librarypunk - 129 - Tumblr, Vtubers, and Ana Valens

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

We’re talking with Ana Valens! Internet culture, learning about yourself, and vtubing.  https://twitter.com/acvalens  Readings Tumblr Porn by Ana Valens (Remember the Internet, Vol. 1): https://instarbooks.itch.io/tumblr-porn-by-ana-valens-remember-the-internet-vol-1  Trans Women and Smut: The 4 Worst Tropes From Porn Artists | [Sex Ed Video Essay]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jf_aLAuCtE  Why Don't Games Journalists Cover Adult Games? It's Complicated. And Getting Worse.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m8C_gkvXGA  Public sex is at the center of a queer culture war: https://cashmeremag.com/public-sex-lgbtq-845525/  Pixiv's NSFW Ban In The US & UK, Explained — And Why DLSite Still Doesn't Have MasterCard & Visa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMdpWC-ReIA  Media mentioned https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-kill-the-couple-in-your-head https://global.oup.com/academic/product/trans-bodies-trans-selves-9780199325351 https://opendistro.net/

Yeah, absolutely. I was actually looking over the notes right beforehand, and I'm actually kind of glad we pushed because so much more has happened over like the past month or so. Like, it's really, everything's escalating that I already talk about. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas like, so I am an elder Tumblr and have had Tumblr since 2009. Yeah. And so like rereading your, like reading your book was like, oh God, I, like, I can't remember all of this. It was like sending me back through time. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no. It's crazy going back to that material and being like, oh, okay, I live through some crazy stuff on the internet. Like all these sorts of different drama periods and events that would hit everyone's timeline.

You mentioned Webrings and I just turned into the anime girl meme of like, Webring mention. Yeah, actually, though. That meme needs to be created, like complete with the little like GeoCities thing in her hand, yeah. Yeah. I mean, all my homies love Webrings. All the homies love livings. I'm glad Neo Cities exist these days because it perfectly, mirrors that experience. It's like, well, we're going back in time to like running your own HTML, like

mark down completely based website. Now the web rings are on like GitHub, which is really cool. Like I'm on one in GitHub. That's like for like digital gardens and personal wikis and stuff. I love that. I'm so glad. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go.

I'm Justin. I'm Scarlet Communications Library and my pronouns are he and they. I'm Sadie. I work IT at a public library and my pronouns are they them. I'm Jay. I'm a music library director and my pronouns are he him. And we have a guest. Which is like to introduce yourself. Sure. Hi. My name is Anna Valens. My name or my pronouns are she her. And I am a journalist specializing in NSFW online content and queer content that's marginalized on the internet. I'm

also a V-tuber, which means I pretend to be an anime girl over the internet. Hell yeah. Oh my God. I love that that wow. Justin loves V-Tube. YouTubers. It's incredible. Oh, really? I haven't been watching this many recently. Yeah. It's hard to keep up because like they cycle through pretty quickly and you're like, oh. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of niches. Yeah, I feel like all the big ones, whenever there's a chat that goes over about 400 people,

it's just like a stream of like words that are impossible to keep up with. Oh, absolutely. It becomes just like this giant like mob. And don't get me wrong, I know a lot of people that love the mob feeling of like, I am. one in a sea of many fans of this anime girl who's acting cute over the internet. But sometimes you want to be like directly interacting with the cute anime girl as opposed to like this like faceless, nameless blob that only exists as like the amorphous chat, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

I think like the only V-tuber I've been watching actually stream is Lynxie. Ooh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I have to admit as a V-tuber, and I think this is. common with V-tubers. Unfortunately, I actually don't watch as many V-tubers as some other folks in the scene. I basically have, like, two to three that I love, who are usually like my indie friends, like my one friend, lazy demon weep, who's very similar to me. She's, like, basically has, like, the girlfriend experience kind of vibe with her. She's, like, a little stinky, well, like, dog demon girl who, like, burps on stream and stuff like that. I love her. But, like, I basically just watch her and, like, another friend, and that's it.

I like the indie vibe. I think it also allows for like a direct communication experience and tends to have a lot more just like explicitly queer V-tubers in that world too. Yeah. Yeah. And you get more fun stories, I think. Yeah, exactly. Rather than the people who like never leave their room because they're like bubble children or something.

Yeah, absolutely. Like the indie Vitubers, again, going back to the one friend I mentioned, we'll be talking about like going out with their mom. And then like also they got completely and utterly like high as hell, like doing a bong rip and like sharing like some weed with their mom. And you're just like sitting there like, wow, this is so cool. They would never do this in a corporate V-tube stream. Yeah. How long have we been trying to do a V-tuber episode? Probably like two years.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm honored to be, you know, talking of V-Tubing with you all then. Okay, let's see. Where do I want to start? I think there's like a connecting line of a lot of things I want to talk about and you've talked about. How do people particularly like queer people?

like use the internet to learn about themselves, like the portrayal of different bodies or things like that. Like what do you feel is like the most important aspect like the internet culture brings to that? Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good question. I think there's really two parts. I think, so first off one, there's like the really important part of just information, right? Like the internet is, even if it's sort of lost some of its credibility in recent years

due to, you know, like the glutton of like AI content flooding Google search or like, you know, kind of the dead internet theory that everything is just like, you know, AI bot spreading misinformation on the internet. Historically, and it still is the case today, despite all the things I mentioned, the internet has an enormous source of information that queer individuals, no matter their age, you know, no matter their identity, an enormous source of information that queer individuals can learn to access and learn about themselves online. So the internet is still almost like this enormous global library written with a wide range

of different topics and themes and styles from very colloquial sort of like, you know, the person that feels like they're literally one of your peers, writing a guide to like trans feminine sex ed, all the way to like, you know, the sort of journalistic like rigor of like reporting on like what it's like to be, you know, like a trans teen in like a red state right now going to high school. Like there's just so much information available online about being a queer person.

And so a lot of queer people fundamentally use the internet as an information resource. And connected of that, and this is the second part, the internet is fundamentally a social tool to connect people, right? To build belonging, allow people to exchange information about each other and their identities through the internet. So in my book Tumblr porn, I wrote a lot about, you know, Tumblr as a space really for queer individuals to thrive, learn more about their sexuality, things like that. And part of that, of course, is the information part that I just talked about. But part of that is also building community between queer individuals, right? you know, people loved Tumblr because it was a social space where you got to meet other people

who shared your experiences with sexuality or introduce you to new ways of experience and exploring your sexuality, particularly your queer sexuality in this case. So I would say the internet is like this information social tool hybrid that's incredibly important to the contemporary queer community in a lot of ways has become, you know, so many queer people are like extremely online, like extremely, extremely online because it offers those things when their IRA local sort of communities cannot. Yeah, all of the different ways that I've realized I'm queer since I was 16 have been through Tumblr.

Like each time I was like, am I this or am I that? Or what, oh, I'm this now. Has all because, like, I saw some post on Tumblr or something. I was like, wait a minute. And it, like, put like a little seed in my head and it made me think about it. or like I saw a fan art or like when, you know, good art used to, you know, went back when there was like cool porn on Tumblr. Rest and peace.

I was like, that's where I first encountered it was like back on Tumblr back at the day. Absolutely. The whole bit about the gifts. It just like sent me back. I was like, oh, right. All of the gifts on Tumblr. I remember now.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, a very different time period.

I think, again, I do see hints and pieces of what Tumblr offered, especially in terms of like that amateur independent sort of adult content feeling, whereas like someone your age, you know, if you're like 21 college and someone who's like basically like 21, 22, whatever, also just like putting pictures of their body online on Tumblr and then you could talk to them. And it didn't feel like a very like like sort of unsafe or kind of like just skeevy environment. It didn't feel like you were on a site where someone was going to catfish you or scam you. It felt like very much just like an organic, gentle sort of experience. and a real exploratory one at that.

It still exists like that on Twitter. I see more of it these days even. In my personal experience, like it feels like people are becoming more and more as other websites close up. They are trying to bring that feeling to Twitter. But it was so different on Tumblr. Like, it really felt like you were hidden away from the world.

And you didn't have to worry about, like, you know, some random, like, person with, like, right-wing imagery, like, suddenly finding, you know, pictures of yourself that are, like, explicit and a little, suggestive and that you wouldn't want your family to see. So it was a different time that really is kind of in a lot of ways gone from the internet. I feel like it exists the most in discords now because it does provide that like screening ability to keep like people out and also to like kick people out if you have to. Absolutely. Yeah, one of the first discord communities they joined a friend

I was playing Overwatch with was like join this one Discord community and we'll use the VC together. You know, the voice chat. I was like, okay. And then what was the Discord community? It was was called, I kid you not, heal sluts, which is basically like, for those of you that don't know, it's like a BDSM dynamic through like healing in Overwatch. It's very complicated. But I remember just like coming in there, it was so crazy. I was just like, oh my God, like this is, I didn't sign up for this. I just wanted to play like Anna like sleep someone, you know, and it was very funny.

But it also showed me right away. Yeah, exactly. That Discord is this place now where it's like people are having ERP, you know, erotic role play experiences privately in these curated communities. And I can't fault them for that because they do think the curated community experience is a really powerful one, again, especially for queer individuals online. That really reminds me. I play Final Fantasy 14.

Ooh, yes. And there is so much of that in there. There's like nightclubs, which I'm so intrigued with. And like they're all like always linking to discords and stuff. And yeah, there's, yeah, you can. I've heard suggestions. on how to make like Gil in the game as like do robotic roleplay for people. And I'm just like, this is so fascinating because this was not at all the community that was

built inside of this game, but this is what has happened. It's just, I find it super fascinating. It really is. There are still places and a lot of it is through Discord. Like, that's really the way it comes together. Absolutely. That reminds me actually that the Final Fantasy 14 world, and I know there's like a specific server that kind of hosts like a lot of like the ERPing and stuff like that, which I think is so cool. Like it's like the red light district server. I think that's like so awesome. But Final Fantasy 14 and then VR chat, which is like a social media platform that's mostly used in VR

and also has a really huge 18 plus community. Those are like two very specific sort of platforms for that stuff that have organically appeared. I've really wanted to dig deeper into because those subcultures are so fundamentally important to both platforms. So it is really interesting, like what appears, why, and the curated community experience and how it sort of is all interconnected, right? You know, it's you start on Final Fantasy and then you end up in some polycule's discord where like everyone's calling you like a puppy girl or something. So yeah, it was, um, that's, uh, as I was reading through your book, it was, um, so I also just finished reading this book called a communism of love, um, which is

very good. I highly recommend it. But critique I have of it is it talks about technologically mediated and it's not just romantic love, it's like love as a form of communism and what that all entails, right? And it like talked about

how like technological mediation is often like, even if it is connecting us over technology is also still like reifying like capitalist like isolation and alienation. And like, I kind of agree with that because, like, there's a reason why queer people tend to connect online together, and it's because it's harder to do so in person, but also, like, people don't use, like, do the hanky code anymore because Grindr exists. And so, like, that

reinforced, like, created actual, like, more alienation where people had been mediating it in other ways, right? So, like, I feel like the way that you write about how particularly, like, trans, people and like sex workers use the internet to connect and form communities, like challenges this like more like capitalist technological way of like quote social media connection. Yeah, no, I think it's really complicated because, you know, there's been a lot more writing in recent years about, you know, the idea of the family as serving, you know, institutional, capitalistic, and patriarchal ends. And also there's a really good like chatbook slash zine. Let me actually go grab it really quickly.

Because I forget the name, but it's so relevant. Arthur, or no, Arthur. I was looking for Arthur. Justin, I can't hear you if you're talking. Yeah, I forgot I was muted. I was trying to find the gay Final Fantasy 14 server. I just Googled Final Fantasy 14 server gay. Good luck.

Yeah, you're going to need it. Everyone's listing fairy, but that doesn't sound right to me. I don't know what video games are still. I forget the exact one. I do have the name of the... It's mentioned in Preserving World Season 2. I don't watch it. I remember that though.

I know we did an episode on it, but that doesn't mean I watched all of it. It was the last episode. I didn't get that far, and I wanted to specifically for the Final Fantasy 14 thing, but I just didn't. It's hard. And my running joke is that I don't know what video games are. Oh, you don't know. Yeah, I don't know what video games are, no. We're going to have problems.

I'm a true gamer through and through. I found the Xeno. It's actually, I believe, a long-form, like, spoken essay from, yeah, that was given it in 2020. It was a talk. It's called kill the couple in your head. And it talks all about the idea of, like, sort of like the traditional couple and, like, the search for, like, like, you know, coupling as, like often serving, like, these sort

of, like, heteronormative, sort of patriarchal. And I believe it also talks a little bit about sort of the sort of like compulsory sexuality elements of it, you know, the sort of like anti-Aist elements that do emerge. So on the one hand, like I am sympathetic to the idea that, you know, like oftentimes in queer communities, like a reinforcement of normative beliefs and values, especially through love and sex emerges, you know, just look at all of like the antagonism against polyamory. Like, that's definitely a good example. But on the other hand, you know, absolutely like you said, right, I really do think, you know,

we see the emergence of like the polycule as like the existence of it, like, the term, the usage of that term sort of like just the nature that like you have a community of lovers. It's not just simply like this atomized state, but it's actually like its own sort of group entity and identity that's like beyond the family circumstance. Like that is like a queer trans innovation. And with a really strong sort of emphasis on the trans side of it, I really feel like the polychule came out from like the trans feminine community in particular really exploring and sort of identifying and sort of strengthening the validity of that experience. We saw that really from the internet. You know, like the disqualify.

scored polychule experience. So yeah, I think it's easy for people to say, well, social media is a tool to reinforce, like, capitalism and patriarchy and stuff like that. But in a lot of ways, it can be like queered into something that allows non-normative ideas and experiences to flourish. I love watching Justin Move Notes around in the Notes document as we do an episode. Arthur, what is it, buddy? Yeah, well, I wanted to make this transition smoother, which, hang on, got too many drops. God damn it. God damn it. It's becoming less funny the longer. I can't find the drop. And then here's a damn-ass fucking gay, damn-ass rock. I still feel like a stroke every time you play that one. I don't know what it says.

Arthur, what do you doing, buddy? Anyway. Arthur, get down from now. So we've talked a lot about like the good sides of learning about yourself and other people. But I want to talk about the bad sides, downside, sort of particularly the parts where people get, I don't know, harmful is the right word because I wouldn't want to use that word in this context, but maybe objectify themselves in learning about themselves or are objectified and see that happen. So you've talked a little bit about, let me see if I got the trans women and smut,

the worst tropes from porn artists, right? And so ways that people imagine themselves might also be, have downsides. And I just wanted you to talk about that some. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the biggest problems of the internet, of course, is too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, right? You can spend a lot of time online and be exposed to negativity or community infighting that happens in specific platforms. Like Twitter, for example, has infamously, I think this is not news to anybody in this episode, let alone listening. You know, Twitter infamously has a lot of issues with, like, queer infighting and discourse and things like that.

And so spending too much time on Twitter can make the average person, the average person, the average person in that queer community, without exposure to an IRL offline community, feel that what happens on Twitter is what happens offline, which is not very necessarily true. A really good example of that is, you know, there's a lot of ongoing sort of discourse and infighting between, you know, trans feminine Twitter users and a certain kind of subset of transmask Twitter users around navigating transmasogyny and like microaggressions from trans mask Twitter users. And so if you spend too much time on Twitter, your first assumption, is like, you know, you know, trans women and trans men are like so totally divided and don't have any solidarity

or anything like that. And then you spend a lot of time offline, you find actually, you know, most transmask, trans femme sort of like individuals have a lot of interconnection and love for each other and like, you know, solidarity and support each other. So it's very easy if you spend all your time on Twitter to confuse what goes on of Twitter with this like small subset of like transmask individuals who do have some issues of trans masogy. and assume that's like a blanket generalization you can make about the relationship between trans women and trans men. So I do think a major issue on the internet to begin with is that there are a lot of sort of communities that become bubbles, and it's easy to forget that you're in a bubble and that there are other ways that queer people navigate themselves, their lives and their bodies. I think also too when it comes to the way trans people and queer people think about themselves and their bodies in general, especially going back to the idea of like trans women, how they see themselves in smut. I think also it's easy on the internet to forget that there are a lot of different ways to

perceive yourself and your body as well and how you want to discuss it. There are a lot of people, for example, who are trans who have really intense bottom dysphoria, and there are a lot of people that don't. And it's really easy if you're on one side of, you know, Twitter, excuse me, Tumblr, TikTok too much to be exposed to one side of that kind of those two sides and not the other. You can walk away thinking a lot of trans people have bottom dysphoria or walk away thinking, you know, the sort of subset of genitals that you were born with, you need to be super duper proud of and it's like a failing, like a political failing if you're not. So I think it's really easy to kind

of get caught up in individual communities with individual values. And it's fine for communities to lean certain ways when it comes to, you know, certain perceptions of like how they'd like to be depicted in art or whatever, like we're very community and it's fine to have differing ideas and beliefs. But it's also easy to make broad sweeping assumptions about how one specific kind of trans person or one specific kind of queer person feels if you don't have a lot of different queer communities that you're plugged into. If you only know like people in a Discord server, people in your Final Fantasy 14 Guild or whatever who then go on that Discord server. Yeah, I mean, there's the joke that's kind of true that trans people shouldn't be allowed on the internet the first

like two years of their transition. Right. Kick him out, yeah. Well, because it's like when you're really defensive and reactionary. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I know I was, right? And then I look back and like, oh, God.

Like, you know, it wasn't until I started like, one, being a little further in and also, like, interacting with trans men and trans women who had further along than I was that I, like, calmed down a bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, not that like those feelings aren't, I gotta hate the work valid, but not that those feelings aren't like valid and an important part of transitioning. But, you know, I feel like so much, just how like so much Twitter discourse is just like from 14 year olds.

Absolutely. Sometimes I feel like a lot of the like the trans infighting is people who are very early in their transitions or something. Absolutely. It's so, so true. I think a lot of it had my first two years in, I was fighting a lot with other trans people about all sorts of different things. And then when I had hit around like the five year, four year mark, especially around like half a decade, I suddenly sort of took a step back. I was less likely to criticize and attack other trans people online. Like I stopped doing that as much.

But also I really noticed that like, you know, let's say like a group of individuals were fighting about like, I don't know, what words to use to describe like trans women's genitals when they're pre-up slash not off, right? You know, girl dick stuff like that. I sort of started to take a step back and realize, like, if one person liked Groldick and another person hated that term, and both of them were kind of early into their transition, to, like, kind of give them space to, like, have weird feelings and, like, hard feelings about, like, how they want to talk about themselves and their bodies, because a lot of that is not really about, like, is Gril Dick good or bad? It's about, like, I am figuring out how to have a body that I actively, like, enjoy and love. And I want to make sure that I'm treated with respect and that I'm not

forced to use words that I like or other people don't criticize the words that I like. And like, that is a very, it's like a underlying thing going on that I think when you're out for a while, you do kind of need to respect that like trans women going through like their first two years, any trans person going through their first two years beyond that situation too are going through a lot. So the least you can do is not be a dick. Yeah. I really like, I don't want to be a dick to like someone who's like probably saying there being like, gee, my mom still hates my guts. It's like, yeah, you don't need me coming in and making your life miserable, too, if you're having Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was also wondering, I guess when you see people get in these insular communities, like, you reposted something today on Twitter, which was like the green text where someone was telling their therapist that they had sexual fantasies or dreams about being rape and that they liked it. And then they said, was this too male-brained of me? And it's like one word.

Right. And I was like, every time I see something like that, like a compound word that like I've never seen before on the internet, I almost like, hmm, something happened here. I'm like, I have to work backwards. It usually goes to 14. Almost 99% of the time you see like mail something and it's all one word. You're like, oh, shit, they've been spending too much time on fortune. Yeah. Touch his ground.

Something bad happened here. Yeah. I also have to say the words, I saw you post something today on Twitter. one of the scariest things I ever heard in my life. Because every time it's either like, it's going to be about like, oh, there's something like really like interesting I want to talk to you about. Or it's like,

you posted something really horny and I don't understand it. I need you to explain it to me. So it's usually one of the scariest words I ever hear in any conversation. Why are you talking about Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice could get it? Wait, no.

You can call it out in this episode. No, comment. Not until my term. Well, Steambo Willie's in the public domain, so it's free for all. Yeah, Steambo Willie Mickey Mask could get it. No comment on all the other iterations.

Yeah, exactly. Disney's going to come along and slap you with a cease and desist. Oh, fuck. Slat me, you say. Slap me. Oh. Well, if Teamboat Willie Mickey does it, then it's fine. It is public domain.

Oh, God. But no, going, I mean, it's so interesting to me, too. the idea of like, I've noticed a lot this kind of thorough line in trans communities where I can tell now, like, who either has been spending too much time on 4chan's LGBT board or more, I'm not going to say affectionately called, but certainly called, maybe derogatorily called TTT, or also TikToks that are inspired by 4chan and like that sort of world or Twitter users who were on 4chan and TTTTT because I see like those sort of like AGP like Twink-Con like, male-brained. I feel like just saying those words and having like an aneurysm,

like they sound like they would kill a Victorian child. You know what I mean? It just is like, these are nonsense words. They're not in the Bible. But no, it's like, it's so much like that shit comes from there. And then you realize these people, you know, if you're like miserable for your life, then your mom and dad hate you for being trans and you feel like Twitter is maybe a little bit too optimistic or kind of argues too much about politics and you just want to go to a place where, like, people are, quote, unquote, real about being trans and, like, quote, unquote, edgy like you, then, like, fortune might appeal. And then you get stuck in this world where, like, you think because your nose is a little bit too big that, like, everyone's going to clock you and

no one's ever going to want to date you as a trans woman. And it's just like, like, I think it's really sad that, like, people get stuck in that bubble because I did spend a little time on that image board in 2016, just trying to see what that world was like. And it was one of the most depressing trans communities I'd ever spent like even a weekend. Like I spent time in there and I felt like I was actively eroding my soul. It's such a miserable place to be. Yeah, like, I remember

I know she's controversial, but I remember ContraPoints once did a video. I forget which one, but she talks about how she used TTT as a form of like self-harm. Yeah. And then like, I realize that it's like sometimes I would use Tumblr the same way sometimes when I would

go and purposely look for people talking about gay transmen. To be like, oh, look at these fucking straight girls. Like, you know, that kind of stuff. And like making like, and I would like read through it and like feel bad, right? But be like, oh, what if they're, you know, I was like, oh, yeah, no, that's a thing. It's miserable. Don't do it.

Absolutely. Yeah, no. I came to this realization like, like three or four years into my transition when I was reporting a lot on like turf shit or whatever. I was like, you know, sometimes I'm just going on to like our gender critical. when like our gender critical existed. And just like looking at the awful things that these people say because it's like a self-harm practice.

Or like you go on Kiwi Farans and you look at the awful things they say about, you know, like yourself because like you're self-harming. And then like you just once you cut like you don't need to know what they're saying and you don't need to see like what that community thinks. You could just cut it out of your life and it'll actively improves your mood. I'm like I don't care for instance what a place like Kiwi farm says about me because they can say whatever they want. I'm not going to look, you know.

Yeah. For me, it was like, it became a point where I was like, you know what, that's not my business. What other people think of this is just not like, it's just not my business. What people think about, you know, genderqueer people or whatever. So like, yeah. That's nice or whatever. I mean, it's not nice, but whatever. You know, it's like, it's fine. Go have your little. Bless their heart. You'll bless their heart. Absolutely. Let's, um, let's talk. about Pixiv. Sure. What's happening with Pixiv? Oh my God, it's a mess. Yeah, no, so it's a little complicated. Essentially what we see, so Pixiv is a very popular Japanese art website. There's like kind of different aspects of it. Like there's Pixiv fanbox that's kind of like Patreon. And there's like Pixiv proper that's almost like devian art for, you know, usually traditionally leads towards anime manga sort of content. And we've seen this sort of tightening of the noose for Pixiv over the past.

basically about a month or so, there's basically this period that happened all at once in March, where, you know, we suddenly saw Gumroad pull NSFW content, and we saw Patreon revise their criteria for adult content. And Gumroad banned all their NSFW material. That's just anything sexually explicit, you can no longer have on Gumroad,

and that's officially instituted. And then Patreon, Patreon and Ari have been kind of clamping down on content that involves, you know, dubcon, non-con, dubious consent, non-consent. Fictional work. You know, think of things like,

you know, fan art that has like two fictional characters, you know, emphasis on fictional characters here, right? Engaging in like a scene where maybe one is doing

something non-consensual to another and like the non-con premise is sexually exciting or just like erotically appealing to like the viewer. Patreon had been clamping down on that kind of content for the past couple years, but they officially codified it into their rules.

The same time that Gumroad banned NSW content and then Picks of all. also was hit with a pullout of, I believe, PayPal. Let me just double check because admittedly it has been a minute since I did that research. And all these bands are getting very confusing because there's a lot of information going out right now. It's actually really hard because I will literally take a break from covering a ban and then I come back like a week later. And I'm like, all right, I'm going to get what the update is on everything that's been happening.

And it's like, oh, shit, like 50 things happened. And there's like one less thing you can use to pay. for things. Yeah, I know. Just that meme from the Simpsons of the, of Mo, like, kicking the guy out of the bar and being right behind him again. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, so there is really, basically what happened with Pixiv fanboxes that PayPal pulled out support for posting 18 plus content or R18, as they say. And then also, we had seen as well, PIX of essentially expanded support for credit card payments as a result for those living outside Japan. There have been issues in the past of PIXIV

and getting proper support for, you know, if you have a Western credit card, there had just been some issues. But we're seeing a situation where the noose is really tightening for PIXIV as well. Because, I mean, this is the most up-to-date stuff. There were these specific U.S. UK regulations that were recently implemented by PIX that stress essentially that you can't post like non-con material on the site, non-con art and like things that deal of like depicting like stuff like blackmail

and that you also can't post anything that has lewd material as well as essentially codifying and obscenity tests through the Miller test into Pixiv. And the Miller test being part of Pixiv is supremely interesting because there has been a push by right wing politicians in the US to codify the Miller test as like a state like into state law as a test for whether

content is obscene or not. We haven't quite seen that in the U.S. It's usually the Miller test is used as sort of like a judicial standard and a very difficult one and often one used against basically either just general adult content or queer content. We'll traditionally see the Miller test use. So it's really scary epicsive because there's all these sort of guidelines against posting NSFW material. You know, they say like you can't post lewd content if they're in the U.S. or UK. And the real question is, you know, are they just sort of of saying it can't be lewd, but technically you still can post RAT material, it just can't be like too explicit. But also, do they mean post or do they also mean we're going to restrict

this content as well? Because if you can't post in the U.S. and U.K., you also certainly can't see it, which is what it seems likely to me based on PIX's policies about that as well. It's very confusing, but it's also very scary because, you know, this is a Japanese company that has been forced to change their policies. And it seems like they're changing their policies in response to both US, potentially UK, particularly US laws and credit card companies like MasterCard and Visa, clamping down on websites like Patreon, like Gumroad, and most likely that being the case of Pixiv as well. I was, the reason I wanted to talk about Pixiv is with the sort of clamp down, especially on fan communities, because we've talked before about how fan communities particularly like, I don't know, like Buffy, people learn about themselves through being involved in fan communities. And we saw a lot of that on Tumblr.

So since, you know, Tumblr is not really the place for adult content anymore, how do these different restrictions from credit card companies, like, affect how people get information about themselves? Yeah, it's really hard. And it's really scary because, you know, at the time, like at this current moment, these bands tend to affect basically adult creators and sex workers. the most. But it does seem like we could reach a point where queer communities are more like explicitly and directly and generally affected. And also just that these disrupt communities de facto, this disrupts queer communities de facto. You know, we're in a case where basically, if you create adult content, whether it's fan art or fan fiction or you're doing like original IPs, you know, whether it's fandom stuff you want to sell or whatever, it is increasingly getting really, really difficult to find a home to post that content and post it in a way that makes it very visible.

You know, I'm seeing a lot of sex workers and adult content creators scare that Twitter is clamping down on NSFW material because we're starting to see, you know, sort of like blanket blurring of images on the media tab and Twitter. It seems like algorithmically creators are just generally speaking struggling with Twitter more. I see my own stuff not appear on my followers timelines as much as it used to. It feels like there's more of a sort of separate. of fandoms and sort of like breakup of fandoms across different social media websites. Really good examples when people fled from Twitter to Blue Sky. And now like there's like a good chunk of your community is on Blue Sky, but they're kind of in their own world a little bit.

Like Blue Sky is kind of doing its own thing. And you've just suddenly like lost like a thousand, two thousand technically followers, you know, from your own Twitter account because those people are somewhere else now. You know, it says you have like maybe 15,000 followers. But technically you really have something close to like 13 or 12,000 because a good chunk is not checking Twitter anymore. And also, again, just the fact that as these censorship policies, as things become more hostile, you know, it is getting harder to really have a centralized place for people to promote their content. So that's more likely to break up a community that exists somewhere. You know, you can't have your, you know, CNC queer content on Patreon anymore. You might go to some other

website that no one really wants to touch because it's a little too skeevy for them. Or if you find that Twitter has banned your account for some strange inexplicable reason, you know, you might be, might get some of your following back, but not all of it because a lot of people will not transfer if you go to another platform. So really, as the heat sort of increases on any of these websites, it is more likely to decentralize and divide community and like separate free people from being in touch of each other, which then, of course, has, you know, the secondary and, you know, effect and so on of limiting communication between people. And even on, like, Pornhub, you can't search C&C. Like, if you search C&C, it's like, no, nope, you can't look for that? Now can you?

Yeah. It just, like, gives you no search results. Absolutely. Yeah, I remember a couple years ago, one of my followers was giving me a heads up, like, hey, you know, when I search on Pornhub for, I believe it was like, like, age play oriented content, you know, I'm talking like, yeah. Like, like, Daddy, Dom, like, little girl content, you know, obviously all of consenting adult performers, you would get like these warnings about like, you know, the content being like, you know, like basically like, you know, child sexual abuse. And it's like, you know, for like pretty much anyone that wants to view that content of again, again, consenting adults roleplaying, you know, being met with that right away is

one frustrating because you're trying to look at adult content you like. But also it's just like, that can be really shaming, right? Like it's sort of pointing a finger and saying like, you are a person who might have, you know, bad desires. And it's like, why is it like this right now? Like, why is, why does Pornhub have to put that message up? Like, that's not, it's not really good. Daddy is a category in the gay sector. Yeah, exactly.

It's like, Daddy and Mommy are fine in certain context. Like, are you, like, what's going on here, you know? It's like slap on the step sister, you know what I mean? Like, it's that kind of stuff. Yeah. I know on A.3, because one of my friends from library school, uh, does a lot of, like, moderation work with AO3. And so I could hear about all the AO3 discourses.

And so I remember when they first put the limit on like where you could limit who commented on your fic because so many people were like, like harassing people who posted like C&C or like non-con, like fanfic. Like people were just getting harassed. Absolutely. I am working on a fiction anthology. It's six stories of non-con, dub con, material. with a friend of mine.

It's like all lesbian non-con, dub con. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, I'm very excited. It's got like a larger thematic story to it. It plays around a lot of these ideas of like performers engaging in non-con material and like really enjoying it. And at the same time,

I'm very nervous when it comes out because it's, you know, a queer porn like anthology created by a trans woman that has like no qualms about depicting, you know, non-con, dubcon content for queer audience for their personal enjoyment. And, you know, I have two big fears, which is one, you know, that, like, Itchio, wherever I host is going to say this is, like, too extreme. You can't make money off of it, which is, like, a crazy thing to do. You know, it's, it's like that meme of, like, I consent, I consent.

And then, like, the third party of MasterCard. MasterCard. I don't. It's like, okay. But then my other fear, too, and I can't believe I even have to deal with this fear is, like, you know, like a 19-year-old kid or maybe like a 35-year-old who. who acts like a 19 year old kid, coming into like my Twitter, my itchio or my email and being like,

you should like die. Like, I can't believe you would depict this. Like, how could you? And it's like, well, they're not real. I don't know what to tell you.

I made them all. You know, it's like it's not like I entered a pocket dimension and made these people acting out non-con for their personal enjoyment for each other. You're banning people to the shadow realm. Yeah, exactly.

Non-con. I walk into the multiverse of madness and I say, now kiss like two dolls. put together. I would have loved that version of Dr. Strange. That would have been way better. That's my multiverse of madness and my two favorite female characters together

and making them kiss. Like Barbie dolls. Yeah, exactly. Throwing back to your comments on, Jay, on AO3. I don't know if you've seen this, but just very recently, they shut down guest comments because they were getting AO3 harassment spam, or AI harassment spam.

Yeah, they're back up now. Are they okay? Yeah. I saw that this morning and was just like, uh, and saw the, yeah, their announcement about it. So like, it's like even escalating even more because it's like, it's AI. So it's not real people harassing real people about what the real people are writing or creating about other not real people. So it's just like absolute layers of just like madness happening on that.

I can't wait until we get to a point where two AIs there are. arguing over like some non-con, dub-con, like, Yaw-I-Fick and like jiz-heck shit. It's going to be incredible. Yeah, it's like, there used to be a subreddit called like subreddit simulator on Reddit where they would basically do like the early version of like LM machine learning. They would train all these different subredits to aggregate them into like the average of like the individual person on like, say, our games or all are like, ask Reddit. And then they would randomly have some of them post a topic, like a post.

that was like a Reddit post from that subreddit. And then like the bots could respond and they'd all talk to each other. You couldn't post or comment at all. You would just watch like it was a zoo of like subredits aggregated talking to each other. And it was like one of the most surreal social experiences ever. Like you would just have random sort of like subredits saying like, you know, this is like responding to a post about like someone's cooking recipe. They'd be like, this is crazy. I think I'm having an issue with my wife.

Should I divorce her? And it's like, nice work, buddy. And it feels like. like that's what the internet is now today. It's someone randomly being like, I think my wife is cheating on me. And then someone replies, you should try this new cleater.

It's 100% recommended. And then the third person is like, I cannot answer this prompt at this time. Pussy in bio. Pussy in bio, yeah. I got my first pussy in bio reply today. I was so happy. Congratulations.

Yeah. I know. I was like, finally. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to upgrade to link in bio soon enough. And then just the naked woman picture where

It's like a naked, potentially AI generated one minute. It's like Linkin bio and MS Paint. Yeah, that's the future. Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. MS Paint, like Homestuck. Oh, yeah.

It's like, it's clearly like shittily edited. It's like paint.net maybe. Maybe I'm not giving them enough credit. Maybe they put in five minutes of work instead of two. I'm pretty sure there already are AI bots that argue with each other on Twitter. We just need to get them arguing about the right thing. But yeah, I've seen some bots recently that they definitely picked up on a keyword, but they didn't understand what the post.

was about. So then they post like an unrelated like sentence about like, yeah, well, this is why you can't cancel student loans. It's like, what? That wasn't what they were talking about. Yeah, I love that. It's so funny. Yeah, someone's like, I really don't want to go to school today. And then someone responds below, thanks, Obama. Joe Biden is ruining the economy. It's like, I am 16. What is this? It's like, go off, but based. Oh, my good. And I'm sure, especially with like the Miller test codification, I mean, honestly, that's like the good outcome because the bad outcome is like what we see in libraries, which is just anything is obscenity. And we just make up what obscenity is.

And then that becomes like enforceable by like the Comstock law, which for some reason has ever been repealed. Yeah. So honestly, like I'm codifying the Miller test, but that's optimistic. That's the one that they pick. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's really challenging, too, because it is hard to see for sure when it's going to stop. Does it start the Miller test? Does it end with, like, super crazy extreme censorship? It's really hard to say. Yeah, like, I love the point that you make in Tumblr porn where it talks about when Tumblr did the NSFW ban and like what it counted as like pornographic or sexual or whatever in nature. And you're like, yeah, but all the things I find. erotic and are pornographic to me don't fit that at all.

And so that like it weirdly like didn't catch then a lot of like, like, etroguru or like macro stuff or like all of this other like more niche esoteric eroticism, this like queer eroticism. And also just a lot of like just blatant kink. Yeah. That's not like essentially sexual. Yeah. So it's like what does.

count as sex and obscenity and like all of like what do these words mean especially in a legal context when like a sex act for like one person might like not involve genitals or nudity at all you know absolutely yeah no i think i think i mentioned the book i forget if i did the experience this experience of mine when i was reporting on like fur suits and like their nsfw equivalent which is myursuits, literally a fur suit that fur is used for sex. And I was like shocked to find, because I was kind of reporting on the history of it. And there's like this sort of parallel history of like people that are really sexually attracted to plushies and like, you know, stuffed animals and stuff like that. And I was shocked to find there's like this like several years after the NSFW ban on Twitter, I'm not Twitter, Tumblr.

There is this thriving community of people being like, oh no, I put my stuffed bear in like the cage today. Like Mr. Stuffles is in trouble. And I was like, this is like, someone's very clearly like getting off to this, but Tumblr is not flagging this as NSW content at all. And that's the case on YouTube as well. As a YouTube content creator, you know, I'm a, these days after I left my kind of journalistic job, I became like a video journalist. And I became an ASMR NSFW like content creator.

And I was really, it really fascinated me to find that like content with like giant women like eating small people. and like that content then like shows like all their stomach like rumbling sounds and being like, oh, this like tiny man's sure say tasted delicious. Like that's an extremely sexually explicit fantasy for someone into that. But YouTube doesn't flag it as sexually explicit at all. You don't even need to put the 18 plus filter on it in a lot of cases. So it's very strange.

Like you can find basically what is giantess porn as long as it doesn't have like mentions of genitals or like topless sections. You can put that on YouTube, but you can't put vanilla sex at all. And it's because, like, one is red as more explicitly sexual. And the other is just red as, like, a sort of getting a little bit too into a just unique fantasy. It's very interesting. It's very interesting. These algorithms reflect our normative perceptions of what sexuality are.

Or like the TikToks of the white ladies who do unspeakable things to their countertops. Yeah. Big food on their countertops or people who are, like, making like. get their hands all dirty. Yeah. Yeah. Like making drinks in the toilet. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. No, that's not a kink at all. I love the guy that like the buff. The buff guy needing the bread like really aggressively. It's like all these different angles. It's just like that's fine.

The pussy chicken guy. Yeah. I hate the pussy chicken guy. Or even just the. Forgotten about him. Or even the weird videos of the men in the pool and they're all like thrusting against like the the surface and it's like, which one would you choose? It's like that, so that's fine.

But if like a trans woman or like any woman, she was a nipple, then we have a problem. It's just like so funny. It's like so funny what's red is like not cool. What is red is fine for the algorithm. Or Mario presenting nipples. That too. Oh my God. The one way to get around this is to do what all the perverts on Quora do, which is go in there

and be like, if I was your step sister. really bad. What would you do to me? Wink, wink, wink, hyper, waggle. The people who swim with all their clothes on. Swimming with clothes, yeah. I love those perverts so much. Incredible. Incredible. There's also a thriving Zionist community on TikTok as well. I think that's one of the first and major instances. A lot of people learned about kink mining, where it's like someone requests you do something without telling you it's a kink. You know, it's, I think for a lot of people, they would get random requests like, hey, your content's really good. Could you pretend from a low angle that you're a giant stepping on me and it's like, hold up, sweetie.

First of all, you are under 18, because a lot of times they'll go under people, 18, and it's really messed up. But it's also like, that is also a kink and someone is trying to get stuff out of you. So that also is common to them, TikTok. It doesn't really get like flagged at all. But kink fishing for stuff that's not explicitly sexual, but it's very strange, super common now too online. Yeah, I mean, that's why I always jokingly call V-tubers, sex, what was it, sex work for children?

Oh my God. Oh, my God. Because if you watch a V-tuber, like, one of the big one, like, you can watch Gura or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. Middle of the road, most famous V-tuber, right? Yeah. And everyone is like, can you say these words really fast? It's a gateway.

It's like definitely a gateway until like crazy. Yeah, no, completely. I, um... It's just, it's chatterbait without the sex, because it's literally everything else that you would do in, like, of like a sex stream except the sex. Absolutely, yeah. And it's just as horny. No, absolutely.

I was thinking of like the one v-tuber friend. I mentioned lazy demon weave. I love her. She's really great. But all our streams are like, and she's explicit about this. Like she says like, I offer girlfriend experience streams, you know, GFE, which is already like a sex worker term, right? And like what does she do on our streams?

Like she does like licks. She'll like, if you redeem enough points, like she'll call you a good boy or a good girl. She will like burp on stream. and then there's a burp counter and like, you know, a couple people on that stream, maybe myself included, sort of have like a thing for that. So we have like this counter that goes off every time she puts out these really loud burps. And it's just like that stuff is like there's like it's Twitch safe. Like she can burp loudly on Twitch.

Twitch is not going to ban her for having a normal human bodily function. But like that is a sexual experience for a lot of her viewers. And then again, there's like stuff like, you know, it really being a gateway for that stuff. There's, I forget her name, but I, it's almost a little bit too on the nose for me. Like, I can't actually watch too much of her stuff, even though I love it. But there's literally like this one like, war themed Twitch V-tuber. And her whole entire schick is like, she is like, like a big mommy, like big stomach girl has like stomach gurgle sounds going in the background of the whole entire stream. And she just like eats her chat and like everything is like, you know, vore or like cannibalism fetish themed.

And it's just like, that. that's fine for Twitch. Like, Switch can't say, like, you can't eat your chat. But, like, this is obviously, to your point, like, this is a very sexual stream for everybody involved. Yeah. I've always wanted to ask, though. Sorry. I've always wanted to ask what, like, the labor of V-tubing, because there's, like, the corporate ones and there's the indie ones.

And I remember John and Ash from Horror Vanguard talking one time about, like, the entry-level-to podcasting is literally, like, can you record on your phone? Right. as a mic and like that's the entry. What's like the entry barriers to doing V-tubing and like the time commitment you have to put into it? Yeah, no, it really varies because V-tubing does have a lot of different iterations. I think actually to be a V-tuber, I know a lot of V-tubers that are kind of broke or poor or don't have as much money, but I actually do think V-tubing costs a little bit to get into and does require like, I think V-tubers lean from a middle-class background.

because in like the best quality V-tube streams for a new V-tuber, that usually involves like a 2D model that needs to be, you know, commissioned, rigged up, and then also a computer that can handle streaming from OBS, you know, a very common software that kind of captures certain applications or your screen and then broadcast it to Twitch or any other platform you want to stream to. For like a basic setup like that, it still costs a lot of money to have like a gaming computer that can

handle that or just like a decent computer that can handle it plus get the model and even if you want to go down a cheaper v tubing route like get what we call a png tubber literally an image that either doesn't move or just like opens and closes its mouth while you talk you still need like the equipment that can handle broadcasting that maybe have like a decent enough computer to play video games while you have the little png just any computer that can handle broadcasting like a certain amount of you know say like a maybe 6,000, 5,000 kilobytes a second over to Twitch. So I do think V-tubing is a little bit of an expensive hobby. I think it costs, I think to do it in a way where like you're actually going to like grow a

following. I think it costs a little bit. And I think it's really interesting for that reason because a lot of the V-tubers they come across either are middle class or came from middle class backgrounds or otherwise, you know, might be struggling right now and like maybe not have that much money and need a lot of support, but they have some sort of support network to fund them and make sure that, like, they can, you know, afford these things that are pretty expensive, like, again, a gaming computer or just a decent enough computer. So I have sort of complicated feelings on V2Ming. I think the entry to

get into it is a little bit pricier. I think it's not as simple as just simply recording something on your phone or, you know, just having like a webcam ready and like a little image. I think it requires some additional things because it's so multimedia driven. Do you have any insights into the corporate side of that world? Not too much, I think. My experience from what I've seen, and I, and this is really from like reading articles or just generally sort of, you know, piecing together things over Twitter is that it's really hard.

I've seen people compare V-tubing in the corporate side of things, like being an idol in sort of like, say, the K-pop world. And it seems like it's really difficult, hard work. Some corporations treat their V-tubers better than others. I also think that there can be issues with discrimination. There is an NSFW V-Tuber agency that was really popular that just started taking auditions called V-A-L-L-L-U-R-E, with like sort of the VA-L-U-R-E, with, like, S-F-W-O-O-Rient content creators. And me and some other trans V-Tubers kept asking them, you know, they said on their applications they only wanted female-V-tubers to apply. And we kept asking, you know, can trans female V-tubers apply?

And they would not clarify that with us at all. So I think there's also issues like that on the corporate side of V-tubing as well, where there might be certain sort of discriminatory practices, or at the very least, again, in the case of Ballur, leaning towards not the most sensitive and best practices towards marginalized V-tubers. And I think situations like that are not uncommon either. But yeah, no, the experience I've had is that if you want to go on the more corporate side of V-tubing, it is really challenging. As an independent V-tuber, I'm more encouraged to stake it out on my own and control my own sort of brand and business.

Yeah, I think I had a bit of lag there. Cool. Yeah, I'm also curious, though, about using Pure Tube because you had a different sort of side of things where you were talking about, why don't people review adult games, and then you do reviews adult games, and then you put the uncensored ones on PureTube. So how has that been working for you? Because I'm just really curious about an open source YouTube option. Yeah, no, I was originally very excited about peer tube, which is, again, yeah, this sort of open source YouTube alternative. And I literally didn't end up using Pure Tube as much as I originally expected.

I think for a couple of reasons. One is just my fear is always, you know, that I open up this sort of like website that is for NSFW oriented video content. And, you know, I'm not an expert on running my own website. So I want to make sure that, you know, it's the most secure online experience possible. And I just am not the best of the technological side of things. So I really would rather go to like a company that can host that's, I can host content with because they can handle the infrastructure side of things.

You know, God forbid like a DDoS happens or something like that. So I've been a little discouraged from using Pure Tube because, you know, it's like the pro and the con is that you run it all yourself. So like, you know, it's like you have to be the expert of everything with it. But as much as I saw potential in it, and I do like that I've had the ability to upload content there and create content for it, I do find it really challenging for the same reason that it's really challenging and hard to tell people like, oh, you were censored by Twitter, go build your own social media network, which is that, you know, there's always going to be a difference between a bustling, enormous place like YouTube that has a built-in platform with a ton of quality features and support features to make things easy for your content. to be seen, for your content to be found, you know, algorithms to help with that, and also really good quality of life features. That's what makes YouTube really good, versus, you know, something a bunch of people randomly sort of like slap together and try

their best to put together, you know, building a platform for that, getting people to actually view the content there, or just simply like making it a good community experience is a separate thing altogether, you know. And so I found it really difficult doing something like peer to actually make it work for me in the way that I'd want it to from like a business perspective, right? As a V-tuber who's like trying to grow a sustainable sort of like outcome for myself where I can like make content and like live off of the money that I make from like viewer support or whatever, I found like that kind of model doesn't make as much sense as like putting that content on something like a fans leaf, which is like only fans or something like or just straight up Patreon. Also it just is really hard.

When you create something, it gets like 500 views on YouTube, but only like a couple on the peer tube iteration. And when you have to do like a couple hours of extra work to create the uncensored version of the same video. So it almost feels like why I put in the time when like I'm not really going to see the same return even from viewers if I upload it to peer tube? So yeah, I found it a little discouraging, but mostly because, you know, there's not a lot of really good support in the contemporary internet for people just running their own websites and trying to get people to visit them. It's not a problem of like, you know, viewers or individuals. It's a problem of the web being antagonistic to that and it's more corporate state today. Yeah. I was also, it just made me think like what, what alternatives would exist if, you know, you needed to move a streaming audience from, say, Twitch to another platform because of some TOS change that just fucks you over and you can't make money there anymore.

Like, what would your options be? And it's, you know, that kind of like website infrastructure is really complicated. Absolutely. There was when I first started V-Tubing, because I started in 2022, took a break and then came back to it. I was trying to find a good place to do NSFW streams as openly and freely as possible with my V-Tuber, because it was originally going to be a completely NSFW V-Tuber, no YouTube content, no Twitch content, just NSFW. I was going to be sort of like playing adult games and making fun of them was originally my V-tuber brand. And I was like really surprised to find how difficult it was even and just find a play, within the NSFW friendly sites that do exist for NSFW V-Tubers, you know, I found immediately issues with what kind of content might or might not be allowed. So there was this one website that I wanted to stream out called Joystick, and I do want to come back to them because I know they've become more popular. I don't know if their TOS has changed since this time, but I remember having a conversation with them,

and it seemed like a little ambiguous whether certain non-con, dub-con video games could be played. And I remember sitting there and just thinking like, this means that like a good chunk of games that I might want to play or even like do like satire of make fun of parody of when I let's play it. You know, do sort of like a narrated gameplay run on a stream. I might not even be able to do because this content might not be allowed on the platform. So it's like I can't even win within the NSFW infrastructure, right?

Like I have to be playing games that are like, you know, meeting the rules and regulations that these companies have to play with because of payment processes, right? again, going back to the whole PIX of, you know, situation. So it's really challenging. It's like this, it's a really, really, you know, even within the alternatives that are NSFW friendly, that's not even getting into the fact that, you know, YouTube Twitch has a much bigger built-in base demographic and like population than like any of these NSFW places will, which often close down anyway. So it's, it's really hard. It's really hard to do that NSFW content creation.

Yeah, or they get popular and then they kick off all the NSFW. people so that they can expand it to something else. Absolutely. That's often the case as well. I mean, it's crazy how we nearly lost only fans. You know, we came very close to only fans getting rid of all the sexually explicit material. It's really, that was wild. I know. Yeah. I remember I switched jobs at the time, and I saw that that happened. And I, that was right when I finished writing for DailyDot, and I came to my DailyDot editor while working the other company,

it was like, you know, all right, I'm back in for one more job. I got to write about how fucked up this is. And so she was like, here you go. Go right away. And I banged it out, like, the night of the band got announced. I was like, I can't just not read about this. This is one of the most egregious things ever. And it's, I think it's still really powerful that that ban was averted. It really showed that, like, if people work to make it clear that they think something like that is a messed up, fucked up decision, that there can still be resistance to an SFW ban. All right. I wanted to ask a sort of like a last question to justify by doing this whole episode about V-Tubers that I wanted to do.

No, but seriously, with what we talked about with, like, misinformation, disinformation, information sources dropping down all the time, what can, like, library workers who have certain skill sets do, most likely in their free time, like, this project, that could help trans people find information that's, like, helpful, accurate, encouraging, edifying, like, how could we use the tools available to us to do that kind of thing? Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, things like this project are really important, like taking the time that you have. And, you know, I always think projects like this that happen off the clock are really important

because, like, it shows a level of real dedication and care for a community. You know, you're already tired after eight hours working and then you go do additional work like this. Like, that's a really wonderful thing. And I think it's, it always means a lot to me when people use that time that they have after work and put it to help others. I think it's a mark of something that deserves immense respect. So I think, projects like this are one really, really, really important already. I think also too, really, I think there's so many different ways. It's like hard even to know where to begin. I think one of the best things, first off, is just knowing the landscape of the information,

you know, where are good resources, where are trustworthy resources, where could you direct someone so that they can learn more about this content from trustworthy sources, right? You want to make sure, especially the state that Google is today and the way that a lot of unfortunately mainstream publishers are today, you know, spinning half truths and lies of trans people. You want to make sure that, you know, anyone that a librarian is working with, whether it's a teacher, whether it's, you know, someone who's young that comes in, you want to make sure that they know, you know, how to apply critical thinking skills around this issue to the best of their ability. You want to make sure you're well read on this topic and you understand, you know, what's the territory, right? Like,

what's the terrain like, right? What is the dog whistle? What is not? What publishers have certain biases? How are those biases going to appear? What publishers are. have good information and good resources. And what publishers have good intentions, but bad information and bad resources, right? You want to direct people to get the best information, not just good politics. So I think it's really important to, like, do the research and really make sure you understand the terrain of the topic. I think that's one of the best things you can do.

I think also knowing where to direct people in terms of what authors, what sources, what, you know, books historically have been really good. I think of immediately, you know, if I was helping someone and they came up to me and they said, you know, where is a book that I should start to learn about trans issues, right? I would probably direct them to read trans bodies, trans selves, right? Which just had a recent addition, so the information is updated. And also, it is, it's a brick. Like, I'm not sure if you've seen that thing in person. But that thing could probably like, you know, that thing will literally not get like blown away by a tornado. It's huge. It's like such a good resource. So I think being aware of what to recommend, what the terrain looks like is really, really important. And then from there, you know, if you want to take the next step, I think also using that skill set to help community ventures, right? You know, if you can find a way to sort of offer like the online lending library experience or like donate books to like trans people in need, right? Get like buy them PDFs, get them access to those books, right? Do like a borrowing system where people can take books and like freely pass them around, things like that.

you know, outside of your kind of like general nine to five hours, I think all of those things are really, really good and really helpful because it really is just a situation where there's a lot of bad information out there right now. And there's a lot of information that has good intentions, but doesn't really point people in the right directions. And there's a lot of works and books with bad intentions and really misinterprets data to try to, you know, peddle a specific belief that's transphobic, that's trans misogynistic, that is anti-transant nature. So that's what I would say. I think knowing the terrain, finding initiatives to spread information easily and freely within your community, and thinking, you know, where are the best resources I can tell people to go to where they can start to learn about this issue. Yeah, I know people have made, for instance, reference services outside of regular things, like for prisoner support. And so I think, I mean, there's already like the switchboard, But, you know, it's quite possible people could put together, especially for people like in Texas. Like today I had a coworker, you know, say, because of this SB 17, do we have to take down these collections that have the word DEI and the title?

And luckily I was like, it's my department. I'll take the blame if someone yells at me. Fine, I don't care. But like that kind of overcompliance is very, like, troubling. So don't do that. Yeah. Don't preemptively just wait for someone to yell at you and then do what you have to do, whatever. Yeah, I think that's a very wise way to put it for sure. Yeah.

Yeah. I know, there's probably, I mean, we've talked about infoshops and community bookstores and thing like that. Yeah, there's, it just came out. I'm trying to. Yes. So open distro.com.net is a new project that came out. I'll drop it in the chat. that has resources for how to do, like, open, like, print publishing. So it teaches you, like, what you need to make a print book. It also has a bunch of, like, open source and public domain, anarchist texts that are already pre-formatted to print out. But, like, yeah, it has, like, everything, including, like, tech recommendations and, like, supply recommendations for, like, if you want to, like, do just your own, like, even beyond just making zines, like, if you want to just, like, do some gorilla print. like here's information on how to do it.

Very cool. Yeah, very cool. I didn't realize that existed. I will say two, speaking of which I've found one of the best things to do as well is actually just having a list of resources that you recommend is like a godsend. There was leather dyke community used to be a part of. And the person who ran it, like she just did a list of all the books that she recommended.

That was like historical information or just like good guides for like the BDSM community she was part of. basically saying like, look, I read through these works, you know, I, as someone who has a lot of experience in this community, like physically doing the stuff that these books talk about, I give this my seal of approval. And I learned use that Gdoc like so much because just like with queer stuff, there's so much bad BDSM content out there. But knowing like what the good stuff is, is like a godsend and gets people on the right track to get the right information. So I think on that note, too, even just compiling the resources is like a godsend. I know whenever I get those lists of like book recommendations, I feel like it's like Christmas Day for me.

I'm like, yes, more things to blow like my money on. Yeah. Well, everyone remember, ILL. You can still get queer books through that sometimes. I got Anna's book through ILL. I didn't have time to read it because I got like a week to read it. And I was like, I didn't get to it. Many such cases.

Yeah, it's very, it's very cute. Thank you. The prints real big. So it's like, it takes like two minutes to read. it's really good. Thank you. I literally just like, whoop, and then I was done. It was great. I'm always flattered. It's got really good art in it. Oh, yes. Yeah. I'm always flattered when someone tells me they picked up the book and

finished it in a night. I love this one. Of course. Oh my God. Getting the art actually in the book was such a fun process because we needed to make sure that the publisher was going to be cool with it. So we had to be very picky about like what art did and didn't get in. But we got like two commissions in the front. One's like a giantess one. The other is just like me giving like a panty shot. And I went to a reading once and I was like, by the way, just a heads up everybody.

I don't want to like jump scare you, but there's a picture of me like giving a panty shot here. And then there's very cute. Thank you. I'm very flattied. Anyway, this one, there's like a Dom friend of mine that came to that reading and she screamed out loud like, what page is it on? I got to know.

And it was so. Yeah. One of my favorite parts. Justin. Yeah, no. It was just amazing. just like how much like, yeah, it's just like all porn. It's great. Oh, it's so good. You can't have a book about porn without porn. Without porn in it. I just bought the e-book, so. According to community standards, it is a really good book, evidently, so I don't know. I guess we're good.

It's all really interesting, too. Like, it's not just like, it's not just cheesecake stuff. It's like, interesting. It's cool. They added it up to the Miller test. They said, if it's cool and for the plot, then you, it's fine. It's not of sanity. Oh, I see, yes. Do it for the plot. Do it for the plot. Chat, is this obscenity? Chad, is this real? What if Library Punk had a chat? I guess we have Discord, but they aren't here when we record.

No. You can become V-tubers. You can become, you can be a librarian V-tubers. That would be really cool. Oh, God. We've talked about it. You should do it. I've talked about it.

Justin has fantasized about it. You should, because then there's, there's like that little system where, like, You can redeem points in Twitch and throw a book at somebody and like, you know, their head like goes flying. So you can have people throw books at you with different names. Like, oh, okay, I'm going to read Judith Butler. Ow, thank you for the redeem chat. I definitely tried getting, like figuring out how rigs work in OBS. So I used the rigging tool that's in like Steam for free.

Yes. And then I was trying to connect that to OBS, which I'm pretty good at OBS. I know how to use it, but the rigging thing confused me. And I was, I got frustrated. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the best way to get into it is probably Veroid Studio, which lets you just kind of create a character and then pop it out to use in something like VC face or so. But again, like, you know, it all comes down to having the correct specs on your computer to like run and stream everything, which is it's all separate. It's whole separate thing, really.

Yeah. Well, I know what Justin's doing tonight. Veroid software. Hyperfocus engaged. Yeah. All right. Did you have anything that you wanted to plug in particular? Because I've got some of your videos. I've got Twitter account. Anything else? No, not really. Just if anyone that's listened really like what I had to say or you just like my voice and you want to see my content online, I'm AC Valens, A-V-A-L-E-N-S on Twitter and Twitch. And if you want to follow me on YouTube, it's the same AC-V-V-V-V-V-V-T at the end. So A-C-V-A-L-E-S on Twitter. And if you want to follow me on YouTube, it's the same AC-V-V-V-V-A-L-E-S, but with V-T at the end. So A-V-V-V-E-S. an SVT on YouTube.

And go check out what I do. I have a lot of interesting thoughts and opinions. And I also create a lot of ASMR content where I do things like get excited over having a roommate that can pretend to be a pet girl, so, which is one of my favorite things in the world. I'm a bad dog, Ian. Hey, wow, that's from my latest audio recording. That's crazy.

All right. Well, thanks so much for coming on, Anna. My pleasure. Thank you. Good night.