Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

Why I show my (fat) face on the internet

Thursday, February 26th, 2015

If you follow me on Twitter or look at my Facebook page, you’ll see I use an actual photo… despite, you know, being a fat person. I sometimes get asked why I do this– after all, I AM a fat person. I guess the reasoning behind that line of questioning is that they want to know why I’m effectively setting myself up to get trolled?

Well… yes and no. It’s true, I understand the risk I take by showing my face, as someone who isn’t conventionally attractive. The reality is that I haven’t gotten much fat-trolling from strangers. Like… three, ever? The actual threat is from people I have bonded with.

Let me back up a bit. Before Twitter and such, while I showed my face sometimes, it wasn’t very often, and not so openly. It was usually by demand to people I have bonded with and deemed worthy of showing them my face. In most cases, it went quite well, and by that I mean “they didn’t flee at the sight of a fat nerd woman.”

As for the rest of them… that’s where it gets ugly. I’ll spare you the slurs, but those aren’t even the worst. The worst is the accusation that I betrayed people, that I had tricked them into thinking I was a hot chick (when I said no such thing… and sometimes I even said I was a fat person well beforehand and they didn’t believe me, thinking it was just “female modesty”).

If you know me, one of the things I hate most is feeling like I’ve cheated or deceived someone, even if it wasn’t intentional. It’s why, when I do commissioned work, I won’t take payment until the other person’s happy (even when they offer to pay upfront), I would hate to hand over a subpar product and bring up the potential of being accused for cheating.

So, now, on social media, my policy is to just show my face at the start. If a random troll comes along and gives me crap for “being fat in public,” so be it. But I won’t be accused of “betraying” people who I make friends with, who were expecting me to be a beautiful babe. Can’t make that accusation if you’ve seen my actual face first!

That said, the picture I use on FB/Twitter is quite old (like… 2008?), so I should probably take a new one. I held off because all the shirts I had were low-cut enough to make the scar from my old trache quite visible and distracting. :P

Why I Like Twitter Integration in World of Warcraft (or, Hyperbole is for Winners)

Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

In Patch 6.1, Blizzard is adding the ability to tweet from inside World of Warcraft. While people have been tweeting about their WoW experience well before this, the integration of Twitter into the game will streamline the process considerably, and will be useful to players with low-end machines, for whom alt-tabbing to tweet is not practical.

Needless to say, this upcoming addition is not without controversy. Now, it’s not possible to please everyone, and there will always be some people who are vehemently against any kind of social network intermingling with their MMOs (strange considering that MMOs themselves are a form of social media, but eh). While I agree that Patch 6.1 is otherwise very light on content (which I will address later on), the amount of negativity rooted in willful, petulant ignorance is ASTOUNDING. That YouTube video up there? Don’t read the comments. Even if you agree with the backlash, the amount of over-the-top anger is enough to make your brain hurt. I say this as someone who regularly goes diving into comments on controversial things.

(disclaimer going forward: I am painter, not a game developer, programmer or even a “social media guru.” What I know about this subject is a result of years of observation and a hell of a lot of tech podcasts.)

The most common complaint is that Twitter integration is somehow “taking away” from Actual Content (quests, dungeon and raid development), which does not make sense because anyone who knows Twitter knows that it has an API that is very easy to implement. So easy, in fact, that in all likelihood it took probably less than a couple days to drop the API code in as well as a little more user interface work to pretty it up. This was most likely handled by someone on the Battle.net/User Interface branch rather than someone who handles graphics, class balancing, dungeon/raid development, or quest design. It is not practical to assign someone who deals with graphics to work on class balancing, you would be better served putting a monkey on a keyboard.

The tinfoil hat argument is that Twitter is sponsoring said integration, which is also nonsensical: Twitter does not pay developers to implement their service (that’s what the publicly-available API is for) and is actually more likely to buy out third-party developers to absorb their engineers and code. See: the multitudes of third-party Twitter clients over the years that have been acquired by Twitter itself (e.g. Tweety).

There is the claim that Twitter is being forced on the player. This is also not true. You have to opt in through the game settings and link a Twitter account (just like everything else that allows you to link a Twitter account) in order for it to work. Though, I imagine that the mere presence of an “enable Twitter” setting to some is enough to count as “you’re forcing me to tweet.” This leads into the perception that “nobody asked for Twitter integration.” Maybe not on the forums (WoW or fan-run), but… you know, there are other avenues for collecting feedback, right? Email, Facebook and, yes, the many Twitter accounts operated by Blizzard employees. Maybe the demand was not so much through loud forum posts and more of a subtle “gosh, I wish I could tweet from inside the game, it would be so nice” sentiment gleaned from tweets and other things. Yeah. “Nobody asked for Twitter integration, this was forced on us.” Sure. Whatever you say.

SO much Picard Double Facepalm. See what I mean about “negativity rooted in willful ignorance?”

The best part is when there are some detractors petty enough to actually call for some of these programmers to lose their jobs over Twitter integration. Really? If that describes you, I hope you’re ready to explain to their families that they’re down one– or their only– source of income and may suffer great financial hardship because they implemented a feature you don’t like, and that this makes you realize how terrible this makes you look, then you will probably need to get unsecured loans uk bad credit to get away with the situation. To learn more about loans and finances, visit https://www.paydaychampion.com/payday-loans-online-no-credit-check/ for more details. You’re possibly, no, definitely worse than those who have openly declared their intent to register Twitter accounts for the express purpose of trolling and harassing Blizzard employees over Twitter integration.

Yes, Patch 6.1 does not have a whole lot to offer in terms of content. That part I will not disagree with people about. That said, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some demand in the past for a major patch that is light on content in exchange for more class balancing, bug fixes, graphics tweaks and QoL (quality of life) updates… all of which describe Patch 6.1 very well, actually. And yet, now that we are given such a patch, it’s being dismissed as possibly the “Worst X.1 Patch EVER.” I guess all this does is reiterate that people really don’t know what they want (even when asked what they would do instead, they respond in very broad generalities, many of which are not really possible to do in the timeframe it takes to put out a major patch) and will complain irrationally about EVERYTHING.

As for me, I most definitely welcome the addition of Twitter. I tweet a lot about things that go in in game, and the ability to attach and crop screencaps is especially nice because it saves me from having to fish up a screencap (it’s annoying in both Windows and OS X) and crop it in an outside program and such.

As for that SELFIE camera toy, maybe I’ll pass on that. I will agree that the whole “duckface” part of it is a bit too much. …well, for Yoshi from Super Smash Flash 2 game, anyway. Somehow I can see Phil, Hynderia and Leslie using the camera, though. Man, ESPECIALLY Leslie– silly Bronze Dragon is SILLY.

In closing… dear players opposed to Twitter Integration: it’s okay to not like things. Please don’t be hyperbolic jerks about it. (that video REALLY needs to be required viewing for posting on forums or anything else.)

All a-twitter

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

If you read Ayarane Project through the main hub, this is probably irrelevant to you since AP sticks my tweets on the sidebar. I don’t do a daily Twitter round-up in the LJ/Facebook feeds as a courtesy to those who, understandably, don’t care to be tweet-bombed (though I would like to think that the Twitter hate has died down since then… hopefully).

That said, I would like to apologize in advance to those reading through LJ who harbor a seething, deep-seeted hatred of the Twitter and would advise you to skip this post for the sake of your blood pressure. :P Hell, if you’re reading this on the LJ feed, I’ll even cut it for you.

Dear internet, I am a twit. I tweet the peeps. I am anything BUT a Twitter Quitter. I even own Twitter-related shirts! (Seriously, proud owner of this shirt and next time I make an offering to the ThinkGeek gods I am SO getting this.)

I made a post along these lines when I first opened my Twitter account last year but for some reason I’ve not plugged it much if at all since then.

You should follow me! Here, my Twitter handle, let me show it to you:
@ayarane

“But Yoshi,” random internet dood says, “didn’t you say you hated this self-promotional business and denounce it as pointless vanity?” Yes, of course. I still have a pathological fear of vanity that no doubt gets me REAMED in the job hunt (this alongside my equally-pathological fear of cold-calling) but this is one of those freak moments in which I’m on a snark streak and I’m going to roll with it. o_o I know, it’s really weird. Please put down the bootstrap whips, doods who would lecture me about applying this elsewhere, as such talk is still generally not welcome here.

AHEM.

Why should you read my tweets?
Well… you know those fun-sized candies that we tend to decry as a rip-off but are, in fact, kind of awesome if you need a bite-sized sugar fix? Yeah, that’s what Yoshi-brand twitter is.
Imagine these little Yoshi Candies with Twitter-colored wrappings, and when you pop one you get a little burst of Yoshi-ness that would otherwise be too small to justify a post (most of the time… sometimes they are links to WIPs/finished arts, replies or, gasp, RETWEETS).

Just as I have been told that I have this thing about making the most mundane, daily nothings interesting enough to read about in blog form (whether or not this is true, well, that’s on you to decide), Yoshi-brand tweets are the same way, just… bite-sized. Omnomnom.
To continue with this horrible candy analogy, the Forrest Gump rule is also in effect– contents are randomized and may contain nuts. NAUGHTY LIBERAL NUTS. That is, I can, will, and often do shoot my mouth on politics and, NOT ONLY THAT, also let my raging voice actor fandom (particularly of one Yuri Lowenthal, who, by the way, is absolute hilarity on Twitter and MORESO when he and his wife Tara Platt are up to no good :3 :3 :3) fly free as a little tweety-bird without fear of having a fireball flung in my face. :D

Oh, and as if you didn’t need any more incentives, this is also what you want to follow if you want to see pictures (and, hopefully more frequently, VIDEO) of my big orange furball. So, in a way, Kestine gets in on the Twitter action, too.

I promise I’m not drunk, internet. I don’t even drink. I’m just naturally this smarmy.

So, internet doods, please follow me on the Twitter machine. I don’t have an awesome Robot Skeleton Army like Craig Ferguson does but… hm… maybe I can amass a Tweeting Prinny Legion. (Dood.)
Well, you could just read the tweet-feed without having to actually sign up for Twitter, but something about having a follow list that isn’t littered with bots and MLM-shills and other not-people-who-are-legitimately-interested just kinda tickles me pi… blue. Twitter blue.

As an aside, I’d considered making a Twitter feed just for the Cthulhu-like entity otherwise known as Yoshi’s Imagination but I decided against it since in most cases it’d break the 140-character limit. Sadface. :( Though, maybe I could make a Facebook fan page for it instead? HMM.

This concludes my shameless Twitter-mercial and I promise I won’t make such a horrible plug for a very long time. :P

Holy shit, it’s almost the end of February. March is when we REALLY get to the COUNTDOWN TO YOSHI DAY 2010 (aka “Yoshi Day Episode 26” aka “Yoshi Day 1st Season Finale” aka “Yoshi’s Birthday But Not April Fools Day”). Sadly I have no spoilers to offer for the upcoming not-television event, aside from it likely involving cake and other tasty food.

Also, unrelated: CURLING. Listen to a curling match without commentary (and no video). Doesn’t it sound really naughty?
I’m very sorry, internet, my mind is in a very lulzy place right now. XD I’m going to bum around on YouTube until Craig Ferguson’s on.

Well, smoo.

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

Apparently, yesterday was National Cookie Day. No wonder Mrs. Fields kept sending me coupon codes and such (well, more than the usual).

Though… apparently December is a clusterfwegh of National (food) Days. The 1st was National Pie Day. Today (the 5th) is Repeal of Prohibition Day.

Other particular food days of interest:

12/8: National Chocolate Brownie Day
12/12: National Cocoa Day
12/15: National Cupcake Day (note to self: tweet this to Tara Platt, ultimate cupcake fangirl. I am so not kidding, she squee’d when I tweeted a Jezebel link for the Periodic Table of Cupcakes XD )
12/16: National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day (I presume pocky is included?)
12/17: National Maple Syrup Day
12/21: National Hamburger Day
12/25: National Pumpkin Pie Day (hello, whoever came up with this is a MONTH LATE)
12/31: National Champagne Day (well THAT’S convenient)

Dear NBC minions (or whoever they outsource to) who code iPhone app tie-ins to their shows:

Please please please make a Twitter Tracker app!
In addition to being able to replay the Twitter Tracker segments on Conan (because flash support on the iPhone/iPod Touch is dumb and only supports Google, thus locking out the NBC video archive and Hulu and just about everything except YouTube and I think Vimeo) and link the relevant Twitter accounts, there is so much fun to be had with a Twitter Tracker app– mainly things involving stupidly-amusing text animation and abuse of the Twitter birdy!

Because, you know, this almost sadistic love of Twitter Tracker’s abuse of the bird is universal. If you like Twitter, it’s funny. If you HATE Twitter, it’s even better! Take THAT, bird!

So, yes. Twitter Tracker app… please? :(

♥, Yoshi

…dear god I’ve become an iTard.

And now Blastoise goes to sleep while I tweak Iggy some more. It has been suggested I slap Boxee on Iggy because he is a media center box and Boxee is supposed to be the most awesome media center software EVAR!!! or something, so I may as well give it a whirl. If Lifehacker gushes over it and even does features about building a dedicated system for Boxee and there are iPhone “remote” apps for it… then it can’t be mindless hype, right? >_> Guess there’s only one way to find out.

Also remember this Snowscheme? Consider it a clue for the next ’09 piece. >_>;

*click*

Not a secret

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Psst… [info]brendala (and [info]dmscv… and I guess [info]neophoenixte and anyone else who gives a smoo about Slayers):

@crispinfreeman: Back to dub more Anime in the morning. And the show we’re dubbing is… Slayers! Oh Zelgadis, how I missed you

Just thought you wanted to know. >_>;

“Oh CRAP” = epic understatement.