This past week, and really the month as a whole, has been odd. Frankly, I was wondering if any of this making-stuff-and-posting-it-online business was still worth it. To be clear, it's been a mixture of things—the 25 year itch (I'll be 25 in June), folks in Somnolescent being busy or stressed out with life on their own, alternating indecision and disinterest in my art and writing, my own struggle at finding a job—but the last straw, and where this affects the Internet, a place I'd really like to go to have fun in all honesty, was seeing the way the groomer Discord server leaks got discussed.

If you don't know, this month, a site called spy.pet popped up selling access to the logs of publicly-accessible Discord servers. Some of them were, really, a thinly-veiled child grooming operation using cute memes and anime boys as a way to gain access to and prey on teenagers, getting them to take photos of themselves and all that, I don't need to go on. The spy.pet guy joined the Kiwi Farms to post his discoveries publicly, and folks closer to home than I would've liked had...difficulty with the news.

Predators are an upsetting enough topic, but when I saw people in servers I'm in desire violent revenge on that guy for shining a light on the shit currently being done to teenage boys, boys just like I was—insecure, from dysfunctional homes, figuring they were just so precocious for their age—I was alienated. If you don't know, and I'm about to put this very not delicately, so be warned: I was a grooming victim. From age 14, I had an older woman encourage me to write snuff for her, violent, painful snuff. She withheld her affection for me until I gave her something to shlick to. She preyed on the stuff that I was into. We roleplayed both, and then she handed all the logs over to another underage person to humiliate me publicly with. She wanted me to move to Canada someday, pretending to be a deeply sick person with about every condition under the sun so I'd feel bad and take care of her forever.

I don't let any of this affect me these days, but that's where I'm coming from. It's a topic very close to home, and seeing people unbelievably fold the kinds of abuse I took under the umbrella of "queer servers"—phenomenal, just the community I want to be associated with, as someone who's learned not-so-quietly over the past year that he might just like dudes as much as chicks. That's all this is, being queer! And not pedophilia or anything.

You can think that's retarded, you can tell me I'm projecting, you can tell me to stop paying attention to the news, but it was everywhere I went. Sheezy had a discussion, boomer shooter Discords I was in had discussions about it, I think it might've even gotten posted in Protoweb? Naturally, folks were worried their own messages had been posted publicly, but the more concerning, and frankly more telling, reactions of fury and upset let me know that I was sharing very different air than I was when I first joined Discord. That's the Internet I share with people? That's who tell me they "worry" about me poisoning their social well? People not upset that kids were being targeted, but that someone decided to show everyone what was happening to them. That's the bad guy.

The classic tale of people seeing two different movies strikes again. I kept my mouth shut through all of this. All it'd do is get me banned and more people cursing the meanie old mariteaux once again anyway for having a heart about the fucking kids and not wanting them to get preyed on or anything. It all fed into a feeling of "maybe I should just leave". "I don't fit in, shit is different now, this isn't my Internet, I'll figure out something else." That's not the only reason I felt that, like I said. I've been more and more aware that the folks on Discord and IRC, even servers about retro tech and old video games, really stuff you'd expect adults to be into more than kids, never get older, but I do. I'm lucky to have Somnolescent, a tight-knit group of people my age who share my interests and I love talking to, because goddamn, that shit is hard to come by out there.

Of course, I'm not leaving. I got blackpilled for a bit, but I'm coming to my senses. I have good chats with people, especially on small Web forums these days, and I'm contributing more and more to Protoweb—it's been really nice to have an outlet for my specific skills and interest in early Internet development. (I wrote a NoSQL CSV database and search thing in PHP for my bleem.com restoration! That didn't even get a journal post, sadly, but you can read a little about the process in the writeup I did on the Protoblog.) Most folks are alright. Quirky, but alright.

And hey, let's continue rolling with the good news, since I got the exorcism out of the way. I meant to announce this on here when I was officially at 160 (maybe I'll focus on it more in another post), but I'm now 18lbs lighter than when I started trying to lose weight in January! I was never super heavy, but I was a couple into overweight territory, and after a Christmas season of a lot of chocolate and booze, I was curious how much I could truly lose, since I'd never really given my diet much thought. It really became apparent today, after an interview I had (which I'll hear about how I did tomorrow, hopefully it's good news since I think I did well)— all of my nicer clothes are a size too big now, and I have to do my belt one notch tighter to fit my work pants as comfortably as they did at Staples. That's wild to think about.

Finally, creatively! I've got a plan for cammy.somnol now; not too drastic as far as changes in the content go, but I have in my head an idea for a new, much fancier front page graphic featuring Cammy as opposed to Setter, plus everyone else's sonas. (Setter will be moving to lofi.mari.somnol, as part of the three-pronged "support all browsers" approach I want to take for that, so no worries, the puppy will not be without mascot work!) I've also decided on a new page banner style, something a lot tidier and a lot less work than the fullbodies I've been doing since the site started. (I gotta get back into drawing, it was something I wasn't much in the mood for lately. Is a shame—another thing I've come a long way on and rather enjoy.)

Oh yeah, and I've been working on a Quake map! It's a little thing for deathmatch I started last year before I went to Wales the first time, but finished it over this oddball period where I didn't want to do much else. I'll save the full details for a post I'm gonna write tomorrow. For now, have a crunchy screenshot:

So yeah, kind of a heavy post, but I'm coming out of the other end. Good timing too; Caby just finished the last of her schoolwork last night, so I'll be hanging out with my girl more! (After she gets in a nice nap, of course. Lots of twelve hours days and not a lot to talk about other than schoolwork, rough times...)