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General chat thread

Deviant Art about to do the Tumblr'ing
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Deviant Art about to do the Tumblr'ing
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If any character has ever appeared underage in a flashback, then all adult versions of that character are "aged up" and the character can never appear in 18+ content.

But the 600-year-old vampire loli can fuck all day because she's officially 600.

These rules are dumb.
 
Deviant Art about to do the Tumblr'ing
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So you're saying DeviantArt... wants to not be deviant anymore, even though it was the cornerstone of their very existence and foundation.

"We will ban stuff we allowed for a long time, without clear outlines of what those things are except that they are unpopular". Yeah, like that ever goes over well...
If any character has ever appeared underage in a flashback, then all adult versions of that character are "aged up" and the character can never appear in 18+ content.

But the 600-year-old vampire loli can fuck all day because she's officially 600.

These rules are dumb.
Technically, it could also say that you cannot present any character as being involved in sex if they were ever at any time in their lives a form of person that was not legal for sex. Meaning, if they were ever a child, ever, even if that is not presented in other works, the character is illegal to present in a sexual way, even as an adult.

And honestly, isn't making it illegal to present purely fictional beings in an "illegal" manner basically thought-crime? I mean, works involving real people can be considered for some stricter limits, but really? Purely fictional people have to follow real life's consent and age limit laws, when plenty of real life people don't*? How can you even police that?

*Note that real life people breaking those laws is something that is almost always a bad thing, or something that should be illegal for good reason, but this sort of thing does happen. And being unable to reflect on or depict stuff like that even in fiction is a massive limitation for no real benefit.
 
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Technically, it could also say that you cannot present any character as being involved in sex if they were ever at any time in their lives a form of person that was not legal for sex. Meaning, if they were ever a child, ever, even if that is not presented in other works, the character is illegal to present in a sexual way, even as an adult.

Yes, that's what I said in the first paragraph.

If there's concrete evidence that a character exists as a child -- which is not universal, common sense and rational extrapolation don't apply -- but if you can find a concrete, named or pictured character which is the child version of an adult, then you can indeed ban all 18+ content featuring that adult.

It's not a good rule.
 
And to take it one step further...

It even increases the odds of actual children being sexually abused.

Yes, you heard me.

Increases.


There's this little psychological phenomena referred to as Catharsis. Now, catharsis has occupied many theories over the years, and I'll mention the other big ones in passing to avoid confusion.


Aristotle held it as a belief that by experiencing negative events in fiction, people would be more emotionally able to handle it in real life. And... well, all pertinent data I've observed suggests he was on to something.


Psychoanalytical theory, it was believed that people could relieve stress by acting out violently while alone, in order to 'take the edge off' as it were. Screaming in an empty room, hitting a punching bag, whatever. This version of catharsis... sometimes works. Sometimes.


Modern catharsis reads as 'when you indulge a fantasy, you lower your desire to pursue the reality'. Note, and it needs to be understood, that the word 'reduce' does not mean 'eliminate'. There will always be people for whom fantasy is not enough. And there will always be those who don't even experience the fantasy in the first place.

As with all things human, it exists on a spectrum. Add 'reduces, does not eliminate' at the end of every paragraph if it helps you remember.


Now, more often than not, modern catharsis it is treated as the enemy in behavioral science, not an ally. New Years resolutions being perhaps the most frustrating variant. It runs something like this:

Step 1: Want to lose weight. Step 2: Resolve to lose weight. Step 3: fantasize about looking good for the beach. Step 4: Happy fantasy releases happy brain juice. Step 5: Contentment reduces desire, and with it motivation. Step 6: Don't put effort into actually losing weight. Step 7: Go to 1.

The entire multibillion dollar self-help industry is devoted almost exclusively to this phenomena. Either trying to overcome it by using what tricks exist to break the cycle (usually some variation on "make habits, not resolutions"), or exploiting it for personal gain at the expense of others... most of the experts are doing a bit of both...


And this phenomena very much applies to sex. At this point, internet porn has probably stopped more STD spread than condoms, and absolutely prevented more unplanned pregnancies than every sexual education class of every government on Earth combined.

... It's also led to innumerable individuals who are going to die alone because they'd rather seek out porn and other forms of satisfaction online than have actual relationships.


So. Yeah. It shouldn't be hard to see why the mental health community as a whole treats this type of catharsis as an obstacle to overcome.


It doesn't have to be. We can demonstrate that certain violent crimes dip significantly for a week or two after a particularly violent and widely publicized movie or game gets released. This is of limited utility, since even if you had the resources to put out a new blockbuster every other week for... ever... consumer fatigue would ultimately negate much of the benefit. Returns diminish fast.


But not so where porn is concerned. There lay an industry where fatigue is limited to an individual level, not a social one.

I, for one, am perfectly content with the idea of people who voluntarily create this sort of pornography service those who voluntarily consume this sort of pornography, without any need for government involvement and harming only themselves.

Which obviously means fictitious material only, and quarantined such that those of us who aren't interested can avoid it with trivial ease.


"Do nothing, and less children get molested" seems like something that every decent human being should be very much in favor of. And for that matter every lazy person.
 
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... It's also led to innumerable individuals who are going to die alone because they'd rather seek out porn and other forms of satisfaction online than have actual relationships.

I agree with your post, but I would like to point out that this line has a similar fallacy to piracy complaints (if people pirate our game we're losing money! No, they weren't ever going to pay you.)- a lot of these people, myself included, were going to wind up alone for personal or social reasons anyway, so the number actually negatively affected is lower than it looks.
 
I was wondering how long it'd take before someone glossed over this heavily emphasized part of my post:

There will always be people for whom fantasy is not enough. And there will always be those who don't even experience the fantasy in the first place.

As with all things human, it exists on a spectrum. Add 'reduces, does not eliminate' at the end of every paragraph if it helps you remember.

Because it seems inevitable that someone will. Every time.
 
"Do nothing, and less children get molested" seems like something that every decent human being should be very much in favor of. And for that matter every lazy person.

But what about the horny children who now must go without sex?

Won't somebody think of the children?

Just for THAT GUY who didn't get it, this post is sarcasm.
 
This is the same thing for Tumbler as it is for DeviantArt: legal protection. Basically, DeviantArt is covering their legal asses, or they'll get shut down.
 
This is the same thing for Tumbler as it is for DeviantArt: legal protection. Basically, DeviantArt is covering their legal asses, or they'll get shut down.
Wasn't Tumbr's decision a thing about having it get a "public offering"? I recall nothing about shutdown threats. At all. Only that they were yet another example of "use niche interests, especially adult ones, to gather users, then kick those people to make things 'family friendly' once you have enough users".

Which backfires because the niche interest people are still the main userbase.
 
It's vaguely disturbing that this is happening in 2023.

It's like the internet is getting sanitized. Or gentrified, to use the American term.
 
Wasn't Tumbr's decision a thing about having it get a "public offering"? I recall nothing about shutdown threats. At all. Only that they were yet another example of "use niche interests, especially adult ones, to gather users, then kick those people to make things 'family friendly' once you have enough users".

Which backfires because the niche interest people are still the main userbase.
From what I understand, no. The mere presence of various laws is a threat in itself, sadly enough.
People have been saying that for... at least twenty years, now.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but you're a little late to the party.
The big thing is that the 'Wild West' period has been ending in the last half-decade or so. However, my stance is that -with some benefit of hindsight, though supported mainly by MIT's Electronic Communities: World Village or Cyber Balkans- such a period shouldn't have been a thing in the first place and if this was Reddit, I would be downvoted into oblivion for just spouting.
 
I wonder how many more site owners need to go "The others were chumps, *I* can make a killing after kicking out the family unfriendly part of the userbase!" before the rests groks their sites depend on these deviants and freaks.
The big thing is that the 'Wild West' period has been ending in the last half-decade or so. However, my stance is that such a period shouldn't have been a thing in the first place and if this was Reddit, I would be downvoted into oblivion for just spouting.
You are the same guy who believes a webcomic called Genocide Man foretold the future of human civilization and complained about how it ended with "Actually, the Genocide Project was a spectacular failure by the end".
 
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From what I understand, no. The mere presence of various laws is a threat in itself, sadly enough.
The laws you mention are weird, inconsistently applied, and usually argued over even by their makers, yes, but they often favor the existence of these websites with niche material. Plus, I have never seen outright threats of shutdown for all of Reddit, or Tumblr, or most places. Sanitizing an image almost always comes down to money.
The big thing is that the 'Wild West' period has been ending in the last half-decade or so. However, my stance is that -with some benefit of hindsight, though supported mainly by MIT's Electronic Communities: World Village or Cyber Balkans- such a period shouldn't have been a thing in the first place and if this was Reddit, I would be downvoted into oblivion for just spouting.
If there is no experimentation, there is no awareness of boundaries and limits. And we need that for anything new. Some things turn out not to be sustainable, and those might go away, but to say "we never should have tried" feels kind of stupid.
 
If there is no experimentation, there is no awareness of boundaries and limits. And we need that for anything new. Some things turn out not to be sustainable, and those might go away, but to say "we never should have tried" feels kind of stupid.
... that ignores what Electronic Communities predicted (and, oddly enough, proved), though. Then again, a lot of people have better faith in humanity when it should never be warranted in the first place. All that's happening these days stems from the fact that we rather thoroughly ignored that paper.
 
Happy 9/11 day everyone!
You know, I once was listening to the radio, which made a message about remembering the people that died in the World Trade Center terrorist incident and was quite somber.

The immediate next song was "Just Like Fire" by Pink. This was jarring.

At least it wasn't "Timber" by Pitbull and Kesha.
 
You know, I once was listening to the radio, which made a message about remembering the people that died in the World Trade Center terrorist incident and was quite somber.

The immediate next song was "Just Like Fire" by Pink. This was jarring.

At least it wasn't "Timber" by Pitbull and Kesha.

Best would be "Jump" by Van Halen.
 
Hurrah! Leverkusen's at the top of the standings!

(please let this last, please don't be a normal Leverkusen season)
 
I feel my country just doesn't produce great media anymore.

All I read/watch is American or Japanese media.
 

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