Of Thots & Thirsty Boys

I like to follow the tech news, for obvious reasons, and I have a morbid fascination with poking around weird internet subcultures—but I don't use social media at all. On the other hand, I know that most of the rest of youse mob are on social media, but probably don't follow the tech press all that closely, or hunt around in obscure speciality forums and the like. This leaves me in a situation where I don't know how much youse fellas know about the stuff I know about, so I'm constantly worried about either over-explaining painfully obvious things, or under-explaining completely alien things. If anyone has any ideas on how this can be addressed, please speak up. In the meantime, I thought I'd take some inspiration from Squib's comment about having seen a doco on Tinder, and write a post about something that's been kind of topical in the ASMR community recently.

A few years ago now, before this blog existed, I was chatting with Melba about a popular YouTuber who went by the name of "Nixie Pixel". Her shtick could basically be summed up as "tech tips + tits". Think of her as the Nigella Lawson of technology. At the time, she was getting a lot of hate, primarily from other women in the tech community, who felt like she was making life harder for them. While they were jumping up and down about people leaving vulgar comments on their videos and blog posts, Nixie would respond to somebody saying "Hey nice tits" with something along the lines of "Thank you, that's so sweet. Don't forget you can go to my merch store and buy a Nixie t-shirt, coffee mug, or calendar—all of which have pictures of my tits on them". At the time, I had conflicting feelings on the matter, being able to see things from both sides. I can remember Melba saying to me something along the lines of, "The ugly side of feminism is when women use a greater-good rationale as a way to control each other".

Fast forward to today, and prepare to enter the world of …

PROFESSIONAL THOTTERY

If you're not familiar with the term, THOT apparently started as an acronym for "That Ho Over There"; "Ho" being an American ebonic shortening of the word "whore". To understand the thot phenomenon, one also has to understand the concept of the "thirsty boy", also sometimes referred to as the "thirsty man"; and I think the best way to cover these two concepts in tandem is with a hypothetical scenario (all names, including names of websites are fictitious):

GameStream is a website where video game enthusiasts come to watch other video game enthusiasts stream live video of themselves playing video games. The general idea is that the more skilled a player is, the larger the audience they will attract—thereby moving them up the site's rankings and allowing them to earn money through sponsorships and the like. That's the theory anyway.

Emily is currently ranked 13th on GameStream, has a regular audience of 800K, and is able to make a living from streaming for two hours on most night. It's no secret, however, that Emily isn't very good at playing video games. On the other hand, Emily is young, pretty, energetic, and usually wears a pair of bike shorts and a bikini top while streaming. Emily is a thot.

Brian is a video game enthusiast. He isn't particularly skilled at playing them, but they provide him with some much-appreciated escapism. See, what Brian really craves is female attention; but he has no idea how to go about getting it, other than by paying for it outright. Every evening Brian watches Emily stream, and every evening he transfers $5 into her electronic tip jar. At the end of the evening, Emily reads out the names of all the viewers who tipped her $5 or more, before waving and blowing them a kiss goodnight. Brian is a thirsty boy.

In the past, I've talked about free-speech extremists, conspiracy nuts, and people who use ethnic slurs being kicked off Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and recently even being denied financial services. What I haven't talked about is the thot purge that's been going on as well. In the last twelve months or so, there's been a concerted effort to force thottery off of mainstream websites and onto places like PornHub where it apparently belongs. From what I can see, this has largely been a movement of conservative "think of the children" types; people who are upset about thots out-competing them in their chosen field of entertainment; and women who find that operating in the same space as thots makes it harder to convince people to take them seriously.

ASMR thottery is rife on YouTube. There are plenty of "whispering tits" channels out there that barely even try to hide the fact that their output is pure masturbation fodder. However, drawing a definitive line between who is and isn't a thot isn't a simple task. To start with, there are some ASMR thots who produce content that is legitimately good for falling asleep to (even I listen to a couple); there are regular ASMRtists who dip their toe into thottery from time to time; there are girls who've started out regular and devolved into thottery; and then there's those who started out as thots before going completely legit. As you might imagine, what this has led to is a witch-hunt type atmosphere, where everybody making a living from ASMR is covering up, and afraid to do anything that might be construed as suggestive, lest somebody point and cry "thot", and put their entire livelihood at risk.

I'm interested to know what youse all think of the subject. About thots and thirsty boys in general, or about the purge specifically. Also, if you were younger, do you reckon you could've been tempted to give thottery a go? It seems like a fairly easy way to make a few quid. Given what I was like in my early twenties, I can't honestly rule out the possibility.

At this point …

… I should probably just put up a permanent link to Noel Plum's YouTube channel.

New Gender Equality Report: What Does it REALLY Show?

The Heat Is On

QLD made it through to the grand final. Complete ripper of a game that went down to the last ball and ended with an absolutely heart-stopping conclusion. Niblings went ape-shit.

Then the second semi-final was so tight it had to be decided with a tie-breaker. Unfortunately, The Heat now have to win a final against an opponent which has dominated the competition since its inception. Can they do it? Probably not. But we shall see, I suppose.

Phew, what a day.

Desperate Measures?

I was reading an article the other day that was talking about steps that could be taken to mitigate climate change, the impact each step could be expected to have, and the likelihood of them actually being achievable. It was pretty grim stuff.

There was the usual stuff about renewable energy and going vegan, etc; but interestingly, according to the article, the one theoretical step we could take to impact climate change, which absolutely ECLIPSES all of the others COMBINED, is to reduce the global population.

This reminded me of something I heard on a podcast a few weeks ago. That fertility rates around the world are either in decline, or expected to go into decline in the not-too-distant future. Thus, without immigration—and procreation incentive schemes, like China now has—the populations of most nations would already naturally be decreasing. Unfortunately, the global population is still expected to rise by a couple of billion over the next century. Apparently, almost all of that growth is projected to come out of the African continent.

So, putting these two pieces of information together—and assuming they're both actually correct—it would appear that our best shot at reigning in climate change, would be to incentivise some sort of population control in Africa. Something which might actually be feasible, considering how dependent Africa is on foreign aid.

If somebody as dumb as I am can put two and two together, I have to imagine that people a lot smarter than me have come to the same conclusion. I can therefore only assume that either the information ISN'T correct, or that the reason nobody in a position of authority has suggested this approach, is because they're afraid of being labelled racist. Of course, a third option is that our economic structures require continued population growth in order to remain viable, and nobody wants to risk upsetting that apple cart, even if it means we all fry in the end anyway.

Which then begs the question, how serious is climate change, and if it really is the worst danger the human race has ever faced, are these the sorts of things we SHOULD be talking about?

So, Watta yiz mob bin upta, ay?

FORMERLY PINNED POST
Ask questions or go nuts talking about anythin' ya want.

School Holidays

I haven't posted anything since new year's, so I guess it's about time for an update.

I've scaled back on work a bit, in order to spend some time with the family. Been back and forth between my place and the brothers' numerous times. Spent Christmas day on my own. The brothers were with their respective in-laws, and my folks will be down in a week or so, so we will have our own Christmas then.

I've had my favourite niece all to myself for a number of small stretches over the school holidays. It's not that she doesn't get on with the other niblings, but … well … she is the youngest, and she can be a bit full-on, so in general, it's best for everybody's sanity if they can have a break from "The Terra" every now and then.

Coming from a family of sports nuts, it's been nearly all cricket all the time. We spend every afternoon playing at the park, and every evening watching the women's games, which I've been pulling off the internet. Adding to the excitement is the fact that the Brisbane Heat have actually made the finals this year, thanks in no small part to the efforts of one "Gwacey Hawwis", who has well and truly established herself as the flavour of the month around here. Even I have to admire how far she's come. Last season, she was an overweight and generally unremarkable player; but this year, she's sporting a magnificently sculpted physique, and established herself as a deciding force with the bat, the ball, and out in the field. Oh, and she's been dabbling in commentary too, which has had bugalugs here in stitches of laughter, since it turns out Gracey is the yobboist yobbo who ever yobbed her way out of Yobtown. It's funny how the voice of your own people can sound so alien when you hear it coming through the telly.

ASIDE: Remember when I said that women's cricket would probably be better off—from a marketing perspective—promoting the players rather than the quality of the game (since that immediately draws comparisons to the men's game, which is fully professional and, well, played by men). This year, they've actually started to do that, which has been pleasantly surprising. And one of the things they've (very tentatively) touched on is how gay the sport is. Now, for anyone who follows any sort of women's sport, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but it turns out that (at least) three out of the eight teams have married couples playing on them. In fact, the previously mentioned hero of our household, Grace Harris, plays on a team with both her sister, and her sister-in-law. Now, there's an angle you can milk if you want to humanise your athletes.

Oh, and it turns out, two out of three of my favourite international players—also a married couple! You could have knocked me over with a feather. Not only did I not know either of them were lesbians, I thought one of them was a hard-line bible-thumper. The things you learn, eh?

Apart from cricket, we've also managed to squeeze in some cartoons (but they might get their own post) and done a little bit of drawing. And yes, I've even managed to get some work done in the mornings. The trick is to tire the little bugger out enough that she sleeps in. I'd ask youse fellas what you've been up to, but at this point, I think I'm pretty well caught up.

Anyway, here's hoping that 2019 doesn't get really shitty. 2018, I'm looking at you.

Some things never change, eh?

Hopefully this one does at some point.