this kid is 14 oh my god is no one teaching children to protect themselves online anymore…
Meanwhile us olds are like: I don’t have a carrd and I’m not reading yours
Please don’t advertise your personal information, anyone could find that and use it however they want.
Oh my fucking god it isn’t 1998 anymore no one cares
??? Wtf does this mean??? 80% of employers google you before hiring you, child predators use that info to groom kids, abusers use that info against victims, police/government track activists online? Do you honestly think the internet has gotten safer since 1998????
also don’t tell any rando who wanders onto your blog with unknown intentions the specifics of how they can trigger you???? no????
the fact that its not 1998 anymore is exactly WHY you should be more fucking careful. do you have any idea the tools people have now compared to then? the fact that its gotten exponentially easier to find people in real life based off online info while young people have gotten extremely comfortable sharing all their personal details is deeply concerning.
im sorry no one ever taught you internet safety but that is NOT because its not important anymore. ITS MORE IMPORTANT THAN IT EVER WAS. please listen to the people whove been on the internet longer than youve been alive. our intentions are good and internet safety is vital. especially if youre queer, which i know for a fact a lot of you are.
If you don’t believe that people can track you online from a little bit of information, please check out this thread by Emily Gorcenski, an anti-fascist activist, where she breaks down how she was able to determine the exact location of someone’s storage unit based only on a photo in the New York Times. (Gorcenski also uses her super powers to out fascists, but in this case, she is using it on one of those people who were buying up hand sanitizer in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The whole thread is fascinating, and is based on nothing more than a single photo, with most of the stuff she relies on to make the ID not even being in focus, let along in the foreground. Stuff you might never think about, like the angle between two building or the exact color of the storage unit doors.
Because you might think to yourself, “What is the harm of sharing a photo that shows the color of my storage unit doors??” But combined with your name and the fact that you live in, say, Eastern Tennessee, that might be all someone needs to narrow it down.
You should really read the whole thing, but to quote something she says at the end:
“The things that give you away are things that are not the focus of the shot. It’s details in the background, the foreground. Shadows, changes in coloration where they’re not expected. …
I have geolocated people from pictures of cranes in the background of images, and use local construction permits to figure out where they are. I have used the shape of downspout guards and styles of siding to identify neighborhoods.”
And as she reminds us: You should always assume that bad actors are capable of doing this, too.
So for the love of all that is holy, please protect yourselves. Be conscious of what you share and where and who can see it. This stuff matters.
Not to mention, like……… predators lie. Predators will do one of these carrds with information specifically designed to lure people into a false sense of security.
I could say that I’m a 15 year old trans indigenous girl named Jess who lives in the inner suburbs of Sydney, and NOT A SINGLE word of that is remotely true, but how do you know??? How do you know whether I’m telling the truth or not??
But you might read it and think “oh she’s a minor like me; she’s Safe to talk to” or “she’s trans too she understands me on a personal level” or “I know her; her name is Jess” or “she’s indigenous, I can take her stances on indigenous topics as Truth” – but I’m not any of those things. And if I wrote all that and stated that they were true and you believed me then you would be in an inherently vulnerable position, because you would be believing I’m your age or have the same gender experiences as you or that I’m of the same heritage, and meanwhile I could be a predator who’s specifically trying to target children by making myself out to be both a minor and two different types of minority.
And yeah, people can lie all the time if they want to; there’s nothing to stop me right now from announcing that I’m actually American, or I’m actually 52, or I’m actually a natural redhead, or I’m actually [insert something that I am not]. But if its becoming commonplace to lay all your “basic” information on the table from the outset then youre gonna start taking that at face value. Youre gonna believe peoples bios. You’re gonna check someone’s carrd out and go “oh they’re a fourteen year old boy from wisconsin” and every interaction you have with them from then on is going to be through a lens of “theyre a fourteen year old boy from Wisconsin,” and they might not be.
For the love of GOD please stop sharing your personal details online. You dont need to tell people your actual name. You dont need to share selfies. Godding fuck dont announce to the whole world that you live in a certain specific area and that you’ve just been kicked out of home. There are people who will take that information and use it against you.
And if you are ever, EVER going to meet up with an online friend in real life, here are some basic tips that you really absolutely 100% should do:
Do a zoom chat with them first. No, not selfies; selfies can be taken from anywhere. I could google “teenage girl,” screenshot it, and send it to you with the claim that its my face. I could steal someone’s Facebook photos and claim they’re mine. Its a lot harder for an adult to con you into thinking theyre a teenager if you insist on doing a zoom call or similar with them first.
If you have a facetime/zoom call/Skype/whatever scheduled, and they cancel it, but still want to meet up in person at the pre-arranged time, DO NOT GO. Straight up say “no, we’ll reschedule; how about we Skype at the time we were meant to meet in person instead.” DO NOT MEET UP WITH SOMEONE IF YOU HAVENT VIDEO-CHATTED WITH THEM. DO NOT. If they dont want to Skype with you or keep agreeing to and then dropping out, then thats a fucking huge warning sign.
If they video chat with you and you’re satisfied that they are who they say they are and youre happy to go ahead with the meet, then agree to meet up in the middle of the day in a crowded place. A shopping mall, a busy cafe, etc. Somewhere with lots of people around. Do NOT go somewhere else with them. Do NOT get in their car or go somewhere with fewer people or etc. Hate to break it to you, but it is NOT outside of the realm of possibility that the person you’re meeting is bait to get you somewhere isolated where someone else can grab you. This is a thing that has happened. Easiest way to avoid it? Don’t go places alone with your online friend until you know for sure they’re not dodgy.
Also: TELL SOMEONE WHERE YOU ARE GOING AND WHO YOU ARE GOING TO MEET. It doesn’t have to be a parent. Lord knows some of you kids don’t trust your parents, and I understand that. But tell SOMEONE. A friend, a sibling, a cousin; whatever. Tell them when you’re going, where you’re going, who you’re meeting, and what the other person’s online details are. If it turns out that theyre a normal human person who is just keen to meet their online friend, then great. But if they turn out to be some kind of creepy whackjob who kidnaps you or something, then at least there is someone out there who can give the police a start point about where you were and who you were meeting.
Online safety is so important and it really freaks me out to see how cavalier some of you kids are with your own safety. There are loads of freaks out there; don’t hand your information over to them in a handy little personal bio.
^^^^^^^
also if your online friend even possesses one iota of common sense, they will be fully understanding about every one of these safety precautions, and take them themselves, too.
if your online friend dismisses these concerns, then they don’t care about your personal safety, and they aren’t your friend, and you shouldn’t meet with them.
my dnd party has run into an npc who may or may not be evil and may or may not decide to betray us and the dm was in chat today like “just so everyone knows…not addressing this comment at anyone in particular…his favorite colors are red and black…wink” so now i’m desperately trying to get a real physical friendship bracelet done before session tomorrow in the vain hope that i can somehow stop this npc from trying to do a murder on my party
UPDATE: the npc was in fact a shapechanged adult black dragon with violence and conquest in his heart. however he did let merry put a friendship bracelet on him and then when she was like “hm okay how big is your wrist in dragon form” he was like “you wanna see?” and then turned into a dragon and let merry measure him for a second, dragon-sized friendship bracelet. the dm described him afterwards as being deeply confused as to why he did this or let any of this happen to him. call that the merry effect
this guy is now a recurring npc because merry was SO determined to make him her friend that it actually somehow worked. he cast dream to talk to one of my party members like “hey…how’s it going…how are the tieflings in the party…not that i care…also i’m not lonely. bye” and the player was like “is he still wearing merry’s friendship bracelet in this dream” and the dm was like “yeah…”
fsdfjhskdf the dm just sent us all this image
so merry taught naeric (the dragon) the power of love, obviously, and because his heart was open and beautiful he started dating…a SECOND evil dragon. and then that gf betrayed him and cast ninth level imprisonment on him so now naeric is our damsel in distress and we have to save him from his girlfriend, the actual villain. how the turntables…
and. in the most horrible plot twist of all. the gf stole his friendship bracelet.
When I was growing up in the 90s, in the days before search engines and everyone being online all the time, I saw plenty of trans women, just as sob stories directed at cis people on daytime television, freakshows directed at cis people on daytime television, the punchlines to hateful and violent jokes broadcast at all hours, and as a species of sexual fetish available to the consumers of niche websites and periodicals. The horizons of the possible to me looked like that: you could be someone else’s tragedy or someone else’s fantasy. The possibility of living a normal and dignified life seemed marginal. There were resources for trans people but they were aimed at adults. There were groups, online and off, aimed at adults. There were definitely trans people living normal-ish lives like mine, but they weren’t people I was supposed to know or see. Society insisted they were dangerous to me.
I want to finish this with a joke, like “Good thing our benevolent corporate overlords have decided we had it too good for too long and brought back the fetish/corpse dichotomy”, but it’s not even just them. Trans people, trans women especially, and our silly little culture and our silly little jokes and our silly little attempts to find and know each other make cis people who, in their view, have to endure them - those things make them seethe. It is an upset to this social situation, this social situation they consider the natural order, which they grew up with and internalized as much as we did, that we have the audacity to see ourselves in things besides jerkoff mags and human corpses. I suggest they die mad about it, and I suggest everyone who shares their frustration die mad about it
Experimental toony headshot commission done for my friend Bear of their character mick. i hope i can find it in me to make more of these- this style was super fun to mess around with
hey y'all uhhh mimi here with a dang ol crisis and a lot of stress.
So um I just got a huge bill, $3000, that I’m completely unable to pay (without using what i need for rent and food) because bills had accumulated over the course of the pandemic, and now I need to pay them or else!!
I barely make ends meet as it is, and rent is due in a few days.
I hate begging but I don’t know what else to do, if you could spare anything or even just share this around, I would greatly appreciate it.
cashapp: $luigiyagami venmo: @luigi_yagami_64 kofi: click here I’m weary about posting my emails publicly, so DM me for Paypal
AS OF JULY 20th: $1600/$3000
have this gif of nova as tax :}
(for The Followers: Revenant’s budget is fine, I keep all of the money towards that in a separate account n all that.)
(for The Followers: im aware of the convenient timing of this, it’s not intentional but im still not super familiar with tumblr etiquette and had to scour around aaa,..)
