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[capitalist voice]: in the dystopian commie hellscape that is china, housing just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, leaving people who buy and then re-sell houses instead of doing actual work high and dry, while mean greedy workers selfishly buy houses, to live in.

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

got fully locked out of youtube for Using Adblocker crimes today (got a pop-up saying I'd be locked out after 3 videos and then the video player locked down) and after some experimentation discovered that switching to my old YouTube profile that wasn't created via a Google account has bypassed it.

i DON'T know if this has anything to do w the origins of the account or if it's just that they're not rolling the new features out to all accounts at once and I've found a loophole so ig we'll see how long this works for!!

this is what i've learned so far:

it initially presents as a dismissable popup saying that adblockers will shortly no longer be allowed & then after a while you get the 'three more videos and the player will be blocked' message followed by the player locking down.

the filters in this post no longer work

YouTube is rolling out the new measures gradually so if you haven't had any issues it's likely to be bcos it hasn't hit your account yet; comments along the lines of 'i used this browser + adblock combo' are therefore not very helpful.

if using uBlock you seem to be able to bypass it by logging out but this does have the downside of having to use YouTube logged out. it apparently also works in private browsing mode.

I posted the above workaround in a reddit thread on the subject and someone else confirmed that making a new account worked for them.

I'm HOPING that someone will come up with a permanent workaround before it hits my old account but given how aggressive this seems to be I'm afraid this might be the thing that makes me finally bite the bullet and switch to spotify :(

switching over to my old account HAS broken my recommendations but less so than logging out altogether so could be worse!!

ok further research conducted, the following adblockers are defo detected:

ublock origin

adblock plus

total adblock

according to comments seen on reddit the following can also trip it:

enhancer for youtube

vivaldi built in adblocker

i am currently having success with an extension called adlock. this list has some more I haven't tried.

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