Something I was thinking about when I watched the final moments of the most recent EFAP was Mauler’s observation that the internet content creator landscape used to be different when AVGN clones ruled Youtube and his question of how that shifted into video essayists and commentary channels. I thought about that for a while and I thought of some reasons why the landscape changed that I would like to share.
Managers
Something that people might not be aware of is how many Youtubers have people managing their content in the form of things like setting up brand deals and other services that I am not familiar with. Some of them are very public about what they do, some of them are more private. The important thing is how managers worked in the past.
One thing that I liked about Machinima, ScrewAttack, and Channel Awesome that the creators probably didn’t like is that they forced the older creators to stick to a set schedule of uploads and some of them forced creators to follow a set formula. This meant that the manager would make sure that if a creator uploaded a video every Friday at 2pm, they would have an upload every single Friday at 2pm.
How would this work if the creator wanted to take a week off? Well, the creator would have to have a video to upload in advance. What if the creator wanted to spend 3 weeks on a super-duper big video? Well, they could absolutely do that, but it would be a passion project and they’d still have to follow the set schedule for regular uploads.
This created a content landscape that I actually enjoyed a lot as a consumer because it’s probably the way it should be for reviewers. Every week, or every day in rare cases, a movie reviewer would need to review a different movie, which meant that a reviewer might have to force themselves to sit through a movie they don’t want to see like Fifty Shades Of Grey to give it a chance to subvert their expectations and earn a glowing review, or dig deep to find a new indie movie to review to fill that quota if they really didn’t want to sit through Fifty Shades Of Grey.
The promise of Patreon and creators becoming more independent was that creators would exclusively make videos on topics they wanted to do, but I personally think that was the wrong way to go. I’ve maintained a position that I prefer it when content creators are encouraged, or even forced, to talk about things that they don’t want to talk about because oftentimes that’s when reviewers are most interesting. Some of my favorite Roger Ebert reviews were when he reviewed a children’s movie like Space Jam or Pokemon: The First Movie, and some of my favorite Zero Punctuation reviews are when he has to pick out a random indie game and commit to reviewing it regardless of what the indie game turned out to be, like when he reviewed Hell Pie.
What I think has happened is that the lack of managers has encouraged content creators to upload whatever they want, whenever they want, which has usually translated to videos about ‘easy’ topics, like videos about Disney movies, being uploaded weeks, or even months, apart, which has made the content creation landscape, at least for reviewers, a lot less interesting, and a lot less engaging.
It’s actually one of the reasons why EFAP has been losing my interest lately, because although they upload a stream every week the topics they choose are generally ‘easy’ topics because I genuinely think the hosts don’t have the ability to make an EFAP on something more obscure, or even just ‘difficult’ like Baby Reindeer, very interesting, or they just won’t do streams on those topics because, as Rags said: “This is our show, and we can do whatever the fuck we want.”
Honestly, my hot take is that I liked you better when you couldn’t do whatever the fuck you wanted all of the time. In fact, one of my favorite Rags moments on EFAP was when he clearly didn’t want to be involved with the debate with Twin Perfect.
Sponsors
I remember the Adpocalypse and how Youtubers transitioned to sponsors over relying heavily on ad-revenue. What that event transpired into is that audiences were far more accepting of basically any form of making money that Youtubers would use. Patreon became a very dominant part of Youtube, but sponsors also became extremely common and audiences would even cheer in the comment sections when creators would have their first Raid: Shadow Legends sponsorship.
Sponsors are what I want to talk about because I have seen Youtubers show that they have a bunch of videos on their computer that they simply aren’t releasing to the public because they don’t want to upload a single video without a sponsor on their main channel, as well as Youtubers having a second channel where they upload ‘slop’ content without sponsors that most of their audience is usually unaware of or isn’t interested in.
The problem is that the appeal for pretty much all content on Youtube is the personalities of the people creating the content, which is less about the actual personalities and more like “That’s an actual person doing what they actually want to do, that’s so cool,” but that is usually undercut by the presence of sponsors. The fact that Youtubers will sit on a video they made and not upload it unless they can get a sponsor to pay for it always seemed strange to me, especially for Youtubers where the image they present is “I’m just a normal, chill guy who makes Youtube videos for fun,” which needs the caveat of “Uhhhh, I’m actually really poor and if I don’t take this BetterHelp sponsor I can’t afford my rent this month. Please understand, I’m barely making any money on Youtube,” when a sponsor is included in the video.
As weird as this sounds, there are communities of creatives online that don’t expect to ever make any money putting hours, days, weeks, months, and years of work into a project. There are modding communities, bloggers, game developers, fanfiction writers, and artists that only want comments saying “You did a good job,” and Youtubers used to be that way, or they used to present themselves that way before sponsors became as common as they are now.
I don’t say this often enough, but I remember when Youtubers would make videos about not just random pictures on Deviantart, but on fanfictions and pornographic videos. They’d do those videos for things like clout, which is something that I don’t see too often on Youtube.
People might say that there are a bunch of Youtubers that talk about obscure media and Youtubers that make things without any expectation of earning money, which I say “Well, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about,” and then I’d point to things like AVGN’s Atari Porn video, and old videos where commentary Youtubers would branch out from their niche to say “Hey, just for fun, we’re going to check out this weird fanfiction story,” or how Yahtzee would include fun projects he created at the end of his Zero Punctuation videos, like how he’d dub over scenes in video games like Half-Life and Painkiller, or how he made a slideshow with Garry’s Mod that depicted a love story between Heavy and Medic.
What I’m saying is that a large part of what made Youtube fun was that not every video from an established creator with 100k subscribers needed to be monetized, or even created with the expectation of being successful or well-received by the community. There was a time when the expectations people had for, say, Jim Sterling was for a high-quality Jimquisition video to be produced and uploaded to the main channel once a week, and for the other days to feature a minimally-edited video where he showed himself trying out a game or reacting to a trailer on his main channel.
In the past I said that I would like it if EFAP would talk about comments and read fanfictions on-stream and I was mocked for it, but I stand by that statement because, although EFAP clearly doesn’t want to do it regularly, when they do read comments on-stream it tends to result in some of the best content because it showcases a side to them that I like. Instead of being totally normal dudes talking to each other about a movie they saw or reacting to a video, they have to use text-to-speech or read the comment using a silly voice or, well, use just a little bit of creativity when reading those comments out-loud.
What I’m kinda saying is that, yes, I think we all like professionally-produced content, and we all accept that sponsors for videos are necessary. But, like, I don’t like how for most successful Youtubers only the monetizable content, often with sponsors, is presented on the main channel, while the other content doesn’t exist, is uploaded to a secondary channel, or is locked behind some kind of paywall.
It just feels strange that these normal, chill, relatable people have gotten themselves into a position where they can earn real money, in some cases a lot of money, to stand in front of a webcam for 10 minutes talking about their favorite movies, chat with a group of friends, or even just play their favorite video game, and in quite a few cases they won’t do any of those things unless there’s a way to monetize it. Imagine how it looks to say “Well, I can’t talk about this cool fanfiction story I read on my main channel to my audience that enjoys my content about that franchise because I can’t get a sponsor for it.”
I wonder if Rags, a regular host of EFAP, appreciates the irony of him criticizing Chris Stuckmann for advocating that filmmakers “Get as much time and money as possible to make their films in the ideal circumstances and for the process to be easy,” when he’s in the position that he’s in where, on EFAP, he has as much freedom as he wants in the ideal circumstances to make money with EFAP, and it’s easy, yet he still will complain if he’s asked to step out of his comfort zone, even a little bit, on stream.
Insecurity
A while ago I had a theory about Cancel Culture which was that usually Cancel Culture is incredibly exaggerated by the audience of the people being canceled, and that most of the people being canceled are perfectly fine. The go-to example is the poor lady who made a joke about AIDS before going to Africa that got off the flight and got fired from her job due to her joke going viral. What people often don’t mention is that she got fired because it’s a terrible look for the company’s PR person to be involved with such a massive PR disaster, and that she got hired at another company a very short time later. Plus, like, she made a racist joke and people were calling her a racist, it wasn’t like she was targeted for absolutely no reason.
My theory is that people think that Cancel Culture absolutely ruins the lives of celebrities and influencers online because of their intense reactions to being canceled. An early example being Seth Macfarlane, who was mocked for his poorly-received hosting of the Oscars and who seemed incredibly bitter about it, making Cancel Culture a plot point in multiple episodes of Family Guy, talking about how bitter he was about it in interviews for years, and even apparently getting emotional support from his friends and family after the ordeal, even going as far as to ask celebrities to say “I liked what he did and I thought he was hilarious, and very handsome.”
What I’m saying is that I think that in the early days of content creation on Youtube the people making videos were more willing to appear on camera and embarrass themselves, like with Spoony screaming at a big gaming event on camera, because even though they were aware of Cancel Culture being a thing they weren’t going to be reduced to tears by someone saying “You’re totally cringe and annoying,” and even went as far as to incorporate those kinds of comments into their video because it was extremely easy content to create. You probably know what I’m talking about, where a creator would read out “This content creator is SOOOOOOO CRINGE,” in a video in a silly voice which you can’t really do as easily with “OMG, I love your content,” and make it entertaining.
That’s changed a lot today with content creators seeming to project an extreme amount of insecurity in every video they’re a part of, which gets even worse in formats like podcasts. It feels like every commentary creator is a chill dude that isn’t offended by anything and only wants to have a good time talking about things they like because, well, that’s what they need to be to avoid being criticized too severely, but they constantly allude to being a very immature and thin-skinned person that is mainly concerned about earning money, to the point where they’ll say “I’m not even having fun producing content at all.”
In college I remember one of my professors saying: “When you were high school kids you were insecure and weren’t confident in your abilities enough to volunteer when you were asked. You’re adults now, and when you graduate you can’t do that at a real job. Part of growing up is being confident in yourself, and if you don’t want to do that, you can always work in fast food where you never need to grow up, while the other adults in your friend group are becoming doctors and construction workers.”
It’s something that I realized with Youtubers which is that a decent amount of them started their careers young and never had to ‘grow up’ the way that my professor said that we needed to. Even with millions of subscribers you still see a lot of Youtubers struggle to commit to any statement they make, and I hear “I’m just a dumb Youtuber who doesn’t know anything and is stupid and socially-awkward and is fat and smells bad,” too many times from rich and successful people.
The thing is, when you’re a teenager, or you’re in your 20s, that insecurity is charming and relatable because you're trying to find a place in the world and discovering the role that you will fill in society. But, when you’re 30 and your role is “I tell people about the latest internet drama and make references to Spongebob,” or “I talk about Star Wars for hours at a time,” even if you make $2 million every day there’s likely a part of you that says: “I don’t like who I am. I don’t like what I do for a living. Yes, I’m rich, but I don’t like why I’m rich, and I don’t like my audience.”
I think that this insecurity leads to people trying to make their content more ‘mature’, but the way they do it isn’t by presenting themselves as a more confident person, or by making a clear separation between the personality in their content and their actual personality so that they can have a good work/life balance, it’s by creating the same content with very superficially mature elements. So, you end up with the video essayists of the past that gained fame by describing the events of a movie and then giving their opinion on whether they liked or disliked it doing the same thing but with quotes from smart people, like Socrates, and making conclusions like “Some people are gonna like this movie, some people are going to hate it. The important thing is that everyone involved with this movie tried really hard and had fun.”
The thing is, teenagers and 20-year-olds get value from a relatable person that comes across as an insecure loser who is too afraid to take a proper stance on anything to commit to a statement. When someone is actually mature they find more value in someone who is willing to do a good job and defend the job that they did, even if they’re like Neil Breen who thinks they did a good job but clearly did a terrible job. A 20-year-old might declare that Twin Perfect’s debate with EFAP wasn’t embarrassing because he was just being himself or something, but a 40-year-old might not tell Twin Perfect that the debate was embarrassing, but they would no longer respect him, and I imagine a lot of 40-year-olds don’t respect a lot of Youtube video essayists because of how eager they seem to be to engage in self-deprecation.
Conclusion
Despite everything that I’ve said, I do think that the content landscape on Youtube is generally ‘better’ than it was in, say, 2010. We weren’t getting a 4+ hour video by The Little Platoon about Rebel Moon, for instance, in 2010.
What I would compare modern Youtube and classic Youtube to is the 1970s movie scene vs. the 1980s movie scene, which Quentin Tarantino has labeled as “The worst period in movie history,” which the EFAP crew have pushed back on.
The thing is, in the early 80s we got Blade Runner, in the same way that nowadays we got the 4+ hour Little Platoon video, but the theatrical release of that film was famously sabotaged by the company that wanted Harrison Ford to provide voiceovers for the film that ‘ruined’ it, or at least, ruined the ending of the movie.
Throughout the 80s films were made which satisfied audiences more than films from the 70s did because Spielberg was producing hugely successful films that are still highly regarded, but there was also a bunch of shady practices going on and a bunch of notoriously poor studio decisions made in order to appeal to a wide demographic, such as the fiasco with Supergirl and Masters Of The Universe, or changing the ending of Brazil.
In the 1970s we not only got more challenging films, but there was also a thriving independent cinema scene that gave us Death Race 2000, Eraserhead, THX-1138, and Duel. There was also Jaws, Star Wars, and A Clockwork Orange, which were big-budget movies that took serious creative risks that paid off immensely which just wouldn’t happen in the 1980s, or would happen very rarely.
I think that I do prefer Youtube back in, say, 2015-2017 when it seemed like we generally got the best of both worlds, challenging content about a diverse range of subjects with production values comparable to what we have now.
To close this, I would like to include a paraphrased interaction I saw on a podcast featuring a pretty big Youtuber that I think illustrates why Youtube has changed in the way that it has.
Youtuber: Look, I don’t need to work as hard on my videos now because not every video needs to be an event. I just want to take it easy now, pump out a video whenever I feel like it, get paid by the sponsors, and then spend time with my family, is that so wrong?
Host: It kind of is. I know your audience of teenagers will be like “He just wants to spend time with his family, dude, have a heart,” but a lot of Youtubers, especially younger Youtubers look up to you for inspiration. If you’re in that position and your attitude is “I’m going to half-ass every video that I make from now on and if anyone calls my content lazy I’ll use my 8-year-old daughter as a shield against criticism,” that’s the attitude that a lot of young Youtubers are going to have. They’re going to half-ass their content and when criticized, they’re going to find their own excuse, like “I have a kid now,” or “I have to eat,” or something.
Youtuber: That’s not my fault, though. I never asked to be a role model.
Host: That’s not how that works. You don’t get to decide whether or not people look up to you, have expectations of you, and emulate your approach to content creation. You only release 2-3 videos a year, and with your status every video should be a major event, but instead every video is half-assed, as you admitted, and then you use your daughter as an excuse for why you don’t put as much effort into your content as you used to. I think you need to have someone in your life, like a friend, that actually makes you feel some shame for your content and encourages you to do better, rather than your social circle being composed of supportive people like your family and the people who pay you through Patreon.
Host 2: He did have that. He fired him two years ago, remember?
Host: Oh, yeah, you fired your friend, or made him quit, whatever the story was. Did that not make you feel bad at all?
Youtuber: Friendships end, that’s just life.
Host: That’s the attitude that I hate that comes across in your content. You can’t just brush aside everything and bumble through life, except if you’re an internet personality, apparently.
Host 2: It worked for the MCU.
Host: It’s not working for the MCU anymore, though, and it isn’t working as well for this Youtuber. It’s probably going to get worse and when he decides to do more work and make better videos, like he used to do, it’s probably going to be too late, or he’ll need to make really good videos to get the views he once did.
Youtuber: My videos are really good, though.
Host: You admitted to half-assing them.

She was Pennsylvania Dutch -- its probably something her parents said? We have never been able to figure it out, but it was used like "damn that sucks", or maybe even a replacement for "son of a bitch" (in the bad-luck kinda sense) maybe even a replacement for "aw shit!"
but she was a cute tiny old lady who would never EVER swear ... but she sure said this a lot instead!
it sounds exactly like "Jam-ick-uh-bit-uh" ... where bit-uh definitely sounds like one word. I know "bitte" is "please" in german ... but thats the best I've ever found?
Cheers!

Paramount: Deal Rumors Aside, What About The Operations? Can The Company Turn A Profit?
May 21, 2024 2:41 PM ET
Summary
Paramount Global remains my worst investment, but I still believe in its potential for success.
Paramount's "lack of scale" is not the reason for its underperformance as it spends about as much on content as industry leader Netflix.
Paramount's loss last year was largely the result of one-off writedowns, both domestically and internationally. These losses will not repeat going forward.
Paramount's streaming operation suffers not from lack of scale, but an abundance of overload waste, which may be alleviated under new management.
The sports slate remains best-in-class, and CBS is still the leader in broadcast scripted. CBS Television City in Los Angeles, Ca, USA. JHVEPhoto/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Paramount Global (NASDAQ:PARA) (NASDAQ:PARAA) remains my worst investment. Let's just get that clear from the start. I said two years ago it was madness not to buy Paramount. That was wrong, wrong, wrong. The fact that I recommended against buying the new Warner Discovery at the same time, and heeding that warning saved a lot of money, makes me feel a little better, but not much.
And no, the fact that Warren Buffett made the exact same mistake as me doesn't help much, either. Mr. Buffett and I are about to part ways, anyway. He is now completely sold out of Paramount, while I am hanging in. Yes, I am still buying. Get all the ribbing out of your systems, and then read on.
Although a few rounds remain to be played in the game, it is no longer inconceivable that none of the various deal permutations that have been put forward for Paramount will pan out, and that it will continue as an independent company. Essentially, Redstone will block a deal with Apollo Global Management, Inc. (APO) and Sony Group Corporation (SONY) and the 'B' shareholders will litigate a Skydance deal to death.
Because so many Seeking Alpha articles are already offering a blow-by-blow analysis of the deal talks - and I absolutely encourage you to read them - I wanted to turn back for just a minute to a more in-depth look at Paramount's actual operations. If it stays independent, can it turn itself around?
Scale Is Not The Issue I'm angry. Usually, when an investment goes wrong, I can manage to be philosophical or even dispassionate about it. Risks of the trade, can't win 'em all, pick your maxim.
But this one is really getting to me. I'm sure part of that is simply the sheer amount of my portfolio that has suffered - I bet a lot more on Paramount than I did on my typical investment, so sure was I that it had the tools needed for success. Fortunately, some of my other media investments have worked out much, much better, or I'd really be hurting. In fact, my Netflix buy has repaired all the damage my Paramount buy has done.
Still, I'm unusually angry, partly because of the sheer amount lost. But it's also that I still don't believe there is anything wrong with Paramount, at its core. It has become quite commonplace to speak of Paramount's "lack of scale" as the reason for its apparent impending demise, or at least subsumption. But I would still argue that that isn't born out by the numbers. Paramount spent roughly $16 billion on content in 2023, the same total as 2022, when $4 billion of it was spent on streaming. That is only slightly less than Netflix, Inc. (NFLX) which leads the industry in market cap and performance, if not in spending. While the gap with other studio peers is larger, I'm not sure spending at Netflix levels equals a "lack of scale."
What's more, a lot of that extra spending by other traditional industry players like Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD) and The Walt Disney Company (DIS) is not spending that investors should necessarily cheer. As I've explained before, Paramount's lower spending total is almost entirely accounted for by its far more profitable approach to sports rights; a lot of that extra spending that Disney and Warner are doing isn't particularly profitable or even sensible.
What then, does account for Paramount's underperformance?
Stock Performance That depends on which underperformance you're talking about. First, the stock price. Paramount cut its dividend in spring 2023. That announcement, with its Q1 earnings, was enough to cause half of the past-year decline in a single day. Paramount went from $21 to $16 with the dividend cut and was still at $16 as late as December.
Since then, the other half of the decline has reflected the increasing evidence that Paramount is more or less ready to throw in the towel, and intends to be a distressed seller to another studio or private equity firm soon. More specifically, it is actually Shari Redstone, who exercises control over Paramount through her 77.3% share of Paramount's Class A voting stock, who is ready to call it quits. The perception that she has no leverage and will be forced to accept a fire sale offer has driven the stock lower.
Operations All that, however, merely explains the stock market decline; what is the operational explanation for Paramount's troubles? The company reported a $600 million loss for full year 2023. How is it that one of the Big Five movie studios, with the most popular of the Big Four broadcast networks, the most popular show on cable (Yellowstone) and the only profitable sports slate in American television, can't make money?
Accounting Element First, we need to acknowledge that there are some accounting factors in that 2023 loss. Paramount took a "programming charge," i.e., a write-down of the value of programming assets, of roughly $2.4 billion in Q1 and Q2 last year. That is money that would ordinarily be amortized over a period of years - it's mostly streaming originals, which Paramount usually amortizes over a 4-year period - that instead saw its red ink taken all at once. Had it been amortized normally, Paramount would have reported an operating profit of roughly $1.2 billion, more or less identical to 2022, instead of reporting an operating loss of the same amount.
Still, that write-down reflects the fact that the content isn't performing well, so those losses were always going to happen, and they're quite real; the accounting change is simply a timing issue. So Paramount is operationally deficient, even if perhaps not quite as operationally deficient as this one-time write-down makes it look. We cannot dismiss Paramount's operational issues by putting them down to accounting distortions.
TV Scripted Content Difficulties Paramount did not break down the programming charge, but outside reports have about half of it owing to the integration of Showtime in Paramount+ as a single service. It's not entirely clear which side of the ledger those losses are coming from; one of the less understood things about merging services is that it potentially makes content on both sides less valuable as it is replaced by more popular content from the other side. Showtime's Q1 2023 viewership was very top-heavy, with just two shows, Yellowjackets and Your Honor constituting 30% of all viewership. Presumably, those two shows reduced the value of some Paramount+ existing content while the rest of Showtime's library may have suffered from competition with P+ content.
Regardless of the exact source, Paramount's content is not performing. That's a little surprising considering that, as I said, CBS content is actually quite popular on the linear side. In fact, in the earnings call following the annual report now-former CEO Bob Bakish reported that CBS had the top 16 scripted programs and 18 of the top 20 in the first week of post-strike broadcasts. Paramount has disclosed in the past that CBS content makes up roughly half of the viewership on Paramount+; and this is despite the fact that P+ isn't even the sole beneficiary of CBS content; roughly $600 million per quarter of Paramount's licensing revenue comes from CBS shows as well.
One possibility that I perhaps did not consider sufficiently was the chance that the unique characteristics of CBS would make it harder for that channel to transition to streaming than its other broadcast peers. CBS is the most popular of all broadcast networks, but that popularity owes disproportionately to more elderly viewers; in the demo, it is actually Comcast Corporation's (CMCSA) NBC which takes the top crown.
With elderly viewers both less appealing to advertisers and less likely to make the transition to streaming, it is perhaps not so surprising that CBS is continuing to perform well on linear but having trouble translating that to streaming.
International Shortfall The damage isn't through yet, either. Paramount disclosed that it took another $1.2 billion impairment charge on content in the first quarter. This one has to do with the international side; a few years ago Paramount commissioned 150 new, original international shows and movies to try to boost international growth. Now, Paramount reveals that even international consumers spend no less than 90% of their time streaming Hollywood content; the local originals aren't doing very much for growth or retention.
About the only good thing that can be said about this complete and utter debacle is that it is a one-off; unlike Paramount's US content spending, which is ongoing and therefore must be made more efficient if Paramount is to survive and thrive, Paramount is gradually exiting International production. In fact, to help cover the losses on its international originals it is selling its share in Viacom18, the network that formerly served as Paramount's onshore operation in India, to its partner Reliance for a little over $500 million.
Where Are The Children? Yet another factor is children's programming. While many have essentially written off Paramount's entire cable channel group, and I agree the prognosis for MTV and Comedy Central is rather grim, I have argued that Nickelodeon remains a real asset, as one of the top two children's channels in linear TV. I believed that would be a powerful subscriber acquisition tool, alongside sports, as the streaming transition continued.
It hasn't worked out. Surveys consistently show the Big 3 for parents with children are Netflix, Disney, and the third is Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) of all things. Neither Paramount+ nor Warner Discovery's Max make the cut, despite ownership of top children's linear platforms/libraries Nickelodeon and Looney Tunes, respectively.
The prognosis here isn't entirely grim. Paramount has reported that half of their streaming subscribers touch kids' content regularly, so clearly Nickelodeon does mean something to the subscribers. It's possible it helps with retention, even if it doesn't drive acquisition. Paramount owns the number one brand for pre-school kids, Paw Patrol.
Paramount has shut down the separate Noggin streaming service and will presumably be amplifying the kids content on P+ as a result, so perhaps this trend will yet turn around. With so many other things going wrong, though, the inability to make kids content more central to the strategy is a painful blow.
The Mismanagement Of Streaming I suspect, however, that Paramount's single biggest defect over the past few years has been the competency of its management. In a streaming world, success hinges overwhelmingly on the efficiency with which a content budget is deployed. That efficiency, in turn, requires avoiding the trap of "overload," something cable doesn't have to worry about but which can kill a streaming service.
What Is Overload? In brief, overload is when a streaming service spends money on content that appeals primarily to those subscribers who were already subscribed and intending to remain subscribed, even without that content. Because revenue does not increase with more viewership, such spending is essentially wasted money. I have been arguing for several years that some economic models of streaming profitability fail to take account of this significant element.
Paramount seems to have had a lot of overload in the last few years. Specifically, its single most broadly appealing piece of content is the NFL, which Paramount is an anchor broadcaster for. Because NFL fans are accustomed to spending upwards of $100 a month on cable just to watch the NFL - over 10% of cable subscribers say that the NFL is the only reason they're still subscribing - Paramount's $6-$12 a month fee for streaming really doesn't need anything more than NFL games to attract these 40-50 million fans.
The Earnings Jaw-Dropper And yet, it seems that's where a lot of the extra streaming money has been going. On the Q2 earnings call last year, CEO Bob Bakish, watching the stock price steadily decline, seemed to be eager to reassure he had a handle on the situation and began describing some of the changes he'd be making. It started out well enough, really; he told investors that NFL viewers churn drops dramatically if they also engage with entertainment titles, which is what you'd expect.
But then, he stunned me and I expect just about everyone listening when he said, "we probably need to do less for [the NFL viewer] in the fall, and more outside the fall because we can rely on the NFL." Compounding the almost Looking Glass-feeling, he then went on to reassure everyone he would be "fine-tuning" the content strategy to address that point in the years to come.
It was, frankly, stunning. Both me and I suspect just about every analyst who was modeling Paramount had just assumed it went without saying that of course, any entertainment content targeted at retaining NFL viewers should drop in the other half of the year when the NFL wasn't playing on TV. My own calculations of the profit margin on CBS's NFL deal had always incorporated that.
And while that was bad enough, it also raised the concern that a management team that didn't understand that going in might have put a lot of other overload in other categories as well. Suddenly, it wasn't so hard to see how the best-scripted shop with the most profitable sports contracts was having trouble making money. Double-loading for 50 million households would be a major drag on the financial performance for streaming.
Light At The End Of The Tunnel Despite all of this, I still think there are bright spots in the Paramount picture, even without a merger. Its operations, as well as its merger discussions, don't seem to lack potential.

1: My Usual Paramount Bull Argument: Sports Profits

One thing that continues to go right is sports content. A few years ago, I wrote that Paramount was a strong contender to become a sustainable streaming business because it had the only profitable sports slate in the business. The stock hasn't gone where I wanted it to go, but that is the one part of my thesis that has been definitively borne out. In fact, many now say that it is CBS's sports deals, at least as much as Paramount's film/TV studio, that the prospective buyers of Paramount are after.
I've covered these in other articles already. The March Madness deal runs until 2032 and the NFL deal runs until 2033, although the NFL has an opt out after 2029 that it will probably exercise given the utterly ludicrous bids the NBA is receiving, so the last four years of that deal might have to be chopped off the profit projections. Even so, Paramount can probably generate $1.25 billion a year in profit just off of those two deals for the next six years.
Those are probably the biggest, but it doesn't stop there. Almost every sports deal Paramount has is profitable. For all the flak management has deservedly taken, Paramount continues to show discipline and focus on sports. You won't find Paramount throwing $2.5 billion a year at the NBA's 'B' package, which is more money than the NFL gets for its 'B' package despite having 10x the viewership.
For all its many, many missteps, a Paramount that can just manage to stay afloat long enough for some of these ludicrous sports bets at other companies to blow up may yet find itself with cards to play later in the decade.

2: Recouping Write-downs Via Preferred Conversion

Another small boon has been the official conversion of the preferred shares. The Paramount mandatory convertible formerly trading under the PARAP ticker was capped at 0.85 shares per common share. Given the initial price of the convertible at $100 per share, that effectively means that a preferred share that was carrying a $100 liquidation value has just been converted into 1.1765 shares of a common stock currently trading around $12. A total value per preferred share of around $14.
And they sold for $1 billion, so that's basically $860 million back into the common equity that management was able to get at the peak of the boom. That actually repairs almost all of the red ink from Paramount's doomed international originals push on its own.

3: An End To Streaming Waste

Finally, a lot of the waste in streaming may soon be ending. Bob Bakish was finally fired a few weeks ago, and while I never want someone to lose their job, he frankly had looked overmatched for a while. Bakish was a lifetime cable executive who seemed to be having trouble making the transition to a streaming-world mindset. Frankly, if I knew about it in 2021, the CEO has no business fine-tuning it into the strategy in 2023.
With international originals no longer draining the coffers and overloaded entertainment programming shifted to months of the calendar where it can be more productive, streaming may yet turn the corner.
Investment Summary I recognize fully that each fall in Paramount stock makes my bullish optimism seem ever more out of step. I do believe, however, that Paramount's failures are more failures of execution than lack of scale or structural disadvantage. Paramount CEO Bob Bakish simply wasn't up to the job. Ironically that wasn't what got him fired; Bakish was almost certainly fired for opposing Redstone's plan to enrich herself at the expense of other shareholders, probably the most competent thing he did in the last few years of his whole tenure.
Paramount has everything it needs to be successful; profitable sports contracts, which is just unbelievable in this day and age, a thriving scripted TV operation, and a viable, if recently somewhat mismanaged, streaming service. An end to overload waste, the continued exploitation of its favorable sports slate, throttling back unhelpful international originals and boosting kids content engagement may yet produce a different streaming picture going forward. Should older viewers start to get more comfortable with streaming going forward and following their favorite programs to Paramount+, that would just be icing on the cake.
It's been a depressing ride the last few years, but I'm sticking with Paramount.

so, I have one of my saved searches as "lesbian", bc I'm a lesbian and am browsing for cute things. I haven't bought since the updated TOS, but sometimes I'll see something and look somewhere else for it.
the issue is that there's someone that keeps posting literal porn dvds clogging up the whole tag. blocking them has not made it disappear for me, which I think is kind of stupid. are people allowed to do this? the covers aren't even censored in the images (full Vs and Ds out lol), which I would assume would make it inappropriate, but nothing ever happens when it's reported.
I'm not trying to say porn shouldn't be allowed to exist or anything, but it's annoying when it's ALL I see pop up as new for the tag. also, aren't minors allowed on the app? this cannot be okay if they are

I was given a set of books by some distant relatives when I was a child and I remember they all had covers featuring overly ‘shiny’, cutesy animals (basically the sort of images you find when you search cute kitten). Each book had a different colour with a kitten (pretty sure, maybe one had a puppy) and like a cheesy glittery background.
Despite the covers, I remember these books were actually somewhat dark. Details I remember are: -the main character(f) had a kitten that I think she had some sort of telepathic connection to. -there were witches/wizards/people with magical powers -there was an enemy figure who was a witch, and I remember a scene where the main character enters a shop full of weird antiques and I think she buys something that means the witch can spy on her. -the other characters in the book also have animal familiars I'm pretty sure.
The series is probably from the 2000s-2010s based on when I read them and I remember there was at least three books.
Thanks in advance!

I honestly love to bake cookies. I think it’s incredibly relaxing and I love to give cookies to people to cheer them up. I’m always tinkering with my recipe. Hopefully you also love to bake, and don’t mind sharing some secrets in the kitchen.
I’m hoping to find someone that can spice up my life a bit. Push me out of my comfort zone, laugh with me in the kitchen, argue about milk vs dark chocolate.
Me: tall, cute, enjoys baking, hoping to find someone for witty banter and hopefully to meet up.
https://imgur.com/a/wTGlgor

Lol, I thought this would be funny to write about as a first silly little post as it is the most interesting thing in my life. (Don’t mind any typos)
First of all, to anyone who wants to tell me to stop or get over it or give me any valid reasonable and rational advice,I will not listen so don’t bother.
As these stories go, I 15(f) in love with English teacher 26(f). I’m obsessed with her, and have been for almost msot 2 years, it would have been longer if she had come into my life sooner.
I’m not a love at first sight person, so it took a while for it to come about. And iv always had problems with getting violently obsessed with things, I believe it’s some kind of coping mechanism, you know? If I don’t have something to live for then I fall in love with something, subconsciously of course. First it was cartoon characters then celebrity’s and the for the first time a real person who I know in real life! (Except she’s my teacher and she’s 26) but also the first woman iv ever fallen for (iv always known Im pan so it wasn’t a shock really). I think another HUGE reason I love her is because I don’t have a mother, she was abusive, druggy, alcoholic yadi-yadi-yada, and so I don’t live with her and I don’t like her and she isn’t there for me, and so I meet a kind female adult who I look up to? Obviously I get attached and I see her as a mother figure. I really do, I want to be just like her, I want to make her proud, I seek her validation, i want to fuck her. You know, regular motherly things!
The first day I met her, first day of year 10. From the second she walked into the class I felt her energy and her vibes and I had that feeling where you instantly like someone and want to be friends with them and think they are super cool. Now, she is not hot, like Obviously to me me right now in this moment she’s the most beautiful and pretty person iv ever seen she’s so cute and hot and all that, but Obviously that’s because I’m obsessed with her everything about her is great, but she’s the kind of ugly that when she first walked into the class people snickered.
She has a rash on her chin, a noticeable moustache, she looks at least 30 despite being much younger, her eyes are creepy looking and small, her skin is really red and dry and way too textured, she does weird ugly facial expressions, she has a big nose, her hair is never brushed and always greasy, she has really small eyelashes blah blah blah.. (she obviously has some really nice features as well, but I’m trying to prove i don’t like her for her looks)
Now In her defence I think they were laughing because she has the hugest ass iv seen in my entire life, not cuz of her face. (She wears really tight leggings everyday) But, she is overweight and a lot of people bring her down cuz of it but that has nothing to do with any of it for me obviously, and I obviously didn’t laugh when she walked in.
The point is, I instantly liked her and her personality, she has that school mum vibe, she’s witty she’s confident she’s loud, she’s funny, she’s so weird (like she does and says the weirdest stuff, she’ll start dancing out of no where with no warning, she shortens words all the time and then says them three times like: “fab fab fab” she has just the weirdest tendencies and mannerisms it’s insane), shes always so exited and jolly, she’s like a ball of sunshine yet at the same time she’s so sassy and passive aggressive, when I’m older I wanna be just like her you know!
And that’s how I felt for a long time, I would just enjoy her lessons because of the energy and vibes she’d bring! She makes everything so much fun just by being there, she’s also a drama teacher so she’s great at getting a crowd going and stuff. But it seemed no one else liked her, they either fat shamed her, or said she was a bitch, or found her annoying.
They aren’t wrong she is all of those things, but she’s only a bitch to you if you don’t respect her and then she’s passive aggressive and makes your time in her class hell, and as her favourite student who kissed her ass everyday it was fun for me to watch people get roasted by her and never have to worry about it. She is annoying to a lot of people because she hypes everyone up, and she’s loud and obnoxious and confident, she laughs at her own jokes and she’s giggly and she does stupid accents, she’s the walking talking definition of “QUIRKY” and so 15 year olds find her incredibly cringey and jarring. But as an immature individual my self I found her energy like something I have never seen anyone have so i from the first day thought she was my favourite teacher ever!
I often take the role of like comic relief when it comes to my friends so I often make the joke myself, and once I felt this admiration for my English teacher, and this giddy happy feeling in me when I saw her, I thought it would be a great idea to pretend/ hint to having a crush on her to my friends as a joke so they can make fun of me. It was small things like “oh my english teacher! … oh.. I liiiiikkkee herrrrrrrr~!” Id day when people mention her, no one caught onto the joke for a couple months until one day, after a holiday I had dyed my hair and she walked past me and she complimented it, I thanked her and INSTANTLY MY HEART WAS POUNDING AND I GOT ALL GIGGLING, my friend was next to me and found it funny obviously. And then the more I went to her lessons I couldn’t stop getting all sweaty and nervous around her, and every time she’d do something cute, like squeal when she’s frustrated and make weird noises or do a fake accent, or tell a joke I’d feel so unbelievably happy, and I couldn’t stop talking and thinking about her, but Eveytime I’d think about her or look at her id get a huge ick of like.. but ewww she’s so not hot! I can NOT be in love with THAT.
By summer I was still feeling this Same way, one day she wore a dress and like the dopey idiot she is, she lifted her leg and from where I sat I saw her panties. I WAS DISGUSTED, and looked away. And then looked back.. but then looked away.. and then looked back.. and then looked away.. (and did it a couple more times) but I felt sick in my stomach the whole time! It was not a hot thing at the time.
Then the year ends and it’s the summer holiday, (now up until this point I was quite caught up with my David walliams obsession. yes the 56 year old.. and so I didn’t really care about her all that much. On the first day back, before school started I went to a birthday party and I saw her walking outside of the school, when I saw her my heat was beating so fast, i hadn’t seen her in 6 weeks and I was not expecting to see her then, I said hi to her and i couldn’t stop thinking about that moment so intensely, and every thought I had about her being ugly didn’t matter to me, it’s not like I forgot about it, I know what she looks like, but I just think everything about her is so beautiful, it’s part of her and so its perfect.
That feeling got worse and worse as the year went by, every time i see her I shake, i sweat, I have panic attack like symptoms, but I feel so happy, like manic, I am overwhelmed, I want to punch things, I want to scream.
Then we get to the part where to silence this obsession I did regrettable and wierd things that she will never know about, some of the despicable things iv done in “the name of love” for her include:
Eating her hair Licking her spit of the table Kissing her chair when she leaves the room Following her around school Drawing her Writing poems about her Writing songs about her Making edits of her Taking photos of her Recording her voice when she talks to me Stealing her trash Licking her pens Making AI chat bots with her personality Making a bingo game about her (that one is just funny, and all my friends played it too, during her lessons lol)
And many other things I won’t mention. Obviously I’m not proud of any of this, and I didn’t really need to do it, some of it I did “as a joke” for my friends, some of them I did just because I could.. but the recording her voice one is essential! Anytime we’d have a heart felt convo I’d record it so I can listen to it if I ever loose the will to live (surprisingly frequently).
Now our relationship as student and teacher was/is very good.
We’ve had some lovely moments, she told me she cared about me outside of the classroom.
A personal favourite of mine: One time she was marking my work and it was just us in the classroom and I rested my head on her shoulder as she was going through it with me, and she looked down at me and she smiled and then we stayed like that for ages while she marked my work.
All my friends said I was delusional and that she probably hates me, but she has a huge ego and i believe she likes to keep me around to give it a boost every now and then.
I wore a matching outfit with her once (on accident) and she was very happy about it
Anytime I’d ask her what I can do to improve my grade she’s say to me “oh no! But you’re doing really well! I thought you did great!”
She’d never get mad at me or shout at me for anything, if we are doing a one between two activity she’d give me the only extra sheet in the class
I asked her to sit at the front to her because I “concentrate better at the front” (i only asked cuz i wanted to sit closer to her) she gave me a sly smirk and then the next lesson she moved me to the back of the class, and also moved her self to the back of the class.
We took a selfie together and the whole time she was giggling, I gave her a Christmas card, she lets me follow her around the school, she gave my friends dirty looks when they were being mean to me
I sent her stupid emails of pictures of capybaras (it was an inside joke between us) and she responded with a way to enthusiastic response for such a simple image lol!
I sand “you belong with me” by TS and she stood in the crown and when it got to the “you belong with me” bit I pointed at her and she pointed back! Singing the words back to me
Oh, and let us not forget the amount of eye contact. I never look people in the eye, one of my first exes I barely ever looked into their eyes all the time I knew them, I just suck at eye contact. Until I met her, since I’m so insecure about her forgetting me or loosing me or something I often stare at her when she’s teaching to make sure that she doesn’t forget me. And some how in the last couple of months she stares at me as well.
Anytime she tells a joke she looks straight at me to see how I respond (always with giggles even when it’s the lamest thing iv ever heard. It’s often not funny at all.) and the entire time shes teaching the lessons I will stare at her. IN HER EYES. Like, I’ll often smile calmly, but if she hasn’t looked at me in like 4 minutes then I’ll stare deeper, but she usually looks into my eyes and hold it for a while sometimes she’ll even smile at me and then stutter and forget what she’s saying before looking away and continuing. She’ll stare deeply into my eyes, throughout the lesson, and I also always catch her looking at me first.
Once she was helping me with my work, she got really close to me, and she stared into my eyes and then I see her getting small glances at my lips (with this one I may be a little delusional) she leaned in and she kept getting confused. Like, she yaps a lot, and a lot very loudly. So it was odd for her to be standing there her arm touching mine talking to me and being like “…. Um-.. heh-.. where was i..” and she flicks through my paper and then looks back at me and goes silent and then swallows and then looks down and then flips through it again and then says something small and short followed by more silence.
I also have a theory shes on drugs, for many reasons but one time I needed her to take a photo of my book, and she was acting so weird, tired but like really like dizzy and loopy and breathless. And she went to take a photo of my book, and got behind me and she leaned into my book, and I felt her heavy loud breath on my neck as her stray hairs were tickling the side of my face and her shoulder was touching my back, she she just stood there and stared at my book for ages until i was like “um so.. you can.. take a photo or something..” and then she slowly did it hahahaha!
Obviously it’s now exam time and so school is basically over and I have no more lessons, so I didn’t go into depth about how much she means to me as a person but to sum it up into one sentence; I would want to seriously kill my self with out her in my life.
And so the thing I had been fearing for so long, the last English lesson, the last time seeing my dear beloved. Well obviously it’s life or death so I have to tell her how I feel and get her to stay in contact with me.
The last lesson ends I go up to her after a morning of: pissing my self, shitting my self, throwing up in my mouth, constantly putting on perfume, checking my hair and chewing the mintiest of gums. And I start my speech, I won’t go into it but I told her how I felt about her (minus the being in love bit I played it off as platonic duh, im not fully stupid).
I told her that she means so much to me, and she’s (one of) my favourite people in the world (that’s a white lie she’s my only favourite) I can’t go on with out her, I need her, iv felt this way since the first lesson, your so fun, you mean so much to me! I cant loose you, I don’t know what I would do with out you!!!!
I cried in her arms as she hugged me! And i didnt even need to ask she suggested we could stay in contact, in-fact all i had said was “I’ll miss you so much :(“ and she already suggested we stay in contact, but Obviosuly I still did the whole speech cuz at some point she needed to know. Her response was basically that she already knew, but she was very pleased to hear it, and everything is going to be perfectly okay.
She said we can stay in contact (through email, cuz apparently there is a “legal thing unfortunately” stopping her from giving me her number (yes I did ask for her number, but in a total no homo way.)
She said I can talk to her anytime about anything as much as I like, and that’s good enough for me!
I also gave her a drawing I did of her and me together which was cute, her response to that was “oh very cool! she walks over. she takes it in her hands, very excited to see it. This really throws her confidence off, she’s really not expecting this. OH THIS IS AMAIZING! her voice cracks THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH! this is lovely! thank you, this is soo good! oh-muh-gud it’s SO good! oww I love it! thank you.. I’m wearing the same top as well, how fun~.. HOW FUN!!!! how fun!! … she takes it and puts it in her bag i will prop this up, on my desk! wicked wicked awesome!” (I recorded her reaction so that’s how you know it’s word for word)
In conclusion, im creepily obsessed and its a problem, but I don’t really regret anything cuz it’s all gotten me to this point where I can talk to her when ever I want and that’s all I could ever ask her. Yes I want to fuck her, but that’s not important to me I just need her in my life, she’s my world she’s my reason of living, and I’m so happy things are this way! I’m doing my exams now so I get to see her everyday when I come into school (by see her I mean wait outside the staff room so I can catch a glimpse of her knee). I’m also glad I’m not in her lessons anymore cuz I’d always get so twitchy around her, anytime she’d be near me and I’d be trying my best not to lunge at her, when I see her my mouth waters I just wanna grab her and kiss her all over! Eeek! She’s adorableeeee!
I love herrrrr ❤️❤️❤️

Goal: Create a heartfelt animated music video Song: TheFatRat - Still Here With You Tone: Happy, Sad, Sweet, Touching, Moving, Inspiring, Beautiful, Spiritual Style: 2D cute cartoon/anime Length: About two and a half minutes to fit the song (more is fine, adding a short intro/outro to fit the story is welcome) Deadline: 2 Months (flexible) Budget: $3,000 (flexible)
​
Sorry if the deadline/budget seems unreasonable. I am very flexible on both and am more than willing to work with someone on a fair price.
​
I would like to have a music video created for my fiancée, Emily, starring her and one of our cats, Fawkes, who we helped cross the rainbow bridge in February 2023. We always get the feeling he's still here with us, watching over us, spreading his love and joy. I want to imagine what that would look like if it were indeed true. On a spiritual level, they were/are truly soulmates, and I want to create something really special for her to remember him by. These last few years have been really tough for her, and we have been abandoned/betrayed by some friends and family mainly due to drama around our caring for Fawkes.
​
I am looking for someone passionate who truly wants to help me make this a reality. I will do everything in my power to get whatever you need to make this work. This is probably way too much info, but I'm trying to get my thoughts out if it can help the creative process for anyone. If you're interested, please send me a message.
​
Factoids:

• Me: 33M
• Emily: 34F
• Emily and Fawkes slept on the couch together during his sickness (he would always lay on her, face to face)
• Emily likes to paint as a hobby (shapes, flowers, birds, owls)
• Emily likes to play PC games (Overwatch, World of Warcraft)
• Emily is usually up at night while I'm asleep
• Emily has been free of work since before he got sick
• I work during the day, Emily is at home alone (she does not drive)
• We still randomly find his fur on our clothes that have been washed multiple times since he passed. It makes us smile and think of it as a gift from him.
• Fawkes and Freyja didn't get along unsupervised, so we kept them separated when we slept or had to go somewhere
• Freyja sometimes acts like Fawkes did (belly rubs and lots of snuggles). We feel as though it's Fawkes visiting us through her.

​
Thoughts, ideas, notes:

• Possibly starting from when we are at/leaving the vet when we said goodbye
• Fawkes depicted as an angel/spirit cat
• Centered around Fawkes and Emily
• Emily doing day-to-day things like watching TV, painting, playing games, chores
• Emily looking at pictures and feeling sad
• Emily feeling hopeless and alone
• Freyja and I can be part of making her feel better sometimes
• I go to work and she's all alone
• Fawkes finding ways to cheer up/help Emily, somehow interacting with things around her
• I want it to express feelings of sadness at points but also happiness and joy
• Locations closely based on actual places we went/live (I can provide pictures of where we live or addresses of locations for Google Maps for satellite views)
• Ending: I would like to show Fawkes with her family dog (who passed away in September 2021) and her grandmother (who passed away in January 2024), all happy together and watching over Emily

​
backstory below
​
Beginning:
Fawkes came into our lives in July 2017 from the streets after his previous owners were taken away from him a few weeks prior. We immediately brought him to the vet to get checked and tested for anything. The vet found that he was chipped and five years old. As a result, they couldn't really do much besides try to contact the previous owners. We took him home and kept him separated from our other cat, Freyja, since we did not know if he could spread anything to her. He was pretty lethargic, hardly eating, and couldn't really keep much down. We honestly thought we would wake up the next morning and he wouldn't be with us anymore. Luckily, that was not the case.
​
He wasn't doing so well the next day, so we called the vet and they had us come in again. Since the previous day, he went from over seven pounds down to about six and a half pounds. Our vet decided it was necessary to medically intervene or he was likely going to die. They hospitalized him on the spot and started giving him subcutaneous (SQ) fluids and other medications to help with his nausea and stimulate his appetite. We left him under the care of the vet and all we could do was wait to hear back. He pulled through like a champ. He was eating, moving, jumping, playing, snuggling, and loving life. It was as if he was reborn, like a phoenix from the ashes, so we named him "Fawkes" after the phoenix from Harry Potter.
​
Over the following years, Fawkes and Emily became pretty much inseparable. He was such a lovebug and radiated that classic "orange cat energy" wherever he went. If he wanted to get into something, he'd either find a way or keep trying until we could stop him. He absolutely LOVED belly rubs, and not once was it ever a trap (unless you felt "trapped" rubbing his belly for hours). In all the time we had him, he never hissed at, scratched, or bit (non-playfully) anyone. He just wanted to love everything and everyone he met. He didn't have any enemies in his eyes, just others who may not have cared for the level of love and joy he wanted to share.
​
Later:
Fawkes was diagnosed with stage 1 chronic kidney disease (CKD) in October 2021, which quickly progressed to stage 3 by early 2022. We were giving him medicine a few times a day, SQ fluids every couple of days, and going to the vet every other week to have his levels checked. He became a regular at the vet and even a few employees confessed to taking breaks just to go snuggle him because they loved him so much. We almost said goodbye to him in May 2022, as his symptoms were worsening and he no longer wanted to eat. He was a fighter, though, and told us he wasn't done fighting yet by finally eating on his own just as we were trying to make that difficult decision. We took him to the Animal Emergency and Referral Center (AERC) that night.
​
The vet told us that he had developed anemia and our only options were either to take him home and start end-of-life care or do a blood transfusion (which might not even work) and keep him hospitalized for a few days to be monitored. We opted for the blood transfusion. The procedure went well and we were able to come and visit him a day later, though they still had to keep him for another day or two just to be safe. We were also able to have his case looked at by a specialist, and they adjusted his meds to better suit his needs. They were estimating he maybe had a few weeks to a month or so before we ended up back where we were before the transfusion. We were now giving him less medicine a few times a day, SQ fluids every night, and going on walks through our apartment building every night before bed.
​
A few weeks became a few months, and he seemed to be doing even better than he was all of 2022 before his transfusion. We would take him on trips to Petco every week or so, so he could walk around and meet new friends. We would bring him to the park while we played Pokémon GO, even if we ended up just sitting in the car. Starting around September 2022, my boss even let me bring him to work with me on days he wanted me in the office. Vet appointments were few and far between, sometimes a couple of months apart. This pretty much continued all the way into February 2023 until we started to notice more significant symptoms again, and his CKD values were getting much worse. He didn't want to eat, he was hiding more, and he would often seek comfort by laying in his litterbox. We could tell our little warrior was ready to be done fighting.
​
Goodbye:
On the night of Tuesday, February 14th, 2023, Valentine's Day, we decided we couldn't make him fight for us any longer. We called our vet and made an appointment for Thursday, February 16th, 2023. We spent the whole day together on Wednesday, February 15th, 2023, snuggling on the couch and finished with our nightly routine of SQ fluids and a walk. We all spent the night together on the couch, staying awake as long as we could. On Thursday, February 16th, 2023, we brought Fawkes to the vet, and he was excited to walk around and explore the new space for a short while before needing a rest. It was nice to see him perk up and act like how we remembered him to be. The doctors took him away to be prepped and brought him back after a short while. We were petting him, kissing him, and told him he was a good boy and how much we loved him as he peacefully passed. We left there with the heaviest pet carrier ever. An empty one.

Pinterest is one of the laggiest apps I've ever experienced when chatting with my friends.
I can't send images properly, send pins, or even reply to specific messages. The notifications are terrible, and I don't receive any direct message notifications. Browsing is difficult, and it lacks features like zooming.
It will never be a proper chatting app until the developers fix these issues. I'm on the latest update and still experiencing significant bugs, particularly with the direct messaging options.
Pinterest is only suitable for browsing media and images where people can see cute pictures and such; it is not designed for chatting at all.

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Products compilation image: https://i.imgur.com/vhLXnou.jpeg or https://i.ibb.co/mSFPDgddc1dbd06890.jpg

Let me start off by saying, my parents are a picture perfect couple.
They are high school sweethearts but even after 30 years of marriage their spark never died, they still go on dates very often, leave love notes to one another around the house and are very thoughtful towards one another.
My dad especially is a great father and husband, when I was a kid, my mom got diagnosed with breast cancer, thankfully it was caught early but she still had to go through chemo and it took a massive toll on her body and spirit, she was mostly bedridden. It absolutely shattered me seeing her suffer that much.
it was a tough time for us but I can’t put into words how much of a trooper dad was. This man took over everything, not only was he the sole provider but he was on top of all household chores: we had healthy home cooked meals, the house was always spotless and he made sure me and my siblings never missed a school day or any extra curricular activities and maintained good grades. He was there for my mom for almost every chemotherapy session and never once showed any signs of fatigue or frustration. He was always cheerful and kept telling us we’ll get through this and we had nothing to worry about, it gave me a lot of hope seeing him stay strong throughout the whole ordeal and helped me stay focused on my studies and not spiral into depression.
Eventually, my mom recovered and everything went back to normal. But to tell you I thought the world of my father would be an understatement, Superman had nothing on my dad. I looked up to him and aspired to be half the person he was.
Imagine my horror when I walked into our house one day to find him in bed with another woman, I say woman but she looks no older than 20 yo, basically my age. My mother was in our hometown for a distant relative’s wedding and I was supposed to be at college but I wanted to drop by for a quick visit. I don’t think I’ve ever yelled at anyone the way I did that day, I kicked her out and chastised him for hours after she left.
This pathetic excuse of a human being tried to bribe me to not tell mom, I can’t even begin to explain how pathetic he was begging me to not tell mom promising me he’ll buy me a new car if I keep quiet. I wanted to throw up. It was a far cry from the father I knew loved and respected.
It’s been 2 weeks since this incident I went back to my dorm and my father has been spamming me with calls and messages ever since. He would range from begging me not to destroy our family to threats of cutting me off the will if I tell mom.
I’ve been wanting to tell her but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, the aftermath of this will be brutal, my picture perfect family will be ruined forever, I pondered telling my siblings instead but I couldn’t do that either, it would ruin their image of dad forever.
I feel like I lost my dad forever, I don’t recognize this man but this is not the dad I knew and loved.
I’m an adult I understand relationships are complicated and my parents’ relationship is ultimately none of my business. Cheating is one thing but bribing your kid? Threatening to disown them if they tell anyone? wtf is this shit? How can I ever look him in the eyes again?
I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive him and I can only hope my mother finds it in her to forgive me for keeping it from her this long. I needed to tell someone desperately but I didn’t know who, thanks for reading this anyways.

I 30 m Swede decided one day roughly two months back I wanted to brush up on my Spanish. I went out on a language exchange app called Speaky and while for the most part the experience was miserable I started talking to a pleasant mexican woman (30). Initially my intentions were purely to learn Spanish, and we had good fun showing small tidbits of our every day life to each other.
She quickly asked to switch to whatsapp, which typically is one of those red flags which you read on every romance scam article. I however didn't mind much because Speaky was full of sleazy eggplant emojis and accounts asking for hookups as well as bots. Besides, at this point I my headspace was that I would never meet this person anyways. There we were chatting as well as doing some video calls. We quickly started chatting every day.
But of course there's more to this story otherwise I wouldn't be writing here. She came across as lightly flirty and I just figured it was good fun and didn't mind (again, I was never supposed to meet this woman). However, things evolved into more explicit proclamations of romantic interest from poth parties involved (another red flag due to the short time that has passed). She also starting sending these really cute messages to me on the regular which I initially thought nothing of but now might consider lovebombing (third red flag).
Eventually talk went to the idea of me going to visit her (Figured I'd do the traveling since I'm from a wealthier country.) That's when, roughly two weeks back, my warning bells went off and all these suspicions came rushing all at once. And I directly confronted her about them.
Now this far down it might seem like a dead ringer for a romance scam, but there is more to it. She has showed me pictures from her university she studied at which seem legit as well as images from her work. She has a substantial amount of followers on social media with certain videos reaching millions of viewers (and from what I've seen no bitter person accusing her of being a scammer or not either). She claims she's from a well off family with roots from Spain and even Germany which she sent me images of. She even sent me photos of an ID (which frankly made me uncomfortable) with the same last name as some of those old (supposedly) family pictures. She has never asked me for money either which she did point out.
This soothed me and perhaps rashly I bought tickets to Mexico shortly after. We continued talking and had fun chatting. After some time we also engaged in some explicit video call activity as well as send NSFW pics to each other. Quite quickly we also talked of future plans (which makes sense if it was legit since just visiting each other would take a big investment) and we both stated we wanted something long term with children and marriage and the whole deal with the idea of her moving to Sweden if all would work out (which could be construed as another red flag as supposedly traditional family warnings is also sign).
I had up to this point mentioned it to a few friends but not to my mother. When I finally did tell her she INSTANTLY went to the idea of it being a scam (she might also be the most cynical person I know). Some time later I worked up the courage (I didn't want her to dislike my mother) to tell my Mexican friend of my mother's reaction and we talked about what we could do about it and decided on me showing my mother what had already been shown to me as well as have them having a video call so my mother could ask questions directly. I talked with my mother and it was decided, however as the day approached my mother said she felt too uncomfortable with idea of the video call so instead she and just had a long talk about the risks both of Mexico in general and romance scams. She painted quite a gruesome picture (she's quite good at it). She also had some questions to send to my Mexican woman.
Passport, home adress, name of her company. She also suggested for me to reverse image search the photos I had been sent, which I did (I just got the social media pictures to no big surprise). She also wanted me to ask for me and my mexican friend to instead meet in Spain as that had been mentioned between us and it would be neutral ground.
Being the mama's boy that I am I obliged. To which my mexican friend got upset, now whether that is from justified disappointment due to my distrust or from manipulation I cannot tell, and she was not keen on traveling to Spain (we had also been talking about my visit to Mexico for a while now), atleast not now, initially. She did however send me photos of her passport and home adress.
She asked what I thought of it all and I said I wasn't sure. It ended with a quite cold conclusion that I needed time to mull things over.
If you've read this far I thank you, wholeheartedly.
Now I sit here with a ticket to mexico (if it isn't used I will consider it an expensive life lesson). A mother who considers Mexico to be the most dangerous place in the world (and me partly agreeing) - my stay would be in CDMX which I've heard is relatively safe.
If I were to travel to Mexico what would be the risks, would they be greater from her knowimg of my coming or they as great if I just traveled alone as a nordic man?
Any other thoughts? Is this a romance scam or not?
Thanks.

Hi all,
So I’ve been reading through the posts and I have to say I’m not really in a typical RJ situation, at least from what I can see.
For context, I’ve been dating this (22F) for over 6 months now and she’s amazing. She’s very supportive, understanding and loving person. She had 2 partners in the past, 1 long term and 1 situationship, which she really regrets, because her intentions were true and he played her. And life happens right, I’m not jealous nor insecure about that. I can see that a lot of people get jealous because of their partner being with someone else, but I realise she was actually looking for love and wanted to be the best version of herself, so I’m not mad or upset about that.
I also notice that people usually get insecure and compare themselves with previous partners of their S/O. But in my case I’m very confident in my capabilities in bed. In fact, I’m an absolute animal and she always tells me how good it was and how she loves our intimacy. And tbh whatever, even if I was worse somehow, it doesn’t bother me.
What does bother is how it could affect my status, our image in the future when we are married for example. I feel like I’m little paranoid and come up with these scenarios in my head that what if in the distant future, when we are married these guys are going to come out of nowhere and say something I didn’t know? If they going to spread some info that’s going to disturb me so hard I won’t be able to handle it. What if, you know? I don’t know if that’s even RJ, maybe it’s some sort of paranoia. But basically I’m afraid that something might come up in the future that could potentially ruin everything, because I just couldn’t handle the disrespect.
Is this my ego problem? Do I think too much what others might think? Should I talk with her about this to ensure this never happen? (But again, how can she ensure that, right?). And I know thats something we can’t control, but the whole RJ thing is based on that anyway, so I’m just looking for tips, maybe someone had these thoughts as well.
Cheers and have a good one peeps!

Intro:
I just saw a post here every day about a lonely guy and his struggles in dating.
When I read it, the frustration, sadness, and despair are palpable. But since 63% of young men are single, and half of male university students are virgins, I can understand why these posters aren’t happy.
The majority of men are lonely.
While I cannot solve this very real societal phenomenon, I will try to put things into perspective.
After all, trite as it may sound, life is truly about much more than dating. We’ll talk about this later on.
Before we begin, I would like to sincerely dedicate this post to all of those people who carry a void in their hearts every day.
I truly hope that reading the following will bring you at least a little peace of mind.
This is something that you need to tell yourself every single day. Life coaches and toxic PUAs like Andrew Tate are telling you to run game on 5 women every day, but I'm telling you to tell yourself this 5 times a day:
It's not your fault.
This should be said and emphasized a lot more. I want you guys to completely digest this idea. It is important to keep reminding yourself of this truth. Once you truly understand this, you will have a much more peaceful mindset.
The situation you are in was forced upon you.
Genetic determinism is anathema to most people. You will always see the fortunate, the lucky people try to take credit for their living situations, but they won't acknowledge the opportunities they were given.
I want you to understand something: when people tell you "you can do it, you can do anything," they are not saying it for your benefit. They are saying it to gaslight you and feel better about themselves. It implies that if you fail, it was because of something you did wrong.
"You could've done it, but you didn't, so it's your fault."
Don't let people gaslight you.
You look at a guy like Jeremy Meeks, scum of the earth. This guy is the personification of luck. The guy made the wrong choices and decisions at every step of the way, and he still made it as a multimillionaire top model, all because of his looks.
He comes from a broken family, he's a criminal, robber, gangster, beat an underage kid to near death, drug dealer, weapons charges, you fucking name it. Yet, women are worshiping him, literally worshiping him.
I ask you this: how many mistakes is too many? 10? 20? 50?
When you are good-looking, no amount is too many. Anything is forgivable.
​
"Anything is possible. Never give up. God's got a plan for you." - Jeremy Meeks
​
Well, when you look like him, yeah, of course anything is gonna be possible.
​
You look at a guy like Hunter Biden, drug addict and porn actor. Still, he's a board member of a nine-figure international investment firm. All because of his dad. All because he was lucky enough to be born into the Biden family.
You look at Elon Musk, richest guy on earth. He in turn comes from a dirty rich family that makes bank with him off of the backs of literal child slaves. His 80-year-old father made a child with his 30-year-old stepdaughter. Think about it, this guy was fucking 50 years old when he adopted that child.
These are morally bankrupt people, and yet you see the lives they are living.
You look at a guy like Bill Gates, whose classmates' parents literally bought a computer room for his high school during a time when even top U.S. universities didn't have computer rooms. Bill got to spend unlimited time with the latest and greatest computers as a child in the 1960s.
I am not saying Bill is dumb. Of course, you also need brains, but even intelligence is luck.
It's brutal how lucky you have to be in life. Not only do you need the smarts, but you need to be born in the right time and location into the right family. You think a smart kid who was born in a war-torn third-world country stands any chance?
Never.
Fucking never.
You gotta be lucky in this life. The most important factor governing success in life is luck. Looks will directly influence how you are treated by others from the day you were born, before you could even remember. Your neurotypicality, face, race, and height are paramount when it comes to how society will treat you (I have mountains of data at the above link, read it to see just how important these genetic factors are). This in turn shapes your personality.
Your intelligence, the opportunities you were born into, your gender; they are all important.
Even in the job market, just your gender influences your chances majorly.
Everything in life comes down to luck.
"Anything is possible, you can do anything."
No, you cannot do anything you want to in life, and it's not your fault. Genetic determinism and luck rule every aspect of your life.
You did nothing wrong.
So don't let anybody gaslight you.
Instead, don't be a free agent in life. Let the blackpill guide you.

{Downpour by Maggie Gates}
M/F, grumpy/sunshine, age-gap, boss/employee, disability rep, dual POV, interconnected series but can be read as standalone
2/5⭐ 3/5 🌶️
34 y/o MMC tattooed bull riding pro uses a wheelchair due to fall 18mo prior. 22 y/o FMC in flipflops and daisy dukes is not good at her job but cheerful and desperate for money until her trust vests. MMC fires many care aides, she's hired as a last resort and begs not to be fired. She's incompetent but hot and it grows on him and his family because his bio fam are big softies.
I love a lone MC finds a big welcoming family cast and I love a ranch setting. It was fine - I didn't DNF. I also didn't read the other brother's book so I jumped in mid series but it seems like an interconnected standalone kind of series.
It was an easy read, no glaring writing issues, and it's an atmosphere/setting that I enjoy reading.
FMC and MMC were fairly one dimensional. Internalized misogyny may have me more annoyed with FMC, MMC is your typical tattooed hottie who's grumpy but a total softie for FMC and protective to the point of somewhat overbearing but tbh fair she's incompetent.
Requisite babylogue, not really necessary to read.
Key peeves:
FMC Quirks FMC is truly incompetent and clumsy in a way that irked me. She doesn't need to be perfect but she just apologized and said she'd do better but didn't have a plan for anything.
She struggled with time management, safe cooking practices, driving dangerously, safe walking practices, professional dressing, and blabbing about her trust. It was portrayed as cute but it was not. Don't tell your sketchy roommates you're waiting for your trust to vest.
FMC ultimately gets a job at the ranch and seems to be competent. Unclear how as it explicitly involves time management skills.
FMC's also just a sunshiney animal whisperer which was annoying
Disability Representation MMC has a serious fall, goes coma then quadriplegic then paraplegic then starts being able to do steps here and there. I get that recovery is slow and the extent of recovery is always unknown, but I was afraid he would magically start walking again.
I suspect part of the recovery was to ensure he could still do the bondage sex stuff without much alteration/accommodation. Felt more like a hurt/recovery trope than a nuanced disability rep romance but I did appreciate that the FMCs POV never showed that she saw his disability as making him any less of a hottie.
Superfluous Subplot I didn't understand the sketchy roommate plot. Her incompetency was sufficient to keep her worried about her job, and there could have been another way to have her move in
All said, I will likely be sufficiently tempted to read CJ's book depending on the blurb.
Would love to hear other's thoughts, especially if I was too hard on the FMC or missed nuances of the disability rep.

Will tip $8
https://imgur.com/a/SST1KQ4
Looking to photoshop different family members’ heads onto a page of my child’s favorite book for a Father’s Day card. Here’s what I’m hoping to accomplish:

1. Dad as the witch (gave two photo options)
2. Toddler as the dog
3. Baby as the frog
4. Cat as the cat
5. Mom as the bird

Doesn’t have to be perfect, just funny and cute! All images linked

This is not any kind of complete love story with any complete ending it's just collection of few incidents. I am just writing it on the run. I am using dummy name for her let's call her Shree.
So story starts in 7th standard I guess. Once day an aunty approached me while I was going for tution class that she wants to talk to my tuition teacher regarding admission of her daughter because their family recently got shifted to our near by society and while I go for tuition probably she might have seen me.
So from here story starts, next day Aunty was with her daughter "Shree" she introduced me with her and we went to tution as usual she was walking a little far behind us ( me and bro ) and following us to the tution because she didn't know the path but Idk what I had no feeling for her with first sight. Like for a month or two she was attending tution with us we almost never talked to each other because I am very shy person and same with her.
After that vacation started and I went to Mama ke ghar and idk what happened I stated to see her in my dreams like playing badminton in our society compound and talking with her so much and she was always cheering and happy in my dream I slightly thought about it that I might like her and eventually started falling for her.
Incident - 1 I started developing very little little feeling for her and one fine day I she came to me with some project work/ model she wanted to create a solar system with toys 😂 idk what was she expecting and she described the project so so un realistic with those material. I brutally told her that it's not possible like this ( I had no communication skills but I really liked her ).
Incident - 2 We used to play games in compound we have a common society compound ( very complex to understand ) and it was her bday she gifted me and all other kinds "Kaccha Mango" it was very special for me I exactly remember she gave me 3 and I kept in hidden pocket of my school bag and never ever ate it after like 1.5 years Chitiya ( Ant ) aa gai bag mai and I had to throw them I was very upset because like after 1 year of this "gift"(kaccha mango) her family shifted somewhere else it was her first and last gift to me.
Incident - 3 Once we were playing Hide and Seek ( Dabba is Spice idk what it's translation in english ) "Shree" , I and one small kid hide at same place. I saw her so very closely ( not in creepy manner ) her brown eyes was like coconut 😂. I was feeling that time should stop and I can see her indefinitely. If I try to describe more about her I have to make another post so leave it and back to the story. We exchange few words about our study nothing more and I tried to peek and see the status of the compound for the guy who was after us to find us and she told don't take a peek to me and as an obedient friend I instantly pulled back my head and it hit so hard in the corner of the wall that it instantly started to bleed. She started to get panic but I was very calm and said nothing happened to me ( I knew I was bleeding but still I wanted to spend more time with her 🫠). After that neighborhood of that building came and my parents and took me to hospital and I got stitches. While on my way and getting stitches all I was thinking was about her that she must be very scared because of this incident. After this incident Shree never came to compound to play with us.
Incident - 4 We totally lost each other's contact after she shifted another where then I saw in same complex where I was going to tution ( new tution not the older where we were together we changed in 9th standard and she before 9th ) and saw her in the stairs of the tution and I asked her "Do You remember me ?" Shree "No I don't" *Traumatic Background music player inside my heart - "Chann se jo toote sapna ...." * After like 5 seconds she laughed ( her smile was so so so much cute 🫠😭 ) and said " Obviously I remember you " and we exchanged our last smile with each other.
I was scared of proposing her because I had literally 0.1 female interaction with anyone in my entire life and she was "Jain" so I thought she might tell her parents 😭 and never dared to purpose her. I still Miss her a lot and currently don't have any idea or contacts where can I find her but if "Shree" is reading this just i wanted to talk to you ( not going to propose you 😭😂💀 ) just " How are you? "😭
That's it guys that you for reading this I know it's not any well structured story but just my feelings. Thank you all for reading this much lots of love.