere as well as a video can. I dont know if I would, but thats the only thing I could consider. I dont know how Id do it though, I dont know if Id write it as if Salad Fingers was recalling it. Youre never sure about if hes controlling the events, or being written about or being watched. I think thatd be an confusing angle.

Because of the controversial and violent nature of the content in your animations, have you ever gotten into some serious trouble because of them, more than just harsh comments, from sensetive people or have sites ever banned your work?
People always claim that my videos was the reason something happened, but I think theyre just trying to get attention. Now and again, someone will say something like “my friend had a mental issue becuse your cartoon”, and they always claim I was behind some kind of violence but you know… Its never substational, their just trying to get attention. I read that it was mentioned in court once, someone had been showing it to someone, some kind of abuse. Not enterily sure what happened with that. I wouldnt be surprised if someone tried to pull it in, maybe one of my more violent ones. Salad fingers isnt that violent, a couple of bloody scenes but not… If someone tried to prove that Milk man was the inspiration, thats be more believable. Thats probably the most violent one Ive done. Or maybe Hell, I did a cartoon named Hell, it was just a lot of gore. I like the way gore looks in cartoons. Its not that I like violence, its just that its fun to animate. Guns are kind of loud, and the idea of a shooting doesnt seem to have the same effect on me as other ways of murdering. Itd take a lot more to stab someone, because a gun can off by accident but you cant stab someone by accident.

How much time do you spend every week on your animations?
Well, Im working on something big at the moment. Its a series of 11 minute episodes, a cartoon. Cant really say much about it, but its being funded. Im having animators work with me. Ive written it, and Im doing most of the voices, and Im directing and animating most of it but Im having animators help me. Its, you know, the first episode is being comissioned and if they comission further ones after that then great cause it could go on for a long time. Its for the internet, as a web service, but there was talk of teve. Im not sure how they syndicate these things, or DVD eventually, but I think itll be a web series. It would be distributed on Youtube, with some companies sponsoring it. I think it would be something like that. Sort of apocalyptic, about a town full of familiar charachters. But its mainly new characters. Spoilsbury Toast Boy is in it, but theres a whole world, and that is just part of this world. There is an over-all storyline but each charachter has an own story line as well. Its guite dense, it started off as a sketch show but then it became a world where a lot of different charachters live and interact with eachother. Its satarical and quite dark. I first started off writing it as a 25-30 minute episode, and then I wrote three 30-minute episode and planned three more. And then I took it to the producer, and we decided it would be 11 minute episodes. So I thought Id split them into two, and make them a bit shorter. But it turns out its more like three or four parts, which means there are probably 12-ish episodes written. And maybe more to come.

But you seem to have money enough for making a serious thing out of it?
I do a lot of jobs myself, so I try to keep it low myself, and I havent met the animators yet. We have just a few animators whos helping, and its quite low-budget at the moment. There is special care to how the money is taken, I dont have a studio to record in, I record in my house, and since Im the writer, the director and the voice artist myself it saves money that way. Im not sure when it comes out, Im working on episode 1 right now. Ive recorded some audio and drawn some story boards and designed some charachters. When it comes out, it comes out. Hopefully in a couple of months. Early 2013.

How long did it take for people to understand that ”Men From Up The Stairs” is about pooping?
Well, as soon as one person said it in the comments then everyone realized. So I blocked the comments on Youtube for a while, but then I decided that I should let them have it.

What part did youtube and facebook play for you, when they were launched back in 2004, in terms of getting you videos distributed? Did you get a considerable bigger fanbase with the help of youtube and facebook?
It took me a while to raise my profile on Youtube, but back in the early days of Youtube they used to do featured videos on the front page of Youtube and itd take, like, two days for one of those videos to get a million views. I got a couple of those, and they really set me off, but I kinda missed Youtube with my Salad Fingers stuff because Id done them before Youtube was even launched. Facebook, never really noticed any help from that. I guess they get posted around but Ive never noticed much.

Do you think Salad Fingers get more attention then he deserves?
Yeah, he definitely gets the most attention, more than anything, which is okey. Its always gonna be one thats the most popular and I guess hes the longest running series Ive done and its probably the most time Ive spent on any series so its good to have one thing that is sort of iconic, that people remembers, and it helps with the traffic for the others. Sometimes I try and divert people from Salad Fingers to the other stuff, but that thing is always gonna be the main one.

Do you do all the voices for your animations by yourself?
Yes, mostly. The only other voice in Salad Fingers is the girl, and that was done by Christian. I wanted it because I didnt want it to sound like me at all. Usually Ill try to at least get one voice from Christian or someone else, so that Im not listening to my own voice all the time. Most of the characters are me.

What kind of money are you making out of your animations?
I live in the north of England, so its quite cheap to live here, and I dont buy much and I dont drive and I dont buy many new clothes so its easy for me to get by. But its not comfortable living, its all right I guess. The payment for me for this new project looks generous, but Ive stated that I would rather it be more enjoyable to make then get payed properly. So if it means not tiring any more animators, Ill take it out of my salary. Id rather have less money than enjoy my job then be under a lot of strain or pressure and have a lot of money. The enjoyment of the work comes first.

And have you gotten laid for being the Salad Fingers guy?
Ive met a lot of people through my work, so yeah, I guess. Not that easy, but most of the time Ive had a girlfriend so Ive never had groupies. While I was popular I always had a girlfriend. But then again, I did meet my girlfriend through a screening of my work. I met her sister through the screening, actually the most girl Ive ever met has been through my work somehow. They are pleasantly surprised Im not as weird they thought I would be.

I’ve seen the porn based on Salad Fingers, isn’t that the weirdest thing that could ever happen?
Well, Ive seen weirder porn. I mean, a lot of people strangly get aroused by Salad Fingers, and its kinda worrying… Or not. Some people are into digging up bodies and stuff, and the weird always attract the weird people. A very small amount of those will get sexual pleasure from it. They think about sex a lot, and they think about Salad Fingers a lot, so theyll just put those two together. Maybe they just thought it was a way to get my attention, and it was. Maybe itd be good to see a video of Salad Fingers porn. Itd probably be time consuming though. I could imagine doing that just for fun, and releasing it anonymously. Just search for it one day, and itll be there.

How’s the progress going on all of your series? Can we expect new episodes of Burnt Face Man, Salad Fingers or anything soon?
Im currently working on this thing, but Burnt Face Man appears in it. Its a town, an entire town…. did you just trump? I thought you farted… It feels like hes got more of a purpuse rather than just being shit solving crime. He fits in quite nicely. The rest of it is very much new. But there will be more episodes of everything eventually. Right now Im concentrating on this thing, but Ive definitely been writing more Salad Fingers because Ive got sort of an urge to do that again. Then this came along - Ive been doing this for years, but it only just managed to get through, get onto things. So Im gonna take this chance for the moment.

I always like to sneak something dark och sinister into Burnt Face Man, and it always takes people by surprise. Darkest is Sock, or Spoilsbury Toast Boy.

What’s your favorite of your own stuff?
I dont really have a favourite. Its always something I havent done yet, its always something Im planning that is my favourite. So I guess its what Im doing now.

Are your characters based on real persons?
Most of them are based on me, and some of them are based on other people. Salad Fingers has elements of my grandmother in there, things that she says, and the way she’ll be confused by things, but its not her. All the charachters are based slightly on someone, but its never one person.

100,000 Swedes can be wrong: "Horses are a fruit"

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 07:58:52 -0500

100,000 Swedes can be wrong: "Horses are a fruit"

92 000 in Sweden can't be wrong: "Horses are a fruit that does not exist"

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 11:51:00 -0500

What do you think about horses? Sorry, wait, why is that even important? They’re still horses. Nothing you can ”think” will change that, even though this social media-”what are you doing right now, everybody cares, I promise”-arabian spring-society that we live in right now tries to tell you otherwise. Right?

Nope, not in Sweden at least. Here we have a Facebook page that’s amassing a huge following, and they’re all convinced. They all agree. They have seen the truth behind what we mortals call ”horses”. Ready? Here we go.

”There are no such thing as horses, a fact that is scientifically proven. We also support the science that claims horses to be a fruit. Horses is a fruit that does not exist.”

They are fruits. That doesn’t exist. Are you getting this? Horses are not animals, they are fruits. But that don’t matter really, because in the end they don’t even exist. No matter how much of a fruit they are.

Some 92 000 people have pressed the like button on the page that’s spreading this news; ”Hästar finns inte”, which translates to ”Horses doesn’t exist”. When I wrote about it earlier this week, they had only about 44 000 likes. They told me they wanted to change the way we’re thinking about horses… before it’s too late.

– A lot of people in the world still believes in horses, but luckily our society hasn’t collapsed thus far. The purpouse of this page is to get people to really think about it, and question what you’ve heard. We want to get the truth out, the pages anonymous 19-year-old founder told me over the Facebook chat.

As one could expect, swedish people interested in horses didn’t find this funny. At all. One Facebook wall post that spread quickly, commenting the stupidity of the horse-page, read ”you’re fucking stupid. I’ve been riding for, like, my whole life and you can’t just come and tell me I’ve trotted around on a fucking fruit that don’t even exist!”

Another person who found the page appalling was Carin Wrange, editor at the information site HästSverige (Horse Sweden), who told me the claims from “Horses doesn’t exist” were atrocious.

– I you’re seriously involved in the swedish horse sphere, you don’t have time for insipid things like this. To claim that horses are fruits, that’s not even worth commenting on. It’s like saying the earth is flat, she told me.

Quite a few pages contradicting the Horses doesn’t exist one as well, take this for example. “Horses doesn’t exist doesn’t exist”. Not to mention “Horses do exist! (a resistance group against the page “Horses doesn’t exist”)”. They’re getting their asses handed to them by the doubters, though. To quote one of them:

“Poor deluded people who have been cheated and deceived by the horse propaganda. What does it have to take for your eyes to open, so that you can understand the conspiratorial lies you are a part of?”

But ptroo, this whole thing didn’t end there. A mere day later, the god damned swedish minister for Rural Affairs contacted the swedish newspaper HD.se through his press secretary. And the swedish government, the people with the most power in all of Sweden, did this to say: Yes, horses do exist.

– The Minister of Rural Affairs, Mr. Eskil Erlandsson, wants it to be known that there is no reason to be worried. Horses exist. They even exist in a lot of different races, they said.

This lead me and my co-workers to the conclusion that the government wanted this story to go away. Why were they so afraid? Do they have something horse-related to hide? The answer we got didn’t make thing clearer.

– I can understand that fruits are hard to keep track of. Tomatoes and eggplants for example, that’s fruit, the press secretary of Mr. Erlandsson told us.

So there. Horses are not uncommon as internet phenomenons. Everybody knows about @horse_ebooks, bronies and the sewer horse, but here in Sweden we also have the old classical snel hest meme. Horses simply seems to have a bit of that cat quality. It’s almost a shame that they are fruits that doesn’t exist.

Världens sorgligaste scenario

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:01:00 -0500

Tänk dig han här….

Tänkandes tillbaka på detta…

Som efter det här…

Måste läsa den här…

För att lära sig laga det här…

Varsågod:

Interview with @weedhitler about Weird Twitter

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:07:34 -0500

Who Weed Hitler is, I don’t know apart from that he’s a kind of weird Twitter user. I interviewed him over mail, as a part of my very swedish, very long news article about Weird Twitter. He answered me in an ongoing text, hard to split up, so I’ll basically just reprint every question he got and then his answers.

Questions:
- Are you a former or active Something Awful-user?
- If so, how ”in the gang” would you say you are?
- If not, how’d you get in to this kind of jargon?
- Is there – according to you – a such thing as Weird Twitter?
- If so, what is it composed of?
- How would you describe the people involved?
- What’s the big advantage in this kind of humour?
- Is it unique, according to you?
- If not, who or what can it be compared to ”outside” the internet world?
- Will it be killed when others start to discover it?
- What do you think W.T most accuratly can be compared with: r/shitredditsays, /b on 4chan or The Weird Part of Youtube?
- Why?
- What’s ”your thing” in it?

Answers:
I have read the dude’s pieces, and while I can’t say I got that it was a joke on his part at first, I gotta give the guy some credit. He’s either really good at faking it to piss people off, or he just said it was a “troll” to cover his ass. Jury’s still out on that, I think, haha. If they were truly jokes, then I commend the guy. The way he wrote those articles made me legitimately upset. Before I answer the questions, I should warn you (though I’m sure you already know) that I have a large disdain for the term “weird twitter”. For the sake of integrity though, I won’t meter myself too much.

I’ve never touched SA in my life. I’ve been linked to a few threads here and there, but even in my pre-twitter days I never once owned or used an account on there. I respect the website for being the source of a lot of jokes on the internet for a long time, I really do, but I can’t bring myself to use a forum that requires you to pay for features. I found my way into this group of people through twitter user @jitka22 I wanna say… Summer 2011? So I’ve only been at this joke tweet business for a year. I guess I just started seeing people make more and more funny things, followed some people here and there, and wanted to get in on it myself. That’s really where it all started.

I’ll be as blunt as possible- Weird Twitter does not exist. Weird Twitter is a misnomer- it’s really just a loosely connected group of painfully normal people who put their creative thought processes out there. I understand using it to describe an account like @dril or @wolfpupy to someone who isn’t well acquainted with it, and that’s all well and good, but to say that it’s a group that someone can “join” or “leave” is entirely wrong.

I routinely and sarcastically call the people involved in what people are calling “Weird Twitter” as “surrealist narcissists who hate themselves”, but really it’s just people who enjoy taking the often nonsensical thoughts they have and showing them to the world in the hopes of finding people who share their sense of humor. The advantages of this are also, ironically, their disadvantages. There’s a sense of accomplishment when you get a perfect 140 character blurb that conveys an idea or concept perfectly and everyone loves it, but at the same time, the constriction of having to deal with only 140 characters is mind numbingly hard. Twitter as a form of humor is honestly one of the hardest. With stand up comedy, there’s no limit to how long a joke can be, you’re just up there talking. With twitter, it’s 140 or nothing.

It’s unique in method and presentation, but it’s also very derivative of other things and itself. My thoughts go to @bransonbranson’s tweet “Any Pizza Is A Personal Pizza If You Believe In Yourself And Try Hard Enough”, which is very reminiscent of a Mitch Hedberg joke, “Any book is a children’s book, if the kid can read!”. One of the things I think you’ll notice with these kinda tweeters is that almost all of them have a huge respect for comedic greats, and you’d be hard pressed to find one of them that outright disliked Hedberg as a comedian. A common joke I hear is that if Hedberg were alive and had a twitter account, none of this “weird twitter” shit would even exist, because none of us would be able to challenge or best him, ahhaha.

Considering we’ve already gotten legitimately famous people who “get the joke” (@radiomaru, @nedroid, @robdelaney, @mountan_goats, et al), I’d say that it’s already been discovered. There’s really no going back at this point, and while this community isn’t what it was earlier this year and late last year, I dare say it’s become better. There’s a much bigger sense of ease, a sense of acceptance. There’s none of that “you have to be initiated into this group. we are a secret club” type stuff going on. It’s a constantly changing organic being instead of a locked box, and personally, I like that. (On the flipside, I’ve noticed a lot of people taking jokes that are intended to be obviously sarcastic very seriously lately, and I’m not too fond of that).

/r/shitredditsays looks like it’s run by someone or multiple people from Twitter. Frankly, I was scared when you asked me to compare Joke Tweeters to reddit, because usually, well, reddit isn’t exactly the most loveable place. SRS is on par with a lot of twitter jokesters and things they (and I personally) hate, so there’s a pretty stark comparison to draw. As far as 4chan’s /b/ board, however, Twitter Joke People are nowhere NEAR that. There’s some similarities in style of humor, use of surrealism and all that, but /b/ is a dump. I’m not one to get offended at things, I’m really not, but I wouldn’t compare a loose group of friends playing around and making jokes to a sub-forum that moves at the speed of light and is full of white kids who think spouting the n word and rape is hilarious. That’s not the twitter I know at all. Twitter and “Weird Youtube” are a little closer in comparison, the only difference being that youtube as a platform is a lot more ego-forming than twitter. “Oh this is MY channel, these are MY fans, these are MY videos” etc. Youtube is such a broad platform that I don’t really know how to draw a comparison. Kinda like trying to compare surrealist apples to post-surrealist oranges.

My thing? I’m just here to excise my weird thoughts and hope people like it. I don’t do comedy because I look at it as a career and think “eh yeah I can do that”, I have this inner urge to be funny. I’ve always been that funny dude, in a group of friends. The guy who spends his whole time trying to make people laugh, y’know? I grew up around comedy, and it’s been with me for years, so I have this insatiable urge to make people laugh. It’s really this urge to provide, because making other people happy is what makes me happy. When a tweet of mine hits the big time and gets favorites and retweets from god knows where, I don’t think “hell yeah, I’m funny and everyone else can eat it I’m gonna be rich!!”; I think “Sweet! I made a lot of people laugh and smile and probably made their day a little better”. That’s why I’m here. That’s my thing. I want to be a comedian so I can make other people happy.

and that’s about everything!

Interview with @virgiltexas about Weird Twitter

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 06:01:00 -0500

Virgil Texas ”is a Brooklyn resident and internet user, who’s involved in writing and publishing”. I interviewed him over Google Chat as a part of my very long, very swedish article about Weird Twitter. I’m sorry if the spelling is a bit off in the interview below, I didn’t clean it up much. Anyway, Virgil Texas thinks a lot of Twitter is boring.

- I think broadly Twitter can and maybe ought to be a fun medium. But a lot of people use it in stodgy, boring ways. People are overly serious to the point of oppressiveness, especially when talking about politics and SEO and business marketing and stuff

And Weird Twitter is kinda the opposite?

- Yes, because part of the fun is being ironic or making fun of people or writing something enlightening in a way that isn’t straightforward and literal. It’s not about being “weird,” because that word has connotations that i don’t think accurately describe what I do

Twitter is a very personal, subjective medium by design. You curate your own timeline with tweets and RTs, and you curate your own feed based on whom you want to follow. Everyone has their own interests, intentions, and styles of using Twitter. Some people have a lot of conversations, some never interact, some want to get famous, some want to promote something, etc. In other words, it isn’t a team sport.

With that in mind, people make associations on Twitter, and sometimes there are close networks of people who largely interact with each other, in addition to interacting with others. If you want to consider that “Weird Twitter,” I suppose you can.

But generally, I can only speak from my point of view and describe what I do, and what a few of the people I know do, and why it’s important and valuable and a very interesting and entertaining way to use the medium.

So I run into trouble when I think about people as a group. I don’t wish to speak for everyone exactly, since everyone is doing their own thing.

What’s with your anonymity? I mean, I’m not questioning it and it’s of course totally up to you what you want to tell me - but more generally, why arent you keen on connecting your twitter to yourself?

- The sort of writing I publish as Virgil Texas is fundamentally different, I think, than the sort of writing I publish under my own name. For example, things I write on my website http://virgiltexas.com or the reading I did here cooldate.tumblr.com/post/32453558398/product-review-by-virgiltexas-presented-at-cool

It’s really pseudoanonymity if anything, it isn’t difficult to find out who i am. But i don’t maintain a separate twitter under my real name

So you could say it’s to make sure Twitter remains your playground, free from boundries?

- Yes, that was the idea at first anyway. In time those two spheres kind of merge, it’s unavoidable to a point. When i first started out, i took part in trolling this guy Greg W. Howard, way back in 2009. Greg is crazy.

Who is he?

- He tweets 500 times a day - http://twitter.com/gregwhoward - and it’s all conservative nonsense and he takes everything incredibly seriously, which made him an attractive person to troll

Let me paus you there. What was your stop before twitter? Are you from Something Awful?

- Probably Facebook or something. No, though i know people from it. My direct inspiration to join twitter was from SA, though I didn’t post there or anything. Like a lot of people, i started taking notice of twitter during the iranian revolution. I read an article about Jon Hendren (@fart) explaining how they managed to goatse over a million people using iranian revolution hashtags. also a guy whose work i follow, who goes by Rubbercat, had a twitter, which made it respectable to me

So, before twitter, trolling meant basically Something Awful to you?

- Sort of, i don’t have a great memory of trolling in the past. Before twitter, I didn’t really troll people much. I probably mainly used facebook in college, when that was a big thing. I didn’t have a strong relationship with SA by any means. I find a lot of it very mediocre, but some of it is very funny

So, you were trolling Greg W. Howard and then what?

- He threatened to sue us for trolling him, and this was before we realized he was just a thin-skinned idiot. Then somebody found on his website a lawsuit he wrote up suing twitter for $1 million because people trolled him

http://www.scribd.com/doc/29564611/Greg-W-Howard-Retirement-Fund

I have no idea whether he actually filed this, but the idea is hilarious. he wrote this one hilarious line “Defendant TWITTER operates a social networking bulletin board site known as and accessed through the world wide web at Twitter.Com”. I wrote a parody of it here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/25598852/Greg-W-Howard-Defamation-Lawlsuit

He also thought the trolls were paid by a liberal conspiracy funded by george soros and obama or something. At some point, using his minor social media influence, he got glenn beck’s news site to run a piece about a paid “twitter-thug” harassing the tea party

Gawker wrote about it, though this was long after i had gotten bored and moved on:

http://gawker.com/5659351/twittergate-how-internet-jerks-pranked-the-tea-party

That’s the greg howard thing in a nutshell. It’s how i first made a name for myself on twitter. Kind of like winning a fight in prison

A lot of the core people i came to follow and interact with started following me during that.

The Greg-business, that sounds like the perfect entry to whatever I call weird twitter. Or is it?

- Maybe. I think from my perspective talking about things that have taken place is easier than stepping back and over-analyzing it. There are a couple other things i wanted to draw your attention to

The Alvin Greene video and a zine I’m creating, which could be a useful end point for your piece. There are many many many other things “weird twitter” has done, like smash mouth eating the eggs, pitbull going to alaska, fake celebrity deaths, trolling scott baio, etc. But those two i’m most explicitly involved in

Alvin Greene was a surprise winner of the Democratic nomination for Senate in South Carolina in 2010. He was a very well-meaning black man but he didnt run a serious campaign or raise money or anything. He was just an unemployed guy who lived with his ailing father, and kind a strange guy. For a while there was this media frenzy about him because he seemed in interviews kind of vacant, laconic.

He wasn’t the sort of guy who seemed like he’d use twitter. Incidentally he was on trial or something for showing pornography to a college student in a computer lab, so i put my skills to work and made a twitter for him. I followed a bunch of journalists and one of them wrote an article about alvin greene’s twitter account, which legitimized it. Amazingly the account is still up

http://twitter.com/greeneforsenate

Sensing potential i convened a chat with some twitter users. One of them, @satellitehigh, who is a rapper and hilarious guy, agreed to do an Alvin Greene rap song. He sent me the cut in a couple days and i was floored, it was effortlessly hilarious, so i made an absurd video with clips from his interviews and strange things, like footage of lebron james slam dunking

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar09czbfE8o

I posted it through the account, which was followed by a lot of journalists, and everyone went nuts. Every political reporter posted about it and virtually of them described it as an official Campaign Video or Campaign Ad. Keith Olbermann’s show on MSNBC actually ran it in full

http://video.msnbc.msn.com/countdown/38388887

Though by then it was realized that it wasn’t from alvin greene, but he was contacted about it and said he liked it. I actually talked to him on the phone. he said he would make me his communications advisor and wanted the video on MTV. The new york times breathlessly reported it as completely real, the whole thing kind of shocked me. how could journalists have such a dim sense of irony? how could they be so stupid? I mean the whole video is a joke, the credits alone. I think there was some racism there, which left a bad taste in my mouth. These overwhelmingly white journalists who had been relentlessly mocking this guy figured, an unemployed black guy, of course he would release a rap video

So did you react in any way apart from being flabbergasted?

- Well, it was a proud moment in my twitter career

When did you announce that you were behind the video?

- I obviously was from the start. at least i thought it was obvious, it’s on my youtube channel. People around “weird twitter” understood i was behind it. This was somewhat before we all started interacting more with journalists, and everything we did could be kept somewhat quieter. The fear is that now whenever we do something funny or cool it’ll spawn like a bunch of crappy news articles. For example, there was a day when everyone pretended that Donald Trump was donating $5 million to Hurricane Sandy victims, and you’d instantly get news articles explaining the whole thing is a troll, essentially ruining both the joke and purpose - as opposed to having people analyze the absurdity and contradiction for themselves, and in doing so learn to think critically

So you think that kind of media attention cripples the “culture” on twitter?

- Yes, i’ll give you another example. A few nights ago people were doing this hashtag #RomneyDeathRally, and a few quickie news articles sprung up about it and these pieces always don’t fully get the joke or convey it well. Or even know the background of things, because they’re just lazy, rushed articles hoping to run some funny internet thing and get clicks. I’m probably being smug on account of having a more explicit understanding and appreciation of certain things than a journalist laboring under a deadline. that’s fair - but the idea of this sort of thing becoming a recurring trend kind of ruins twitter. One guy who was quoted in that gawker article i linked to. And you should read that whole article.

He said this: “Now it’s not funny anymore that they think we’re working for Rauhauser,” said TheRealSomebody. “Now I’m not getting credit for being the scumbag on the Internet that I am. Rauhauser is.” (in response to conservative media thinking his trolling is funded by democrats or something) That’s really the anxiety. being mischaracterized or having the joke ruined (by journalists with a different agenda) will make everything we do less funny

If conservative media thinks that a trolling bunch of twitterers are an organized democratic internet attack - isnt the joke on them? Do you have to read their articles, and if you do - can’t you just laugh it off? Who should and who should not get the joke, if you understand what i mean?

- I’m trying to draw a parallel between two very different circumstances. Yes, they picked up the troll essentially. They bought it. But in that situation it was more the involvement of this guy Neil. Maybe the parallel isn’t great between those articles, but the broader point i want to make

Yeah but generally, if media dont get the joke, isnt just the joke getting bigger?

- Not if the media stops the joke by not getting it

But isn’t that what trolling is about? Joking with people who dont get it?

- Sort of. Put it another way - with the beandog thing, it was funny to troll greg howard and other paranoid conservatives and it was funny when conservative media thought that. But what if it gets to a point where conservative media says, oh, these are all people paid by george soros and this democratic consultant neil, therefore you can dismiss/ignore them. That’s what i mean ending the joke without getting the joke. On a broader scale, i think there is a fundamental tension between twitter and the media. Some people like @dogboner and @fart are really vociferous about hating buzzfeed and gawker and their ilk, and i completely understand them

Yeah, is this all symptomatic for the weird twitter relationship to media and others who desperately want to get in on the subversive, fun to write about action?

- Yes. It’s not very fun when your work just becomes grist for the buzzfeed or huffington post pageview mill, especially if the person doing the piece is some dull cutesy writer whom you don’t respect on a comic level

- You’re calling it “work” - is that the way you regard it?

Yes, the interaction on twitter makes it a medium for trolling, and that’s a somewhat unique interaction you can have through social media. If you’re involved and understand it, sometimes it’s just the funniest tihng. Understand the background, i mean. “in on the joke”, you could say. But that isn’t the only highlight of course, there’s also a ton of standalone tweets that are insightful, brilliant, funny, and extremely well written in their own ways. there’s a wide variety in style

Where do you personally draw the line between separate funny tweets, and the broader cultural trend that weird twitter is? or maybe we should take a step backwards first. what - according to you - is weird twitter?

- There is a philosophical core, i would argue. A lot of cynicism, malaise, anomie that gives rise to a high level of wit and an appreciation for the absurd. After all, surrealism and dada were direct responses to the miseries of WWI. In practice it amounts to maybe a couple hundred people who exemplify this, and have similar outlooks and responses to life, albeit with wide variety in beliefs in lifestyles

What do you mean would be the WWI of weird twitters?

- The unflinching misery and fundamental absurdity of life in late capitalist societies, but that’s a shot in the dark. also the reality of death and nonbeing coupled with life in societies that seem to deny this reality

So it’s more of an eternal hangover from the party of modern all-the-time cultural stimulation?

- You might say that, sure. If you want a third leg for the stool, it’s cultural products that are barely stimulating, huffington post slideshows, rage comics, memes, all that horseshit. And from that there’s need to make something that’s a direct response to these products and aims to transcend them, that’s why things like trolling appeal to me. People bizarrely have this general belief in the sincerity of others. Look at literallyunbelievable. All these fucking people who think onion articles are real. So by trolling/irony (which, generally, could be considered saying something untrue) you violate this social compact where everything on the internet is truthful and real. That’s what i mean by transcending. Perhaps a better term is transgression. Yes, i mean transgressing.

I mean, look at this for instance, this is just something i happened to see

http://i.imgur.com/oG492.png

it’s a fucking rage comic, why is it a fucking rage comic. why do people fucking communicate like this, what fucking broke society.

So, satirizing the background of everything?

- Yes, it aims at fundamental satire. I personally prefer transgressive, dark comedy, comedy of violence, you know, like brecht or the onion or louis ck.

You kinda sound like the self-loathing jew of social media

- I like that, let me use that on my book jacket. Anyway, it is that willingness to transgress, that darkness, i think that defines what you call “weird twitter” more than anything. It is borne of intelligence and honesty, and it sets this humor apart from people who are “merely” funny

There’s thousands of comedians on twitter, and they all kind of makes jokes that are boring puns or simple inversions or dull observations. People who i am sure are perfectly funny on their own, of course, elsewhere. But take to twitter to deliver the equivalent of leno monologue jokes or jerry seinfeld-type observational one-liners, this is doing more with the medium, it’s raising the level of writing, for one. The standards of good writing do not stop at the internet’s doorstep, despite 99% of writing you see on the internet. There is a reason why a lot of my favorite twitterers are exceptional writers in their own right. They are intelligent, exceptional writers, and they are as well extremely bored with the way people interact with this medium

Is it elitist?

- Well that’s a difficult term

Let me clarify. There has always been intellectually understimulated youngsters, you know the “The secret history”-kind, who loath their contemporary view of culture, and who’s longing for something else in a nonchalant manner. Is weird twitter that crew of our time?

- It’s such a small group of people, with many hangers-on who do zany things and write about dubstep and ron paul and 69, but who generally aren’t as good. Calling it the crew of our time is a bit strong. I’m sure there are plenty of people with similar views using their creative energies elsewhere

Yeah but you know - the core, the elite, whatever you want. is there a likeness?

- To what?

Well, The secret history. Have you read it? By Donna Tartt.

- No

Okey, never mind then. I think I might be over analyzing.

- Well i’d have to read it, but i think i understand vaguely what you’re saying. I think you can characterize it in this way. I mean you’d have to make that argument yourself, obviously. i wouldn’t mind terribly if you sensationalized us. I like the idea of being big in sweden, though keep in mind that these people also have a high sense of irony and wit. You can be young and depressed and brilliant and creative while not being very funny, of course

Now when I write this, and Buzzfeed has got their thing on its way - are we killing weird twitter?

- You’ll still have the people, and they will maintain their integrity i think no matter what the media does. To a point, sure, because once you’ve been praised and accepted and everyone acts like they love the joke or want to be “in” on it, you’re not being transgressive anymore, that’s a fear. But the media is still very gullible and bad, and they will be trolled again. Like with #SandyLootCrew, though that wasn’t us. I think the proper response to being mischaracterized by the media and confined to a space alongside some dumb recent news parody account ( see rubbercat’s site: http://tech.rubbercat.net/2012/10/the-50-most-epic-viral-debate-meme-parody-twitter-accounts.html) is to double down and keep doing well, to make more creative products

I note how you say “us”, which brings my thoughts to the anonymous dudes I’ve been in touch with. is weird twitter the pretentious humour equivalent to them?

- No, because anonymous is fundamentally different, just in many ways. I think that the “weird twitter” people will do well as they progress as creative producers, brendle just published a book for instance, tricia lockwood is a poet, @arr is a music writer of some note and i’m assembling a zine. A humor zine that will feature work from a lot of these people. The response has been very positive, and i’m excited for it.

It will be similar to a little-known zine called Army Man from the 80s, it was precisely as morose and absurd as “weird twitter” is. The writers of Army Man, incidentally, formed the core writing staff of the Simpsons which, i think, inspired a lot of “weird twitter” people in their own way, as well as Jack Handey, whose “deep thoughts” were first published in Army Man. Not sure if you’re familiar with him.

Unfortunately not

- Well when you wake up take a look http://www.boche.net/deep_thoughts.htm

The level of humor is strikingly similar. And john swartzwelder, who wrote one of my favorite jokes: “I’m not strong enough to end it all, so I guess I’ll just kill myself instead”. So this zine I’m publishing, called Rebel Girl, is kind of a return to that, i’m hoping to some of the original Army Man writers - all have had long and prosperous comedy writing careers - to contribute. It’s very cyclical. Their sort of writing directly influenced our sort of writing.

As always, in the case of culture. I noted that alvin greene woke up again as we’ve chatted. How much of the weird twitter stuff is like that, hibernating and then suddenly popping up again?

- Not much. I only use it occasionally, when i remember to

Well, if you dont feel like adding something, i think thats that

- If i could ask one question - do you personally like “weird twitter”? I mean you’ve obviously chosen this subject to write about

Well, my interest is always based on the theme of people doing stuff together on the internet. And that ranges between like Amanda Todds disgusting harassment crew, 4chan voting Justin Bieber to go to North Korea and this.

- Ah yes

But sure, i see the appeal in weird Twitter, and i like much of the things that reach me, as well as the foggy edges of the concept.

- At the end of the day it’s good writing

Yes, but also because internet underlines much of what people has been doing for all times: creating strange groups that feel confident with one another.

- Yes. Though i’ve always felt that beyond a handful of probably confusing references, “weird twitter” comedy is incredibly accessible, and can be related to. After all, most users i’m fond of are followed by somewhere between 3000-20000 strangers. Part of the object of Rebel Girl is to put this sort of writing (some of it longer than 140 characters) in a permanent form that can be distributed widely

Yeah. But in my view those references are often used to create a persona though, you know, the pokemon tweets for example, they arent about pokemon

- Right

It’s not the phenomenon of pokemon that hosts the humour, its the new context to place it in.

- Yes that’s a good way of describing it. To a point you need to follow along to really appreciate everything. But so much of it stands alone

Of course, yeah.

- There’s only so much context you can put within the boundaries of a single tweet, but by following someone over time you get context. This is a big reason why Rebel Girl will not be overly referential. I told writers to avoid references generally, i want to distill a certain part of the writing that can be appreciated by anyone.

Take this joke for example. ”lacan once said ‘the very foundation of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding.’ what the hell is that supposed to mean you french fag”. that’s by @brendlewhat. You don’t have to know who lacan is or that he’s a psychoanalytic philosopher to understand it

Exactly.

- The language works on its own

What i like about it is also that its so obviosly nothing you reply “lol” to. It’s not that kind of joke, simply, but it still is. Very Louis C.K

- Sure. A good stand-up comic cultivates an atmosphere where his humor makes sense. If you printed out a louis ck stand-up bit verbatim, it wouldn’t be very funny. But when he’s on stage looking as he does and speaking with certain tones, the comedy clicks, you can argue much the same about “weird twitter” and context

Which reminds me about a last thing. When twitter one day ends, like dies, which im sure it will - where will you and weird twitter go?

- I’d rather not contemplate it. But twitter as a form exists now, and will be supplanted if it ever disappears. And as well, something like the zine can be an organizing point. An “underground” zine isn’t as necessary as it might have been in the 80s when a few people stultified by culture could be truly enlightened by it. But as a cultural option, “weird twitter” and this brand of comedy serves has a valuable and unique place. i think personally that expanding that influence is a good thing

But not the “shit my dad says” way?

- Yes. Most people just imported comedy they were doing elsewhere when they joined twitter, that is why it is not funny and doesn’t work. This is more organic to a point. It has a lot of antecedents, like SA and such, but people individually have different origins and frames of reference - it’s something like a melting pot

Yeah. fun detail: during this whole chat, twilight no 2 has been playing on my TV

- That is awesome

It felt fitting

- I refrain from discussing “weird twitter” in detail, but i’m sure there are good arguments to be made about its social/literary/political/philosophical significance. But that is the work of a critic. I think oscar wilde said the work of the critic is of secondary importance. “The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic”. Stepping back and analyzing “weird twitter” isn’t terribly fun or interesting, in part because it’s such a nebulous concept. But cultural products on their own can be analyzed and criticized. So making a zine that functions on its own taking some aspect from “weird twitter,” that’s something i’d like to see discussed.

Yeah i get it, you shouldnt analyze a joke. if you laugh you should never ask why. cause then youll stop laugh

- Right. And it’s a tightrope to walk because you might very well be wrong

“You stop laugh”. Yes, I am Niko Bellic.

- Anyway, we’ll see how things go, but i’m confident that the best years are ahead.

Daylight saving idiots

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 16:52:08 -0500

“Daylight saving time (DST)—also summer time in several countries in British English, and European official terminology—is the practice of advancing clocks so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Typically clocks are adjusted forward one hour near the start of spring and are adjusted backward in autumn.”

That’s how Wikipedia describes the thing that, since the romans began practicing it, happens twice every year. It’s nothing new. It should not come as a surprise.

Yet it does. Behold some of the results of my depressing experiment: searching for “time back wtf” and “time hour crazy” on Twitter.

Closing with my personal favorite:

That’s deep, man. Now go back to school.

Q&A with @AlexanderRhodes AKA "Suspicious Onlooker" from Jack Reacher

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 15:58:20 -0400

I did a short interview with Alexander Rhodes, known as “Suspicious Onlooker” from the movie Jack Reacher, made famous by Reddit. I advice you to read the part about his future dreams (about building a giant shower) extra carefully. It’s imaginative, to say the least. The interview was originally done for, and published on, the swedish news site Nyheter24 where I work.

What’s your actor resume thus far?

I’ve been interested in all aspects of film for as long as I can remember. When I was like 10-11 my parents got me a video camera and I was always the one filming stuff at family events, etc. Also enjoyed acting in videos that me and my friends + brother made. I would sit at Barnes and Nobel for hours at a time reading movie scripts. Also just acted by myself in my room / getting into character and reenacting scenes with action figures. My family has some history in the industry… maybe it is genetic?

If not acting I’d still like to be involved in the industry in some way because love everything about film. Throughout college I took plenty of theater classes and acted in student films. Also self-study all the time, take acting classes, and recently have started receiving private lessons. I started out doing background work (extraing) for several movies. Also worked behind-the-scenes as a production assistant and interned for a casting director. I have two very small credited roles so far.

Tell me about when you discovered your Reddit-sponsored pathway to fame - from the first posting of your IMDB link to the campaign that followed.

This entire situation was a fantastic accident. I replied to a Reddit thread asking about how actors or extras get extremely skinny for roles with some general knowledge I gained through working on movie sets and interning for a casting director. Some people started replying or private messaging me asking about which movies I worked on so I edited my post to include a link to my IMDB page.

My comment got so many views that after one week my IMDB profile jumped from an extremely low number to #1,212 on the entire website. This pushed the profile up to #5 on the cast list of Jack Reacher putting my name alongside of A-list celebrity actors. I thought that this was simply hilarious and didn’t expect it to go any farther than that. A few days later I posted a thread with a screenshot of the cast list to Reddit titled “I was a movie extra and posted a link to my IMDB in a comment which got a lot of upvotes. Apparently they rank the cast based on profile traffic. Look at what you guys have done..” without expecting much. If anything I hoped that a couple people would find it funny.

However, thousands of Redditors and Imgurians thought that it was hilarious and spontaneously decided that they were going to try to get me listed about Tom Cruise on the cast list. In the process of all of this, I answered people’s questions and they soon realized I’m actually an aspiring actor so they started showing their support in huge numbers and instead of just being an internet joke, it turned into a mission to catapult me into Hollywood. With the support of Reddit and other online communities my IMDB profile reached the IMDB top 10 and is currently standing at #2 site-wide.

Has this changed your life in any way?

Absolutely. The attention has been largely positive and resulted in many hours of laughter. So guess it made my life a lot happier? In addition to this I got a free flight out to Los Angeles, California and am currently pursuing a legitimate career in acting. A month ago I would have never thought this to be possible. Thank you so much, Reddit!

What kind of responses have you gotten from the actors and people behind Jack Reacher?

Tom Cruise tweeted me his congratulations with the hashtag #Rhodes2Hollywood. He tweeted about it a few more times but other than that have heard nothing from any other cast members or Paramount. Someone told me that Lee Child, the author of the book series, thinks that the suspicious onlooker meme is hilarious but I haven’t seen him publicly talk about it or anything.

Did the attention lead to any new possible gigs for you?

Yes although nothing is 100% set in stone there are many potential commercials, a few small supporting roles in movies, and plenty of internet video opportunities. I’m planning on pursuing as many of these as possible.

What’s your dream for the future?

Ideally I would be able to financially support myself through acting and production. If this happens I will be forever in-debt to the internet communities which made this all possible. I’ll continually try to think up of ways to give back to them. Enjoy writing screenplays and would love to turn at least one of them into a movie someday if possible.

It has always been my major life goal to build a GIANT shower. Jets of water everywhere with waterfalls, a large tub like in book 4 of Harry Potter, etc.. you could just move about and have a good time while showering. I would get a green engineer to make the water recycle / filter itself and use solar heating to make it as eco-friendly as possible. This costs a ton of money and will probably never happen but you asked for my dream.

If I became a figure of public interest I would do my best to promote causes which I support. Being a nerdy science guy I would promote space exploration and science education. Also feel very strongly about lgbt rights (marriage equality), sustainable universal healthcare, net neutrality, not entering into unnecessary war, and a lot of other stuff. Have many documentaries which I would like to produce. Find an awesome wife and raise children. I’ve never had the money to travel as much as I would like to. Hopefully this someday changes as I would like to go to ALL the countries.

There are probably more dreams but that’s it for now!

"I was doxed. Pictures of me naked and in underwear, taken by my ex boyfriend for him and I (not of..."

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 06:36:36 -0400

“

I was doxed. Pictures of me naked and in underwear, taken by my ex boyfriend for him and I (not of an extremely explicit nature, but still, we all know it doesn’t take much for a woman to be extremely sexualised), were stolen off of my email and posted in /b/ along with my full name (only two people in the world have my name), and my adress and phone number.

This was about a year ago. I don’t know where to start, but I am considering doing an AMA. You would not believe what I have experienced since then. Men at bars in the (large) town where I live call me slut. Entire threads on 4chan are devoted to finding out which facebook-events I am attending. I recieve multiple emails everyday calling me horrible things. So do my mother, father and little sister. And my dear cousin, who is only 14, had them sent to her as well. I cannot begin to explain the hurt of being called up by a child, wondering why I’m naked in her facebook inbox.

What has shocked me the most is: I have NO RIGHTS. I can not demand of a sight that they not make money off of my naked body. When I email them, they just say ‘haha, serves you right for being such a slut’. Basically, so did the police. I know this is very lengthy, but I am willing to answer questions if you have them. I am young, but pretty well-versed and educated. I have to live with the fact that for the rest of my life, who sees me naked will never be my choice.

This comes up at job interviews. I’m a hard worker with dreams of a career in publishing (luckily I got a job), and when people google my name they see my naked 17 year old body. Strange men call me and show up to my house, shouting slut and whore in the middle of the night.
I am right now working on an article with the headline ‘Anon is always male’, on structural misogyny on the internet, and how this forces even women who are anon online to buy into the male narrative of ‘isanyoneup’, friendszoning etc.

I feel like I am sexually harassed by men every single day online. Every day. I don’t talk to strangers anymore, because so many have come up to me and talked, and later admitted it was only because they had seen me naked online.

Yet, I am not ashamed. I did not take those pictures or appear in them out of insecurity. It was a conscious sexual choice for me, and I found it arousing to be part of it. And I MAINTAIN that it is my birth given right to be naked wherever the fuck I want. I will not give in the pressure of thinking of myself as a whore. But the fact that I am being sexualised in a context which I have no control over is terrifying.

I am considering starting a foundation to further female rights on the internet, because we are the victims, ladies. Men HAVE NO IDEA. The person posting them is a sicko, but completely regular men get turned on by the idea that I am being sexualized against my will. We need to make sure that everyone knows that A CLICK IS A DECISION AND A STANDPOINT. If you surf r/creepshots, you are participating.

I am against SOPA and PIPA, but complete anonymity and freedom of speech are not the same thing. Integrity is not anonymity, it is respectful accountability. You should be held accountable for what you do and say on the internet. FUCK YES. How can I sit and watch as my naked body is being exposed on 4chan, yet have not right to hold the violator accountable? That is not right.

Most times, anonymity online is not used to riot against oppresive regimes. It is used to violate human beings and then pretend it’s not done by you, but by who you are on the internet. It’s wrong. I demand and think that we need, like there is in the real world, gatekeeper anonymity. Meaning usernames, but if a person is seen doing something illegal they should be held accountable, and the owner of the site should know at least enough to contact them.

”

- Redditor kwammiz describes being doxed.

"Let me tell you about the time I was failing Math class. It was the summer of 2005, I think. I was..."

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 12:06:47 -0400

“

Let me tell you about the time I was failing Math class.

It was the summer of 2005, I think. I was a scholarship student to Harvard. My mom was an alcoholic and my dad was never really around. He was occasionally abusive due to what I think was a drug addiction. I’d always not quite fitted in at school. My lack of social skills led me to seek recluse in academia. By night I’d just read. This one time when I was about 13, the police arrested Dad, and I had to spend the night with my uncle. He was a brilliant polymath- no idea about practical things, but he had a passion for learning. That night, I was tearful and alone, and he tried to take my mind off things by introducing me to some more advanced mathematics. I finally found a passion for something. Even when dad was released, I ended up spending more and more time with my uncle. Eventually, when I was 16, he gained custody after I became sick of my dad’s alcohol abuse. Fuelled by my love of maths, I graduated most classes with full credit, and my uncle encouraged me to apply to Harvard.

The problem was not just getting in. The problem was the atmosphere. I was a small town girl with severe social anxiety issues. I was under immense pressure to perform and I felt I couldn’t compete with some of the intellectual heavyweights present. During this time I was also increasingly aware of my lowly sexual status. I was worried that I would die alone without experiencing sex- my attempts to secure a one night stand were mostly unsuccessful.
Anyway, my grades were really failing thanks to my social worries. It was about this time that my few girl friends started complaining about how lecherous our teacher had been to them, pressuring them for sexual favours in return for better grades. Suddenly, a plan came to mind.
The next paper I had back, my professor asked to see me after class. He sat down in front of me. His cologne was overpowering… almost sexy. “This really isn’t acceptable, Katherine” he shook his head, “I don’t see how long you can go like this. You’ll end up failing”.

I leaned into him, unbuttoning my shirt. “Really Professor? Is there anything I can do… to help?”
This caught his attention. He approached me, his lips practically next to mine. “Well, you’ll have to give me everything…I…need.”
I asked him, breathlessly, “What do you need?”. He looked into my eyes and replied “I need about tree fiddy”.
It was at this point that I realised my professor was actually an 8 story tall crustacean from the Paleozoic era.
“I ain’t givin’ you no tree fiddy you goddamn Loch Ness Monster!” I yelled as he shuffled off into the sunset, “Get your own goddamn money!”

”

- Glorious answer from the Reddit thread Has anyone ever performed sexual favors with a professor for a better grade at a university?

If you don’t get it, read this.

Hallå! Vi blev intervjuade!

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 16:53:27 -0400

swedishproblems:

Nyheter24 fördjupar sig lite i svensk internethumorkultur, The Typical Svensken möter vår kritik och vi avslöjar att vi är nittiotalister! Det tycker vi ju såklart är roligt och vill visa er.

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"I am a post-colleged age male who raped several girls over a course of 3 years"

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 05:10:23 -0400

I am a post-colleged age male who raped several girls through use of coercion, alcohol, and other tactics over a course of 3 years. First off, I must say, I was at a dark and horrible place in my life, that I’ve since grown from. I’m ashamed of the person I was, if the people who I’m close to now knew who I was, I would be ruined. I’m known for being a great guy, friendly and easy to get along with, a community/political activist, a fervent volunteer in the community, and a person who rises through the ranks quickly due to successes at work. That was my mask, and I was good at it, so good that maybe I convinced myself along the line that was who I could really be, and that may of helped me change, and stop doing what I did. I’m somewhat remorseful for what I did to those girls, but I don’t think I could ever face them to apologize.

A redditor who after posting this deleted his account tells the story about his serial raping tactics, in a thread where rapists are asked to tell about their deeds. He goes on to talk about how he was well-appreciated in his community, and mentions that if he ended up in court against any of the girls he raped, he’d probably be trusted enough to win the case. A lot of redditors praise the guy for coming out, daring to discuss his crimes. But one of them, throw-away account The_Truth_Fairy, takes on another view.

The only way to prepare against someone like you would be to live in fear of any great guy that was kind to introverted girls like me, and I’m not going to live my life in a self-imposed cage, when you should be in a government one. As a women I ALREADY can’t go out by myself at night. I can’t smile or make eye contact with others while walking down the street without worrying that it will lead to men approaching me. I can’t put my drink down at a party, I can’t wear a short skirt, I can’t nod off on the subway, I can’t even be NICE to a guy without the thought of “don’t make him think you’re leading him on, he might think you ‘owe’ him later”, which is what happened with many of the men in this thread. If you think I’m just crazy paranoid, ask a woman you know what she does in her daily life to protect herself against a sexual assault. But you didn’t confuse the situation. You didn’t misinterpret anything. You preyed on innocent girls, probably damaging them for life.

Cookies for Breakfast: So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club....

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 04:28:36 -0400

Cookies for Breakfast: So a Girl Walks into a Comedy Club....:

breakfastcookie:

This is something that happened to a friend of mine in her own words.

“So, on Friday night my friend and I were at her house and wanted to get out and do something for the evening. We brainstormed ideas and she brought up the idea of seeing a show at the Laugh Factory. I’d never been, I thought…

My illustrated reaction to the news that fruit flies now are able to count

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:08:27 -0400

Fruitflies evolve number sense, as told by Nature.com. How did reach this conclusion? Well,

During a 20-minute training period, flies were exposed to either two, three or four flashes of light — two and four flashes coincided with a vigorous shake administered by placing a electric toothbrush next to the box containing the flies. After a brief rest, the flies were returned to box and shown the light flashes. Despite a dislike for being shaken, most of the flies were not able to learn to associate the negative stimulus with the number of flashes. But 40 generations later, they could.

The illustration below is my exact mental image following these news.