Why Is “get ___ed Idiot” One Of The Funniest Sentences In The English Language

the funniest part of my appendix removal experience was being wheeled down to the operating room and as we were going my nerves were everywhere so i half-jokingly asked the nurse taking me if she still had her appendix bc i felt not normal for getting mine out on top of having the jitters about being cut open so i was trying to fill the silence and she just.. looked mildly offended while being like “uhhhh. yeah. of course i do” like…. my bad i guess

House rule: when Tim falls asleep on you, you cannot, under any circumstances, move. It's cat rules. You can't get up to pee. You can't get yourself water or a snack or the TV remote. You're stuck until he wakes up. Good luck.

i’ve started to think about ao3 audience interaction as kinda comparable to doing a live reading in an intimate little bookstore, like kudos are everybody who stayed til the end and applauded, comments are everybody who waited to come up to talk to you afterwards, and bookmark comments are the little snatches of conversation you overhear outside.

this helps me feel better/less anxious about responding to comments with some form of thanks, because if someone walked up to me in person and said they liked my work right after reading it, i would compulsively say thanks. it also helps contextualize audience size in a healthy way i think, bc most of us naturally crave more attention on our fic, but if we were actually in the room with even like 20 people applauding and five people waiting after to tell us how awesome we are we’d be fuckin elated.  

Not to slut shame but some of you could definitely be sluttier

did not everyone get a lecture from their dad to have a firm handshake? like sir what am I supposed to do with this limp fish you just handed me

Starving to death this morning because ive been to the new local cafe twice this week already and if i go a third time ill look desperate.

the tiktokification of ao3

or: some of you fundamentally misunderstand ao3 and it really, really shows

i was talking about this with a friend a few days ago and since then i've seen multiple posts of various sorts that have just made me think about it more, so. here is me breaking down a disconnect i see particularly with younger members of the marauders fandom (i say marauders specifically just bc that's the only one i'm plugged into):

okay, so i've seen many (usually younger) marauders fans either talking online about how they wish ao3 was more like social media (specifically regarding algorithms) OR talking about ao3/fanfiction/fanfic writers as if they are operating under the same etiquette/guidelines/assumptions they would bring into social media platforms. this ranges from being mildly irritating to genuinely harmful, and i want to talk abt why.

first - you have to understand that social media, in this day and age, exists in a profit economy. and when i say social media here, i'm referring to platforms like tiktok, twitter, instagram, etc. all of these platforms exist in a profit economy where content is a product that can be monetized. this leads to a few important distinctions:

people posting on these social media platforms are generally posting with the intent to get their content seen by as many people as possible, as quickly as possible

they post with this intent because once their content is consumed by enough people, it becomes a product that they can monetize

therefore, if that content gets popular enough, these people can become influencers, where content creation is an actual job and their audience are, in a sort of vague and obscured way, similar to consumers purchasing a product

because of the profit economy surrounding social media, there are certain assumptions + forms of interaction that bleed across almost all social media platforms. the ones relevant to this little essay include:

operating under the assumption that anyone posting anything on the internet wants to go viral, ie. be seen by as many people as possible as quickly as possible in order to grow an "audience"

these influencers are creating content for us, their audience, so they should want to please us. they should also be trying to appeal to the broadest possible audience. therefore, if we dislike their content, we have a right to make that very, very clear.

in that same vein, we have a general right to critique content creators, as they are making a profit and we are the consumers purchasing their product--much like you might feel entitled to a certain standard of service in a restaurant where you are paying for the food.

when you carry these assumptions over to a platform like ao3, it creates problems. why? in a nutshell: because ao3 exists outside the profit economy

ao3 is a non-profit. it does not have an algorithm because it is not trying to sell you anything. this means that the writers posting their work on ao3 are not making a profit. we are not influencers. we are not creating monetized content to sell to a consumer-audience. where consuming content on other social media platforms might be comparable to eating at a restaurant, reading fanfiction on ao3 is more like coming over to someone's house and eating cookies that they made for free. you are in their house. the cookies are free, given as a gift. so what happens when those assumptions outlined above start to bleed over from other social media?

assuming that anyone posting fanfiction online wants their work to go viral -- i've seen this with popular fic writers getting questions like, "are you worried x isn't going to be as popular as y?" those questions are usually not ill-intended, but they demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding about why writers post work on ao3. it's not to go viral. it's not to build any sort of online following. most of us who post on ao3 have jobs or schoolwork or other commitments, and writing fanfiction is something done for fun, out of a love for writing. those sharing their work online might be seeking community, but that is fundamentally different from seeking an audience, and in no way involves internet virality. if someone is posting fanfic on ao3 with the hope that it'll "go viral," then they likely either won't continue writing fanfic for long or will reach a point where they have to re-evalute their motivations, because seeking joy and validation by turning your art into a product for consumption just isn't very sustainable.

influencers are creating content for us, so we have a right to let them know if we don't like it -- nope!! fic writers are not influencers. yes, even the popular ones. no matter how much other people might blow their work up on social media, fic writers are still outside the profit economy. they are not creating content for an audience. they are not creating content for you. they are writing because they love it, and they are generously sharing it. if you don't like it, don't interact with it. you are never entitled to loudly and publicly proclaim how much you dislike a fic. i talk about this more here

we have a general right to critique fic writers, the same way we do with content creators/influencers -- again, no. you should not be treating fic writers the way you would treat an influencer on another social media platform, no matter how popular they may be. this is not to say fic writers are beyond all reproach; rather, it is a call-in to check your entitlement. fic writers are not little jesters entertaining in your court. they are not subject to your whims. they do not have to do things for you. they do not have to write things you like. in that post i linked on point 2, i talk about what etiquette might look like if you're really concerned that a fic writer is doing something harmful, but that is not what i'm talking about here. i am talking about the proliferation of negativity i have seen, especially on twitter and tiktok, where people essentially just talk shit about fics or fic writers as though they are entitled to have those fic writers working to please them. this is gross, and it needs to stop. you wouldn't go over to someone's house, eat the cookies they baked to share, and then spit those cookies back in their face and start shouting about what a shitty baker they are. or maybe you would--in which case, congratulations! you are Not A Good Person.

anyway, at the end of the day, a lot of this can be boiled down to: Because ao3 exists outside the profit economy, fic writers are not influencers, and you should never be treating them as though they are. i think i see this disconnect largely with younger people just because they've maybe only ever really understood social media within this sort of influencer-consumer-culture economy, and genuinely don't understand how to interact differently with the internet. so, consider this post a call-in to reevaluate the way you interact with fic writers and the etiquette you use when it comes to engaging with fanfic on ao3! i promise that ao3 being different from social media is a very, very good thing, and also a very, very rare thing, so let's treasure it and focus on fostering community rather than trying to morph it to fit the mould of influencer-audience dynamics that we see almost everywhere else <3

me getting irrationally angry at hangers clinking together even tho there is a group of people talking and a huge ass fan right next to me

does this say anything about me? probably not

gonna start listing off streams that i refuse to believe actually happened/weren’t complete and utter fever dreams:

that one irl stream where tommy and tubbo had random people try and catch them in a park in the middle of nottingham and they found one pretty bloke and a bunch of stoners

when tommy played among us with the sidemen, wilbur and tubbo, for a video, didn’t tell them he was streaming the entire time, spent the entire time defending philza minecraft’s honour, got KSI to tweet something along the lines of “philza suck ya mum”, to which phil responded by saying his name sounded like an STD, before ending stream and raiding phil, who had been quite peacefully draining an ocean monument the whole time, and completely derailing his stream

that one irl stream fundy did where he just woke up in a forest, practiced archery, attempted to make a pizza from scratch without most of the key ingredients, called phil for help and ended because phil accidentally came up with a ghost story that bore striking resemblance to something that actually happened in the forest and all parties were scared out of their minds

the SBI monopoly stream. i will go to my grave not knowing whether the whole bit with wilbur’s office’s firewall was staged or not, but i choose to believe it wasn’t for the sake of my own enjoyment. the stream just kept escalating as they went through the steam library.

that one ranboo stream where him and tubbo were helping phil hollow out the basement, and phil and tubbo spent a good hour trying to get ranboo to order delivery. people gifted hundreds of subs to ranboo anonymously in an attempt to hit a subgoal which ranboo kept shifting in order to avoid doing it, 500 of which may or may not have come from tubbo himself

connor’s house party on the dsmp. i watched this entire thing live from multiple perspectives and i could not tell you what the fuck was occurring. also the fact that this was like the 3rd most recent time schlatt’s played on the smp feels illegal

irl drunkcast. the costumes, the alcohol, the everything. this stream was a blessing and most of the people involved probably have very little memory of it

feel free to add on, these are just a few that stuck out to me