First link is broken, pulled from the notes because I have at least a couple mutuals who regularly reblog this person’s posts and… if you look up the old username you get nothing but terf/radfem blogs praising her so yeeeeeeahhhhh. Blocked.
fucking hate it when the stuff everybody says “actually works” does actually work.
hate exercising and realizing i’ve let go of a lot of anxiety and anger because i’ve overturned my fight-or-flight response.
hate eating right and eating enough and eating 3 times a day and realizing i’m less anxious and i have more energy
hate journaling in my stupid notebook with my stupid bic ballpoint and realizing that i’ve actually started healing about something once i’m able to externalize it
hate forgiving myself hate complimenting myself more often hate treating myself with kindness hate taking a gratitude inventory hate having patience hate talking to myself gently
hate turning my little face up to the sun and taking deep breaths and looking at nature and grounding myself and realizing that i feel less burdened and more hopeful, more actually-here, that i am able to see the good sides of myself more clearly, that i am able to see not only how far i have to grow - but also how much growth i have already done & how much of my life i truly fill with light and laughter and love
horrible horrible horrible. hate it but i’m gonna do it tho
the barbenheimer experience i had was so funny i saw oppenheimer first and in a quiet scene we could literally hear ken singing in the theater next to us and then during barbie it when was quiet we could hear a fucking explosion coming from the oppenheimer screening
I think one of the most profound forms of love is “I’ll try that, for you. I may not like it, but I’ll try it.”
It’s a confused middle-aged man in a pottery class, whose daughter is helping him with his clay’s plasticity. It’s a kid scrunching up their brow while listening to their mom’s favorite music, trying to figure out why she likes it. It’s a girlfriend who says “Yes, I’ll go with you” and her girlfriend cheering and buying a second ticket for a con. It’s a friend half dragging another friend through an aquarium, the one being dragged laughing and calling out “Wait, wait, I know we’re here for the exhibit, but I haven’t been here! Slow down!”
It’s being willing to spend some of your time trying something new because it makes someone you love happy.
the thing is this dashboard change isnt the end of the world ill get used to it whatever im just fucking dying of embarrassment that its supposed to look like twitter
twitter gets run over by a bus and the next day tumblr comes 2 school wearing her clothes like. oh my god come on
One of the things I occasionally get paid to do by companies/execs is to tell them why everything seemed to SUDDENLY go wrong, and subs/readers dropped like a stone.
So, with everything going on at Twitter rn, time for a thread about the Trust Thermocline /1
So: what’s a thermocline?
Well large bodies of water are made of layers of differing temperatures. Like a layer cake. The top bit is where all the the waves happen and has a gradually decreasing temperature. Then SUDDENLY there’s a point where it gets super-cold.
That suddenly is important. There’s reasons for it (Science!) but it’s just a good metaphor. Indeed you may also be interested in the “Thermocline of Truth” which a project management term for how things on a RAG board all suddenly go from amber to red.
But I digress.
The Trust Thermocline is something that, over (many) years of digital, I have seen both digital and regular content publishers hit time and time again. Despite warnings (at least when I’ve worked there). And it has a similar effect. You have lots of users then suddenly… nope.
And this does effect print publications as much as trendy digital media companies. They’ll be flying along making loads of money, with lots of users/readers, rolling out new products that get bought. Or events. Or Sub-brands.
And then SUDDENLY those people just abandon them.
Often it’s not even to “new” competitor products, but stuff they thought were already not a threat. Nor is there lots of obvious dissatisfaction reported from sales and marketing (other than general grumbling). Nor is it a general drift away, it’s just a sudden big slide.
So why does this happen? As I explain to these people and places, it’s because they breached the Trust Thermocline.
I ask them if they’d been increasing prices. Changed service offerings. Modified the product.
The answer is normally: “yes, but not much. And everyone still paid”
Then I ask if they did that the year before. Did they increase prices last year? Change the offering? Modify the product?
Again: “yes, but not much.”
The answer is normally: “yes, but not much. And everyone still paid.”
“And the year before?”
“Yes but not much. And everyone still paid.”
Well, you get the idea.
And here is where the Trust Thermocline kicks in. Because too many people see service use as always following an arc. They think that as long as usage is ticking up, they can do what they like to cost and product.
And (critically) that they can just react when the curve flattens
But with a lot of CONTENT products (inc social media) that’s not actually how it works. Because it doesn’t account for sunk-cost lock-in.
Users and readers will stick to what they know, and use, well beyond the point where they START to lose trust in it. And you won’t see that.
But they’ll only MOVE when they hit the Trust Thermocline. The point where their lack of trust in the product to meet their needs, and the emotional investment they’d made in it, have finally been outweighed by the physical and emotional effort required to abandon it.
At this point, I normally get asked something like:
“So if we undo the last few changes and drop the price, we get them back?”
And then I have to break the news that nope: that’s not how it works.
Because you’re past the Thermocline now. You can’t make them trust you again.
Classic examples of this behaviour are digital subscription services, where the product gets squeezed over time, or print magazines (particularly in B2B) that constantly ramp up their prices a little bit each year until it’s too late.
Virtually the only way to avoid catastrophic drop-off from breaching the Trust Thermocline is NOT TO BREACH IT.
I can count on one hand the times I’ve witnessed a company come back from it. And even they never reached previous heights.
So what’s the lesson for businesses here?
- Watch for grumbling and LISTEN to it. - Don’t assume that because people have swallowed a price or service change that’ll swallow another one. - Treat user trust as a finite asset. Because it is.
And I will admit this is one of the reasons I am (with sadness, because I’ve got a lot of value out of this place) watching Elon’s current actions wrt Twitter with curious horror.
Because I’ve NEVER seen someone make such a deep dive for the Trust Thermocline, so quickly.
It’s why I’ve got about 20 big accounts I’m watching on here to see when they personally feel he crosses that Thermocline and begin shifting their main effort and presence elsewhere.
Because that’ll be the moment I suspect things will start changing very quickly. /END
ADDENDUM:
Been reminded of the time I was brought in to talk about this to a gaming company who I can’t name.
The marketing manager got SUPER angry and was like:
“rubbish! we did lootboxing like this five years in a row and people kept paying!”
I’m:
“Mate. That’s my point.”
For those asking, I’m bet-hedging myself while I wait to see what happens. So you’ll find me now on:
I think something very scary that is happening for the newer generation is that the invisible audience no longer exists. They’re not invisible, they’re right there, in their pocket all the time, and that is so physiologically damaging.
“he he ho ho elder millennial thinks technology is evil and Edison was a witch”
fucking no but don’t you remember in middle school when you were like “I’m horrible and everyone hates me” but you literally never had any evidence to back that up so you eventually grew out of it? Now imagine you had a little light box that people from all over the world could tell you that actually yeah they did hate you , and they could do it anonymously. Why do you think teens today are so fucking obsessed with cringe? Why do you think you haven’t seen a gen z horse girl? Like the audience isn’t invisible anymore and the kids have to perform form the second their born.
“Well, ackshualley, most jobs employ your time and mind, not your body. I am very intelligent.”
Wrong!
Are you required to perform a physical action, like typing on a keyboard? To be present? To utilise your brain, which is a physicalorgan? Are you required to talk with your mouth? To listen with your ears? To look with your eyes?!
ALL JOBS EMPLOY YOUR BODY.
ALL LABOUR IS PHYSICAL.
This post is specifically about people who do mental gymnastics to justify their disrespect of sex workers and their labour, but it can and should be taken at face value - all labour is physical labour. Some labour poses higher risk to the labourer. Sex work is high risk physical labour, like firefighting, and deserves the same amount of respect and security.
You are so right king. The Federal government literally acknowledges the above in OSHA regulations
You work in an office at a desk typing emails all day? OSHA still mandates things like temperature and ventilation of the office, the maximum weight you are required to lift (like 50 pound boxes of printer paper), and other things. The ADA requires reasonable accommodation for assistive devices and access for office jobs. The requirements for simple office work are myriad. Because all labor is physical.
I’ve been rereading some of my old travel diaries from my early 20’s, and one of them seriously reads like a slow-burn fanfic. I was on tour with a small indie band and there was a cute guy my age traveling with the band. And we spent two weeks “accidentally” hanging out and sitting close to each other at the merch table in smoky bars and reading Tolkien poetry to each other and taking walks at the beach and sharing food and stargazing and sleeping next to each other on living room floors and giving each other back rubs and talking late into the night gazing into each other’s eyes.
We never kissed. We never even held hands. I pretended to fall asleep on his shoulder once in the car, and one day I gave him a little kiss on the cheek. And that was it. We said goodbye two weeks later and we both thought it was forever and I pined so hard that I threw up.
A month later he sent me an apologetic letter saying that he was sorry for being so presumptuous when I clearly had no romantic interest in him, but that he had to be honest that he was in love with me. And I was like, “What?! He was in love with me this whole time???”
So yeah, we’re married now (celebrated ten years last autumn) but if you’re ever wondering if your slow-burn fic is too slow, or that your characters are too oblivious, just remember me and my now-spouse mutually pining over each other every single second of the day for two weeks without ever saying a word to each other about how we felt. I was reading my own diary yelling, “JUST KISS HIM ALREADY!”
@staff openly tagging face selfies of trans women as sexual content after you already lost ONE lawsuit over queerphobic moderation is quite a fucking move
Train all employees (including subcontractors) on New York City Human Rights Law and unconscious bias, with a focus on sexual orientation and gender identity
Have humans review user appeals on adult content. Previously they only had humans review post-removal appeals
Revise the language used in appeal process for users
Search random sample of previously filed appeals for terms involving sexual orientation and gender identity to identify bias and retrain AI image classifier
Hire an expert in image classification to remove algorithmic bias around sexual orientation and gender identity and train employees on addressing image classification bias.
Have an image classification expert complete a evaluation on bias in moderation and steps taken to address it.
Search filed appeals after new review process in place for terms involving sexual orientation and gender identity to identify bias. Monthly reports of bias will be sent to New York City’s Commission on Human Rights for 18 months.
Would be very interested to see these reports on bias as clearly it has not worked!
