cultistofvertigo

Social media is weird and a misnomer. For one, it's not actually social. In order to BE social you need to either:

1. Already know a bunch of people on the platform, which, if you're out of school is pretty near impossible

2. Grab people's attention through some unknown means of gaming the system's algorithms which is something no one really actually seems to understand how to do, and even if they do the rules keep changing, so that you basically have to get lucky.

3. Already have some sort of fame or following that causes people to pay attention to you. This can either be from getting attention via method #2 or from something outside of the internet, which is becoming increasingly rare as time moves on.

And if you can't fulfill any of those criteria, "social" media becomes extraordinarily isolating. You just end up shouting into the void and all it does is remind you of how little you mean to everyone else. You could literally drop dead timoarow and no one would even notice. It's miserable, and it's why I have no strong interest in pursuing or maintaining a presence on any of those sites, because that's just simply not where I'm going to be able to be social. There's no point.

I have recently - maybe you can tell from my recent uploads - gone on a bit of a spree and updated a lot of things. I made my twitch account look like I'm actually a streamer because I streamed one time to see if it would work. Updated my youtube banner and lil pic. I even updated twitter despite the fact that I fucking hate twitter and all it does is upset me and the only person that follows me is my sister. I've also connected them, by adding links between them on their various pages.

I did this because I was bored and it was fun to customize things and make them look cool. That's it. But in the process of doing so I've made a few observations aboot my online presence.

1. THIS is by far my most well known and well watched account on any website, and I think it's obvious why. It really seems like people by and large are more interested in me being tied up and mmphing than hour long video essays on monster lore. It's almost like the internet is collectively trying to tape my mouth shut so I'll shut up aboot Godzilla and just make the sounds they like. In which case, I really think the collective internet ought to friend me on SL cuz that may or may not be my secret weakness \o/

2. Nothing explodes, I do not seem to have the ability to "go viral." That said, I am also not incapable of producing "content" that a fair amount of people actually want to see. For context, everything I do online, I do as a personal form of expression and a record that I choose to keep myself, and everything I've shared has been because I on some level want other people to be able to access that. I like expressing myself and I like sharing. I am not good at editing or selling myself to a specific audience, and I have very little interest in ever learning to do that. This is probably why I'm not very popular, as it were. However, the views do come in, not all at once, but nearly every SL pic I've posted here has at least one favorite, and my Spider Pit video has several thousand views. And that's not nothing. It's not enough to make money off of, unfortunately, but it is kind of cool to realize that my ideas and exploits have some level of importance or value to other people. After all, if anything on this site is "for you" then it has to be the SL pics, and it just kinda feels nice knowing that something I added to the world made other people happy.

3. Consistency really is a job. I remember when people first started making money from youtube videos and I thought it was the funniest, most pathetic thing I've ever heard. Now you can get thousands of dollars just for streaming yourself putting on makeup. And, like... trust me, if I was pretty, I would be doing that. I only post things online sporadically, because I tend to do different things at different times and all that. But of course that hasn't "paid off" for me. Like for example, it takes a day or two to write a script for a youtube vide, another day to record, and then a week or so of editing depending on how much effort I put into it, and that's just looking at the days, not the hours. After I spend that much time on one project, I just kinda wanna do something else for a bit, so I don't just jump into the next one right away. Uploading pictures here takes considerably less effort, but I'll be honest, I sometimes forget this site even exists. So rather than uploading things regularly as they come, I tend to be silent for a while, and then upload a bunch of stuff in bulk all at once. Which then takes far more time out of my day than if I had just uploading things more often, which then dissuades me from uploading again for a while. I can tell that if I was more consistent with uploading, that the momentum I get would start to compound on itself, and if I devoted myself full time to either here, or youtube, or maybe even twitch, I might actually develop a following somehow. And that would be cool.

4. But of course, I don't do any of these things full time. And why would I, right? No one's paying me for any of this, I don't owe y'all anything. If I was, then you'd see consistent effort, but because I'm not, I'm not big enough to justify a patreon, which then means that I... well, it's a bit of a Catch 22, innit? But it's one I think is worth figuring out. I really don't like putting in effort and getting excited aboot something I've been working on just for it to fail spectacularly. That doesn't feel good, and if I did something like that consistently, it would absolutely destroy my will to keep doing such a thing, so it's a self-defeating prophecy. But then if I tried to mold my output in a way specifically to attract an audience, that both A. is extremely risky and likely will not please the algorithm gods, who are by definition unknowable to all human experience, and B. would no longer be something that I necessarily even want to make, thereby defeating the purpose of my even wanting to make stuff in the first place. I would be purely profit motivated. And you really can't BE profit motivated when no one knows who you are. Again, bit of a Catch 22 here.

At any rate, ultimately, my only goal with increasing my social media presence would be to make it lucrative. And not even that lucrative, just enough to live off of. Fame doesn't have much of an appeal to me and money is only useful insofar as what you can use it for, so I wouldn't be shooting for the moon if I tried to "step up my game," as it were. But then, y'know, what would I do? And then of course there's the other problem, that through the act of chasing monetization, I'm completely ignoring the reason I actually upload stuff on social media to begin with: personal expression that I choose to make public. And that shouldn't change, I don't want it to, so even assuming I had a patreon... what the hell would I even put on there? If it was exclusive content, I'm no longer uploading things for the same reason. If it was some sort of executive creative control, then it's not really personal expression anymore.

In conclusion and in summation and in closing and finally, I am at this weird crossroads where I can tell that there are people out there who have enjoyed the things I've made public, I have a personal desire to continue making things, and there is the possibility of money involved... but I don't know how to fit those pieces together, or even if they WILL fit together for me, personally. Maybe I'll try some new things and see how they go, idunno. Couldn't hurt.

But, should the time come when someday in the future you see me doing a RAID SHADOW LEGENDS ad, know that I am literally only doing it because they paid me, and it will have nothing to do with my aforementioned expression nor will it affect my opinion on the product itself, which I have no interest in at all. If that time comes, feel free to call me a sell out. Because I'd rather sell out than have to constantly ration food because I don't know what I'm going to eat timoarow.

Living for me is a nightmare, but lately it's been the fun kind, on and off. I'm thinking of elaborating on this for my first (new, I had three entries but I privated all of them because of things) post on my daily diary blog thingy, so I won't get into the details too much, but... I'm a severely broken and traumatized person. It's hard for me to say this out loud and it has taken a lot of work on myself to get to the pointe where I can admit it, but, my anxiety is completely out of control. I get scared by the stupidest things. I have been abandoned and ignored and hurt so often by so many people so badly that it has totally distorted my ability to interact with other people normally. It is absolutely crippling. I had a realization about this when my girlfriend told me, as an attempt to relate to what I go through on a nearly daily basis, that she had a panic attack once.

Once.

Ever.

In her whole life.

It fucking blew me away to even contemplate the idea of not having panic attacks as a regular fact of life and something that happens at least once every 2-3 months, and sometimes as frequent as weekly. It made me kind of appreciate just how fucked this is, how unusual and intense the shit I have to deal with is compared to normal people. And I hate it. I hate it so much. It's destroying my life.

But I'm okay, now. It's been very up and down. I've been hanging out with my bowser (not FJ, who became my owner, but the other one, Merlje, who is way more into classic DID stuff and scheming up death traps and the like) recently, not just because I don't really have a lot of friends anymore but also because I swear to god she can't keep her fucking hands off me. Seriously I'm not joking, within the past month she has kidnapped me FOUR GOD DAMNED TIMES, the fourth - and current - kidnapping she has a tighter grip on me than anyone has ever had before as I'm now a completely exclusive slave to her... guess it's like a pattern where eventually my bowsers win? This is twice now, although this is only temporary. So obviously I'm floating and giddy and living the dream I've had since I was a little girl and that's all very good.

But it comes in waves and this month has been extremely difficult for me, and the ups are so high but the downs have been so much worse. I got jealouse, which isn't really supposed to happen and it scared the hell out of me. I'm also dating a complete and absolute idiot that I can't help but have a soft spot for because he's so fun to be around and nice to me, but I get mad at him a lot. Oh, and there was another suicide attempt. And near-constant fighting with my wife who never really seems to listen to me or care about how she treats me at all. But also, a boy likes me, my bowser cackles and wants me so bad I've been kidnapped more frequently than Peach, and me and my girlfriend have been doing really well... aside from a pretty big hiccup. Oh, and the image on the header for this post? That's not just black, well I mean it is, but it's also a screenshot from SL. Oh yeah, I'm one of those chicks that actually likes being helplessly sensory deprived and just trapped that way for long periods of time. Black screens with null interactivity make me feel things. I'm weird, I know.

I'm okay though. Despite everything I've struggled and suffered through this month I'm still here, still alive, still want to be alive, etc. I'm still dealing with a lot and my anxiety is ever-present, but luckily the few friends I have left are the ones who are the most understanding. So, I've got support too.

Oh! And I'm a Princess again, too, did I mention that? It isn't the same, I don't have a sim, I don't have a place I really belong and feel safe at, I don't have subjects to come and be a good hostess to and rock their worlds without asking for it, etc. But I've got the castle, I have a King (so I get to call him Daddy, which rules), and as previously mentioned, my bowser won't fucking let me go. That's kind of a microcosm of how things have been lately. I do have what I need, and it's nice, and I'm grateful for it, but I still can't help but feel like there are still huge chunks of my life that are missing. I want my life back, and I'm trying to make that happen, it's just a matter of getting through the hard parts.

Oh, and as for the reason I've been away for so long: a guy that really had the hots for me and was messaging me lots passed a hard limit for me multiple times by being explicit about sex, which squicks me and can make me nauseous and throw up if pushed, and when I asked him to stop, he just repeated himself and then called me a stupid bitch because I didn't want to fuck him or something. And that scared me to death to the pointe where I've been afraid of this site and have been avoiding it. I'm less scared now, but... my first interaction with anyone after being back was being dismissed with a stupid meme when I tried to ask that I be addressed by my title, as if I wasn't even a real Princess, which... opened an old wound. So mostly right now I'm just fighting with depression because of it.

So idunno. I usually feel like I'm treading water trying desperately to stay above the surface, but I'm a couple inches out of it at the moment. I'll be okay maybe. Not really in the mood to upload SL stuff right now, but I do have some paintings I did ready to go, so... I'ma do that.

93/93

Princess Malyssa

It's extremely painful and I've been relapsing and struggling for months. I'm not really myself anymore and I haven't been in a while. I don't want to get to into the details here, but if I feel like talking about it later I'll write a "WHY I'm Not a Princess Anymore" journal later. What I want to express here is I'm struggling really hard and though I am still here, alive, with no plans, the version of me that felt like she was alive is currently MIA. I am trying to keep going, though. It's hard, every day is hard, and the urge to give up is really, really difficult to fight sometimes, but I'm doing it anwyas.

To make it clear, being a princess was not just some throwaway title I declared myself to be as a mere adjective. I belonged. There was a sim, Poppy's Hangout, that I adopted and hostess'd, I made it a pointe to help as many people as I could, to make them feel welcome and engage them and show them a good time. Most people in SL are introverted, shy subs, and as an extroverted switch that puts everyone else above her, I've always seen it as my responsibility to make sure others are settled before I allow myself to accept love. I hate myself more than I've ever hated anything else, because I'm trash. But at Poppy's, I was happy, I was useful, and I belonged. I had a family, a Queen, and the visitors there were happy to see me. People knew who I was. People gave a shit about who I was, and where I was.

Being a princess again, having somewhere to belong and a purpose and a use and having it actually matter when someone steals me, is something I'm trying to work towards. That's going to take finding a new sim, and that's going to take surrounding myself with better people and fighting my own self-loathing to get myself out of these self-destructive behavioral cycles that I've been stuck in my whole life. It's going to mean that I need to learn how to say no without feeling like I've done something wrong. This is, apparently, possible. I can see paths towards these ends and so I've decided not to give up, but I'm not optimistic.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, anyone who's gotten down here.

My life is an engine fueled by cynicism and love, I hate humans and I love people. I have no inherent value and the only thing that has ever mattered to me is being useful or wanted. I'm not pretty, I'm not important, I'm not worth the effort, I'm annoying, I'm a mess, I'm not stable, I'm not okay, I'm a fraud, I'm a freak, I'm trash, I don't deserve to be loved, and I know that everyone who says otherwise is lying to me to get something from me so they can just throw me away afterwards. You're welcome to tell me different, but I'm always right in the end. I'm so sick of always being right.

But... I'm still here. At least until the inevitable implosion of civilization, which, the way things are going, will probably happen before the 33rd Godzilla movie even gets greenlighted.

93/93

So I was talking to my friend about some stressful stuff that she was helping me through, and me wanting to be kinda cheeky and flirty as a little thank you, had an idea.

As a preface, this girl is the... she's the pet of one of my bowsers, but she's also the switchiest of the lot, and in my experience with her playing out her role in scenes with said bowser, the impression is very much of a "second in command" or head minion or toady or what TV Tropes called "The Dragon." Being that I'm, y'know, a princess, and I'm kinda livin' the DiD life, and I call regular tops "bowsers" (or did you notice?) it's only natural for my brain to also come up with an association for this other friend who's in on the whole thing. As far as a Mario reference is concerned, she's something like Kamek? I've also called her a "Wendy" type before.

So the idea was to see, since there plenty of racy fan arts of Peach and Bowsette switching, I figured, surely the internet is depraved enough to have done the same thing with Peach and Kamek. They haven't! Or if they have, it's very difficult for me to find. I DID however find Wendy with both Peach AND Daisy which was pretty fucking sick, but they weren't switched, and I was trying to express, essentially, "you are loved and appreciated for your friendship and support, here's me expressing affection via teasing you with switching" which was not conveyed by the piece at all. Side note: I would link that here, but the search result was off-site, so it may BE on deviant art but I don't know enough aboot the artist to confirm that. And I don't want to be a jerk and link to off-site stuff of an artist who is potentially being screwed.

So I guess my first question is:

1. Why is there no fan art of Peach switching with any of Bowser's "generals," so to speak?

But you know, look, I'm a simple girl, I like two things, monsters and bondage, but not at the same time please no thank you. So you give me search results for Peach in compromising situations and like I'm GONNA click. I have poor impulse control, fight me. So now we're looking at a whole stretch of tabs - the overwhelming majority of which are here on DA - and it's all awesome and I'm overwhelmed. I actually kind of hate DA for this exact reason: it's an ENDLESS rabbit whole. You click on one cool pic and then that artist has 100 more just as awesome, then each of those suggests at least 9 more similar pieces by other artists, and each of THEM has their own galleries of at least 100 more. It never ends. I mean I don't "hate" that there are so many talented artists here on the platform willing to share their work, I LOVE that, but the problem is, I kinda love so much of it that it makes my head spin, and before you know it I have like 4,000 fucking tabs open.

So why don't I just close those tabs? Well it's because I'm confused. I have a very poor understanding of the "favorite" system on DA. I sometimes see users with IMMENSE favorite folders many fold larger than their own galleries, and sometimes I see people with with just a few. One general trend I've noticed is that the less active or prolific or, and I'm going to use this term in a kind of shallow way but I'm only intending it to be illustrative and not diagnostic, "talented" an artist is, the more robust their favorites are. But this is not at all a consistent trend and there are many exceptions and I'm sure that there's a bias in my sampling size. I'm not stupid, I'm aware of the bias, I know the kinds of audiences a full half of my interests and the views on a lot of my SL pics attract.

In this way, it makes it hard for me to judge what kind of message favoriting a picture sends to the artist, from me. Obviously I'm assuming they're happy with it, but to what degree? Personally, when people favorite my stuff, that makes me happy that they enjoy it so much, but if there's any additional clout I'm supposed to be feeling, I'm not. I also don't much care if someone was to go through and favorite my entire gallery side from the fact that it might bury comments in my notifications, and I do like responding to those since I don't really get any outside of Bedders flirting with me. I also don't know how favorites affect my visibility. I assume it spreads my stuff around more, but to what degree? Am I building up some kind of hidden meter in the algorithm? And to that end... I'm not really here for the fame, I just like sharing my stuff if people want to see it. But I'm one person, everyone's different, and because I've never been engaged with DA as a social platform aside from very brief periods where I stuck to my own circles, I don't really know much about any of this stuff.

But I WANT to. I'd like for artists I love to know that I enjoy their work. I'm not totally present here but I figure, as long as I am, I should try to engage with people, right? When I log on to DA's front page I am BOMBARDED with the absolute most amazing art. Gorgeous speculative evolution, paleo-art, art of extant dinosaurs, cool monsters, helpless damsels, backlogged photos from my bowsy's past exploits, and on and on and on. But it's overwhelming, and I feel nervous about how much I should say or do without it becoming annoying, and what's rude, etc.

So, I'm gonna break my confusion down into a series of bespoke questions in the off chance that someone might want to try and help me navigate the social aspect of DA better:

1. Is there a limit on how many of an artist's works I should be favoriting at one time without being an annoyance in their alerts? Or are all favorites welcome? Side question: is favoriting alts weird? Or normal? Or is there no standard at all?

2. How should I be expressing gratitude towards the people who fave me? Because what I have been doing is basically, checking out their gallery, and then being too anxious to do much else, and not wanting to be a bother. I see people will comment on a profile and say "thanks for the faves!" Am I a monster for not having done that? How much attention and gratitude should I be giving these people so that they can know that I appreciate it without it being too much? My personal take is honestly I'm just happy that they like the stuff in the first place because that's the only reason it's here, for the people who want to see it, it's not FOR me.

3. How much weight does it have to be "watched?" Again with the last question, it is nice, but it personally feels like, good, it's for you, please enjoy, and less "thank you for validating me." If that makes sense. That's my personal view on it, I guess. Should I be watching all these people back? Are we doing the old school youtube thing with the sub for sub stuff here? Cuz if y'all want me to sub I'll sub xD

4. ...what the fuck is with the llamas? No seriously, what does that mean? What is that? Where is that? Who is that? Why is that? I am COMPLETELY lost on the subject of llamas and about the only thing I know about them is that winamp really whips their asses.

5. Is it whiplash to like a bunch of monster/dino/cool stuff in a row, then a bunch of bondagey stuff? Should I pace that better? Should I integrate them more regularly? What kind of message am I sending to people with that stuff? Should I just make separate folders so people can compartmentalize that stuff and don't experience whiplash at all? Can I still just not categorize things? Because to be honest, I kinda like that you can look at my favorites and it's this kind of mixed up vision board of the whole of my personality and interests. I'm weird I know, but I'm proud of my weirdness and I wear it on my sleeve. Also the thought of someone someone knowing me from CKC stuff seeing my gallery is mostly me tied up in SL or someone who looks at my favorites cuz they see trussed up Peach starting at a wall of freaky monsters just makes me giggle so much.

In closing and in summation and in conclusion, I'm really not sure what's kosher in this system. So, if I accidentally do something rude or unusual on this platform, I'm very soary, and please tell me so I can make people feel more appreciated in the future.

Thanks in advance,

93/93

Princess Maly~♥