Please forgive the length of my post
I’m a tenacious and uninhibited kind of person. Companies hate me. I talk to them like equals - asking questions, expecting answers. They hate me for it. All you have to do is give me a phone number to a real person, that’s all you had to do. But instead, I’m doing OSInt trying to find the office number for a random lady in your HR department, because you’ve made yourself completely inaccessible. “Send us an e-mail with this form” haha fat chance, like anyone will read that. How stupid do you think I am? How much contempt do you have for me? How much disrespect do you have for your customers and end-users that you won’t let them hear a human being address their concerns? You don’t have a spokesperson? A reception? A PR Guy? Fuck off. Sorry, I guess they’re too busy working from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM remotely from home three days a week, like the rest of you white collar freaks.
So ok, I try searching for office phone numbers. If that doesn’t work, being fortunate enough to live in a big city, sometimes my next move is just to show up at their local headquarters. I highly recommend it to everyone, that gets results. They hate that. That shit terrifies them. Nothing terrifies them more than an actual consumer of their product showing up in person. Actual physical accountability. It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t so pathetic and sad. You’re that atomized, that alienated and scared, that you’re terrified of a customer just asking a question to you, in person, face to face. What am I going to do? I am but one woman, one of the people your company needs to keep enriching itself, simply smiling in your office in a well-fitted suit. Why are you so afraid? Is it that all the police and security guards money can buy can’t stop me from being tenacious enough to ask a sincere question? That all of your money still can’t account for being annoyed by people outside of your control? Seriously, just pathetic. These people live in such constant control of their sensory environment, constantly inundated with racist crime propaganda, the idea of a friendly stranger using their product is literally impossible to them. Imagine being that misanthropic, what losers.
I made a tumblr blog at the end of last year. Was very excited, as someone who has a pathological fear of social media and was looking for a way to build connections and solidarity more. An attempt to be part of society and be less of an exclusively lurking ‘digital agoraphobe’. I considered using the new blog as a sort of professional portfolio as well. Immediately, seconds after creating it, I’m marked as explicit. I made no posts, followed nobody, messaged no users. I’m marked explicit. I reach out to tumblr support.
9 months. 9 months later they get back to me. “HMMM UMM WE’RE NOT SURE SWEETIE… ARE YOU SUREEEE YOUR BLOG ISNT SEXUALLY EXPLICIT?” “Yep” “OK WE’VE UNFLAGGED IT NOW TEEHEE WHOOPSIE!!” “Why did this happen? What did I do to trigger your flagging system? Can you please let me know what I need to do to prevent this happening in the future? I’m trying to build a professional portfolio here, and I can’t just have it randomly be inaccessible for 9 months.” radio silence Like, it’s not that big of a deal. I’m always friendly and cordial whenever I have a chance to actually talk to someone. This is why I’m such a big phone call booster. All this text and e-mail shit is exactly what the elite in charge want, because they can just sit on it forever, never have to respond. “We love to hear feedback from everyone!” and their form just gets sent to an inbox that’s never opened. But a Phone call with a human? A face to face interaction? THAT’S fucking accountability that forces them to immediately respond. Look man, I expect to be treated like a bug at this point, to be treated like a cockroach. At the bare minimum, you should be forced to actually tell me to go fuck myself. Especially from tumblr, a website that markets itself as friendly and queer and hip, to randomly be telling it’s users (many of whom have serious sexual traumas) that they’re flagged for being “Sexually Explicit” for doing nothing. I won’t even open the can of worms of them doing that to random SFW selfies of transmen and transwomen, groups of people who are already regularly told their existence is inherently sexually explicit. This is why I avoided all of this social media shit to begin with, why it terrifies me - in addition to the damage 4chan kiwifarms mfs can do if they decide they don’t like you. Complete unaccountability, everything you build online can just be instantly undone by cold, uncaring, distant, privileged, elitist freaks. No trial, no reasons given. Literally kafkaesque. And I hate how as a relatively young person, this is damaging my ability to make connections with others.
I’m not going to go to tumblr’s offices and demand answers or anything, I don’t give enough of a fuck about this, it just makes me sad and tired. Me making this post is the extent to which I care, and even this feels like too much work in regards to this. God damn, why the fuck does the SFW/NSFW distinction have to dominate the entire internet?! Most people are adults! Why are we intellectually and artistically kneecapping the repository of all human knowledge so some toddling pants-shitters can “safely” watch skibidi toilet 47?! It’s not even safe, kids are still getting groomed online! All of this shit, holding back culture and sexuality and drugs, all of that for the supposed safety of the children, and they still get groomed online. It doesn’t even work! Most of us grew up with the internet in some capacity, whomst amongst us didn’t check the “Over 18” box when we were underage? We should have entire generations of people who already know from firsthand experience this shit doesn’t work! The SFW/NSFW dichotomy allows people to marginalize subjects they don’t want to face or talk about into “NSFW” where they become filthy untouchable pariahs. The idea of making certain ideas or people or subjects “not safe” is going to fuck with people, even on a subconscious level.
Social Media, the internet, websites in general, it’s like they have active hate and contempt for their end users, because as someone who is supposedly their prime target demo, they have made their services too frustrating, patronizing, and difficult for me to use. I was an IT SysAdmin for many years for fuck’s sake, how can they design something so hostile even I don’t feel comfortable using it?!
anyways, my sincere thanks comrade for reading this far and for letting me vent this somewhere. I know it’s kind of a cringe rant, but at least I know on hexbear the posters are (mostly) actual real people with flesh and blood.
I want to be clear: I don’t think you want to harass employees on the phone. However, as a person working for a very small company that used to have open incoming phone lines, 99.999% of the time someone just wants to “talk to someone” about a problem they’re having, they really just want to yell at and insult someone who has to take their abuse as a condition of employment. That’s why it’s so hard to get someone on the phone.
Yeah and unfortunately that issue is only solvable by making those phone calls go to the people responsible, who hide behind many layers to make that impossible
If the person you’re getting angry at doesn’t have “executive” or at the very least “manager” in their title, you’re just making a random worker’s life miserable
It sucks so bad that companies are both completely evil and yet made up of people who aren’t evil and deserve compassion and are also victims of said company. A “company” is really like 6 guys who are fully unaccountable to anyone and are completely impossible to contact.
The other day a client sent in a ticket, all caps, ranting, because they didn’t read the documentation. I went out of my way to call them since they provided their phone number, and how did that go? Well, they spent five minutes shouting about how they don’t have TIME to schedule a call, they needed it fixed NOW. Of course, it wasn’t important enough to stop shrieking and providing advice to me about how to run the company that I don’t run so I could actually tell them the solution to their problem. Even after they got through their initial shouting fit and I solved the problem their dumb ass created for themselves, they went right back to yelling management advice at me, a person who is not in management.
This is why phone access is less and less available. Who has time to waste listening to some 60 year old man-child who hasn’t figured out how to interact with other humans? There was actual work I could have been doing instead.
Yeah. Those working the phones are just regular working people, not “white collar freaks working from home 10-2 three days a week”. Please treat them decently as you would all other workers.
Those working the phones are just regular working people, not “white collar freaks working from home 10-2 three days a week”. Please treat them decently as you would all other workers.
More people need to remember this. Yes there are jerks here and there but the vast majority of workers are just regular people just like you. They are just working because they have to and they are trying to make it through the day given the weird constraints that come with employment. Be cool to them at all costs.
Absolutely correct, but I don’t think she was talking about phone reps there, I think she directed that towards upper management types, who absolutely are wastes of space who rarely if ever do any actual work.
Absolutely. I want to be clear too, I don’t harass or abuse these workers and I don’t encourage others to. These quests are just quixotic attempts of trying to find some official representative of the company who can tell me in clear language the information I need to know to properly utilize their product or service. If I’m calling someone who I know wouldn’t possibly be able to help me, I immediately apologize and ask them if they know who I can or should contact, and if they can redirect me. This has worked out for me pretty well in the past, but it’s often frustrating the amount of hoops that are put in place to make it so difficult to contact someone. I understand though, I’ve worked in positions where I’ve taken inbound calls from the public. I think it’s an element of hostile design that’s made all of our lives worse, and these companies love passing the buck around from department to department, from role to role, so that oops, nobody is ever accountable! Websites, Apps, Healthcare Providers, Hiring Agencies, Insurance Companies, Utility Companies, idk, it just sucks. But yeah, generally I’m a big believer you attract more flies with honey than vinegar anyways. I personally have a feeling it’s less likely that the public’s abuse of these workers caused this and more likely that it’s the result of profiteering strategies to make customer service cheaper and cheaper.
I personally have a feeling it’s less likely that the public’s abuse of these workers caused this and more likely that it’s the result of profiteering strategies to make customer service cheaper and cheaper.
I think it can be both. Paying somebody to be yelled at isn’t really a good use of resources, so while the motivation isn’t caring about their workers, the end result is the same. I think most of the call-ins that were major time sucks back when I used to have to take calls would fall into three categories: yelling abuse, people for whom written instructions are difficult to follow, and people who just like to have someone at their beck and call who would call numerous times to cover the exact same ground every time. The second group is perfectly reasonable to accommodate, but they’re outnumbered by the other two and there’s unfortunately no way to sort the people who just need to talk about it to properly get their mind around it from the people who want to shout or ask the same questions twelve times.
That perspective makes sense, it’s definitely a “yes, and”, not an “either/or”. And while it makes sense from a business and logistics perspective, I think companies being more opaque and being harder to access is going to have severely negative effects over the long term. I think it’s only reasonable to expect that every organization with humans behind it should have some sort of human representative, even if it’s just a doorman at the office to tell you to go away. They benefit immensely from the public, why shouldn’t there be a way for the public to communicate with them? But earnestly, maybe that’s a naive and childish expectation for me to have.
It’s not unreasonable, though that doorman should be paid a lot more given what they’d go through lol
People want to be heard, and they want companies to address problems so they improve; which is why minimum wage phone workers all have premade lines to pretend something will be done about it.
It’s a natural response that if someone screws you over, you want to admonish them. It’s how healthy societies remain healthy. And once the people responsible don’t have to hear feedback (by hiring people to ignore complaints for them), they can much easier stop caring.
I 100% agree harassing employees isn’t good thing to do, but I also can’t totally blame people phoning up with their rage-filled frustration, as it is absolutely fucked that they can be screwed over and then silenced.
Not that I like pointing every problem back to capitalism, but if people taking those complaints didn’t need the job to live, then they’d immediately just quit awful companies, and bad feedback would actually work.
yeah, and like, I hope it’s clear in my OP, but literally all I want to know is what to do to not trigger their flagging system again. I have no idea what I did or why I was flagged as NSFW. If there’s something I need to do to prevent their automated algorithm from doing that again, I kind of need to know what it is to properly be able to use my tumblr blog in the normal expected way. I’m not looking to admonish anyone, I’m not looking to yell at anyone, or berate anyone, I just want to know how I’m supposed to use their website properly, and FAQs just don’t cut it. There isn’t a FAQ for my specific situation, lol.
For sure! I ended up speaking more in the general, than to address your specific case. I didn’t get the impression you were out to berate, however very frustrating it is :)
Honestly, it seems like there are enough people having similar types of problems to the one you had (like trans people getting marked explicit for sfw, fully clothed selfies) that it’s likely they’ve got an automated trans person detector that just arbitrarily sends people to horny federal prison for simply being queer.
Several years ago I was single and made a tinder account, but got banned after marking my sex as intersex. There was nothing inappropriate or inflammatory on my profile and it happened so fast that I doubt it was caused by report bombing. I got banned so hard I cannot create a new account on Tinder on any other dating site or app owned by Match Group. (Match.com, hinge, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, etc.) I had absolutely no recourse, and couldn’t even get a response from their support team.
Ultimately, this doesn’t really affect me because I’m happily partnered now, but it’s crazy the level of control that unaccountable corporations have and their ability to arbitrarily discriminate against queer people without reprisal.
i seriously cant imagine they have a robust system to actually detect adult content on tumblr considering the absolute filth and debauchery im following on that site
Put trans in bio, sexually explicit.
Post heterosexual porn gifs, wholesome content for the whole family.
When I was young, I spent a lot of time on a practically pre-historic version of Second Life called Active Worlds, where you could build things and it had a basic scripting language and model format. I made friends there (because I couldn’t in real life) and they were cool, one of them got me into programming. That turned into an obsession for me, and a career. I wrote scripts, bots, built my own clones of the app … I was like 14, lol. I wonder where those friends are today.
Lately, I’ve been watching videos about VRChat and Resonite, and Resonite especially looks really similar, but … I don’t want to go online. I don’t want to put my creations on to someone else’s computer, or risk being a subject of the 4chan kiwifarms mob just for existing, or think about how much data collection is happening behind the scenes of these “free” products, or how it can be taken away any time with no accountability. So, I have very little interest anymore.
I quit social media years ago. Even when I had a Reddit account, I didn’t post, because of the “site culture” there. I work for a big tech company. Last time someone showed up in person (with a resume), they locked the elevator so that no one could walk in anymore without a key fob. I want to write good code that’s not at all like what you’re having to deal with, but I get blocked by “business concerns.” My next struggle is going to be trying to implement the WCAG 2.1 standards in our apps without destroying my carefully maintained relationships with our designers (read: contrast removers and font shrinkers). But, I spend most of my day trying to figure out what to do with myself because the people above me either don’t have any idea what my team should be doing, or they’re not saying, or they’re getting ready to get rid of the entire tech department. I’m just glad we secretly banned generative AI from use, because while it can’t replace us and the complexity of our work, it sure can make me laid off.
I’m one of those white collar, work-from-home types that you mentioned (although I work more than 3 days a week, I’m posting now while watching my work computer and wondering when I’m going to be unblocked on a supposedly critical migration for a project I’m not responsible for). I’m so grateful to be able to work from home. When I get frustrated with lack of clarity, I can keep it in until the end of the meeting and let it out and no one knows. I don’t have to get COVID every month from commuting to an office, nor do I have to deal with sensory issues like sounds/sights/smells of roads/transit. I can use a weighted blanket without needing to explain to anyone (or carry the damn thing in a backpack) and if I pick my face too hard (I’m working on this one) I can just turn off my camera. And, when no one tells me how to use my time … I can watch YouTube videos. I can pace and complain at my partner about new bullshit “security” requirements or stupid requests or being asked to fill out critical reports and decide timelines at 4pm on a Friday (“oh, I’d give you more notice, but the CTO just told me this was required…”). I wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t like this, but it wasn’t always like this; I used to be an office every-dayer, but luckily I had my back to a wall, a big desk, and a privacy barrier to help me focus, and I was only responsible for writing code, instead of managing.
I’m probably autistic, and I have been a computer toucher my whole life; it’s been my #1 passion. It makes me feel alive to build a PC, or to fiddle with some new technology, or to get something that “shouldn’t” be done working, and the doubters give me strength (next project: VR on Linux). But when I think about the world we have today on the Internet, compared to the world from when I was a tiny egg and what I expected the future to be like, I want to cry. We all know how it got like this, but that doesn’t make me feel better.
Hexbear is a light in the darkness for me. I didn’t post seriously ever on Facebook, or YouTube, or Google+, or Reddit, or even MySpace, but I’ll post here, because I feel like you all understand me.
edit: lol, how poetic, this is my 1-year anniversary on the bear site
Good rant.
I don’t have anything real to contribute but just wanted to say your rant is appreciated lol.
yeah second this, its a really good rant
I work in customer services, and I do believe the whole thing is a joke, brought to life by the necessity to present accountability on part of the company and try to dodge it at the same time. We are literally paid to sit there and take it like a good soldier, explaining the same thing over and over, until the customer starts screaming down the line and calling us names. At this point I usually smirk, I can finally hang up.
At this point, my only role is literally to be a person that they can talk to, as I still can’t do anything most of the time. I can ask questions from other departments and gave the answer to the customer. I’m just a relay between the “experts” and the customer, there to take the flak when they feel dissatisfied.
The company I work for is a contractor for a car company. I don’t even have a license. I know nothing about cars. Some of my bosses don’t have a license. They know nothing about cars. I was lucky enough to be in a training session with one of them, and they asked the coach responsible for the training, what is a clutch. These are the kind of people that these companies put on the frontline to “help” you. I have to say some of us are trying our best, but obviously we won’t be using our free time to educate ourselves on this. We make minimum wage.
I believe it is the logical choice for these companies to just completely restrict customers from talking to anyone. If you talk to me on the phone for half an hour that costs like 20 bucks for the company. I’m not sure how much the tokens would cost if you handled the query by ChatGPT or something like that, but I guess you can’t even compare. Who cares if the model was trained on stolen content using slave labor, if I lose my livelyhood, or if you can’t talk to anyone? The company gave you an answer to your question now their job is done.
The truth is they don’t want to have customer services, it is just an uncomfortable complication that comes with having customers. But they do care about their brand image, so I recommend posting and complaining on their socials, you are much more likely to get a reply. At my job, if a customer posts on social they get a case opened and an agent assigned almost immediately. This is not going to work for the big tech companies obviously. Tesla might even sue you lol.
The takeaway is that companies are not your friends and the people you can talk to are not put there to help you even if they have good intentions. The people responsible for these practices are chilling on their private islands not giving a shit, or sitting in the offices where you will not get into, because they have security. But at this poin, I’m pretty sure even they can’t help you at this point. It is the system they exploit that is broken beyond repair, and they don’t care to even try to fix it. They have bigger fish to fry, as they have to give a presentation at the end of the quarter on profits and growth.
If I have to deal with customers calling to complain about total bullshit, and I’ve had to do that, tech companies should be forced to listen to me complain about my bullshit
Still mad about my most recent reddit temp bans (+ one account perma-banned because of those temp bans, what the fuck) because I literally cannot talk to a fucking person to explain how their automated bullshit fucked up
The important part though is that those random customer service workers who pick up the phones need to have a way to actually forward calls to the people who can do something about the bullshit
If every call center worker had a button that pushed a caller straight to the CEOs personal cell phone with no ability to turn it off I feel like a lot of things would work better
Excellent writeup. Very unfortunate to hear about tumblr’s disgusting actions.
god and like, the way they try to sell the lack of phone calls, the lack of human connection as a positive thing.
“oh it’s so easy! use our AI chat! use our app! we bet as a young person, you’ve got phone anxiety right? well do we have the thing for you, it’s a chatbox! we’ll text your phone instead of calling, don’t you like that? Don’t you love it? isn’t it convenient for you?! oh no, it’s entirely incidental that we saved millions of dollars by switching to this instead of having a call center or having to pay a couple people to answer phones, oh no no no, this is for YOUR benefit!”
it’s so fucking condescending. i dont want an app, i dont want AI answers, I want to sit down with one of your employees for 5 minutes and talk to them about what I need, because I’m a person, a social creature who likes interacting with other social creatures. I’m not a god damn robot. where is the warm beating heart?! where is the fucking blood anymore?!
A great tip I got from a friend in corporate that I’ve used successfully, is knowing the internal email for the higher ups of any given company is usually their first initial, last name @company email.
When you get to them with your problem (delivered in your best lib-ese) they’ll usually react by immediately contacting someone beneath them wondering why the everloving fuck they’re being bothered with this and tell them to fix it pronto.
You’ll get a real person calling or emailing you then.
Try it!
This is good advice. If you can bring yourself to, linked-in can be a good place to find names; try to find someone “too important” to be dealing with you; a director or C-level. As the previous poster said, they’ll delegate dealing with you. I’ve had months long wrangles dealt with in hours by a CEOs secretary that way. Make sure you provide a good contact phone number and be prepared to answer calls from unknown numbers.
Edit: typos
if they dont use that format then just get the email address of ANYONE ELSE in corporate. whatever the format that is used in their email is the format used for all people’s emails. very occasionally is the directors emails different and usually that is because they use their own personal emails OR they had the email from way back when the company was starting and there was no standard format to the email address
GOOD post.
Showing up in person to some office to complain directly to a real person that fucked you over is a great power move when possible
I like when I go look up a recipe from a website there’s like 10 trillion adds thrown at me and I have to scroll for like 2 minutes to just find the ingredient list
And there’s a jump to recipe button but it doesn’t fucking work
I recently learned about this: https://justtherecipe.food/
I haven’t used it though.
Not to mention the needlessly long personal anecdotes. Dear recipe authors, I do not give a damn about the backstory of the recipe and how much your kids like it.
The authors don’t give a shit about the stories either, it’s just that the longer you stay on their website the higher they go in the search rankings
Holy shit a talking pigeon.
keep us updated on these developments
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