Skincare is really difficult

I really hate trying to keep up with my skincare!

It's annoying to try and keep up with regularly. It's annoying to try and make sure I'm using the right stuff. You do one thing wrong and it all fucks up, and you spend more time reversing it than improving. 

Recently, the weather has been doing weird things and that's been affecting me. Philly is a lot dryer than where I grew up. For most of my life, I had weirdly waxy skin. Not dry, not oily, but a sinister third thing. My pores would be clogged with translucent waxy stuff, like blackheads without the actual dirt. Washing my face was actually difficult because I was repelling water, so I had a ritual of steaming my face down before I could start washing. 

This was all in the 2010s and people didn't gaf about skincare. BB cream had just hit the masses and people were completely painting their face completely matte and topping it with glitter from the craft shop. But now, in the modern era, I learned about a curious method from the east called "double cleansing".

When I was a teen in a humid valley, anything even slightly oily would give me whiteheads. Now that I'm older and I live in a different climate I flake. So I guess I need more help staying moistened like a snail, and the double cleanse helps with that massively.

I literally just swizzle some oil into my hand and pump some cleanser in, then mix them into a lathered emulsion. Apply this to a wet face and wash caveman style. 

My skin? squeaky clean. Hydrated. Moisturized. 

My pores? Unclogged. I haven't needed a pore strip in ages, the crumbs just fuck off.

I'm bouncy, smoothed, and thriving... Mostly.

SEO is a cruel cruel beast

If you've ever tried to make any sort of name for yourself on the internet, you'll understand how difficult it is to keep your head above the sea of endless posts. Google crawls so many websites with huge blogs of perfectly manufactured walls of text. Even on individual social medias, you have to fight against the armies of people with similar names and posts. 

Obviously, originality is key, but too much originality will put you on a desert island all alone with no followers. Keeping an eye on what's new and trendy will keep you associated with things that are currently being searched, but then you risk being seen as desperate for clout. And being seen as overly desperate is a death sentence. It's a pain, isn't it? 

When you google (or Bing) my name, I often only come up in 5-9th place. The results above me are all related to the anime Bleach!! When I started using the "Ichigo_42ga3" (and related) handles, Bleach wasn't running. Then it came back! Even worse, one of the songs the show uses is even called Monochrome! ARGH!!! How misfortunate! .·°՞(≧□≦)՞°·. ueeehh~ ueehhh~ 

Linking across my socials helps a ton though. Here's a tip: Every YouTube video is it's own page, and is indexed as so. Use that description box wisely!!! 

Go watch my rant videos blah

You see the title. I've been trying to stay on my video grindset. I'm not that good at it, BUT go watch the videos that I have posted onto my YouTube channel, ICHIGO MONOCHROME. Nya rawr.

The videos are kind of rant rambles about fandom craziness, or whatever. I don't know, I was just going off the top of my head. 

In that first video with the Fairly Odd Parents thumbnail, I was just stunned at the audacity of the stalker mindset. The pure delusion that comes with being so obsessed with a child cartoon character, that it wills you to repeatedly DM and then email the voice actress your unhinged love manifesto. Not a confession towards the actress mind you, an angry message declaring your LOVE FOR THE CHILD CHARACTER, and your offense at her insinuation that said character could love another cartoon her own age.

The other two (1) (2) was true, from the heart, dissatisfaction with the state of horror media commentary. Specifically when it comes to the sloppy, immature way people talk about amateur projects. 

It's so annoying seeing these shitty copy-paste thumbnails on shitty copy-paste videos just dogging on a highschoolers art project. Whether it's a webseries, a video game mod, a fangame, whatever, there is simply no reason to be going AVGN mode in your hobby critique video. Especially not when it's so painfully obvious by the cracking, theater kid voice work, that it was made by a KID.

Like, we get it. one-hit Slenderman monsters aren't original. They aren't fun to play against because there isn't any learning curve. The monster designs are boring. 

BUT... These. Are. Not. Professional. 

This isn't triple A $90 gaming. This is a zero dollar Minecraft mod that doesn't even take 10 minutes of your life. By forcing yourself to make a mountain out of a mole hill for content, you forced yourself to suffer for who knows how much longer just to collect footage. Forced yourself to sit there thinking about it, writing about it, editing a thumbnail for it. And for what? To scrape content off the back of a nerdy child? As stupid as it sounds, it's the dumb things that get under teenagers skin. Mfers will tear them down, call them cringe, say their creation is the dumbest shit they've ever played, all for the chance of a mediocre algorithm bump.

And then it doesn't even work because they're posting low quality content in an oversaturated genre with an exchangeable video thumbnail.

Let the damn kids make their stupid nextbots and fnaf clones. This is the practice run. Let them play.

Rant over. Nya.

New Video: Gen Z stare

I finally uploaded to my YouTube channel. I'm trying out a minimal editing approach because I lowkey hate editing my vids. Go watch it!!!

But yeah, like I was saying in the video, people in 2025 are just ridiculously rude. Idk if was the pandemic preventing these types of people from getting hit in the mouth for acting this way in public, or what, but the Regina George wannabe bullshit needs to gtfo. 

Way too many people think that, because they can be their own one-man paparazzi on the internet, that they can terrorize the general populace with their diva complex. Like, you're not a celebrity, you're a sociopath, borderline delusional, and completely insane.

I mentioned that case with the lady who shot her manager, because she thought she was "out of pocket", because the manager sent her home twice in 2 days. 

Like you really can't tolerate rejection THAT BAD, that you KILLED somebody? Over a job? At McDonald's?

Was the clown fuckin you? was the Ronald Mc D good? Cuz there ain't no fuckin way that you stab some lady MULTIPLE TIMES over some mid ass McDonald's pay. Go apply for Burger King. And come to find out, she finna get hit with a premeditated murder charge because she FILMED HERSELF CRASHING OUT ON TIKTOK. Making threats!

Another (way less insane) example, some years back this Starbucks barista on TikTok made this dumb post talking about "Get ready with me to make this man his milk shake at 7am." with the nastiest attitude ever. JUST PUT THE FRIES IN THE BAG, BECKY! GET OFF THE CROSS! She really posted that shit like people would agree with her. Everybody in the comments was flaming her. Stay in your lane, and run bro his Mocha-Frappe-Fucking-Whatever, with his 3 shots of heart attack juice, 7.25$ Regina George. 

The cognitive dissonance of people with a grandiose sense of self, and cog in the machine lives, needs to be studied.

.☙🕁♤🕁❧.

Teenagers are weirdos

You know that artist dude PiroPito(nana825763)? I know you do, I understand my target audience, you're like me most likely. If you somehow don't this is his channel. 

Anyway, as you probably know, he's very talented, and therefore pretty popular. He's been on YouTube for a very long time and has produced many niche horror internet classics such as Username 666, PokoPoko shopping, Cooking idol, and the like. Piro for most of his internet existence has been a mysterious figure who showed up to show his art and his ants. Faceless and nameless like many Japanese creators from a previous era.

However sometime during the pandemic he started playing Minecraft and posting that to his channel. Honestly it was fun seeing a casual new side to a person who had existed in mystery for like 10 years. His channel started growing fast and he even began making a horror game and streaming the BTS process.

The regular and open content from a person who used to be a total mystery to the American audience made him insanely popular over time and the pandemic probably had a lot to do with it.

I'm glad he's doing well online, but I can't ignore the type of people his content has attracted. There are way too many tiktok teenagers thinking this dude is a super artsy cool alt idol figure. The type of unstable kids who worship Kikuo and other "weirdcore" horror aesthetic shit. 

Like he's really good at art and atmosphere, but ultimately he's just an older Japanese guy with obscure media tastes and inspirations. An artist, not a tiktok star with a curated personality.

I worry about the American fans that linger in his livestreams asking annoying starry-eyed teenager questions, borderline interrogating him on all his quirky facts like he's some underground idol. It's gotten to a point where he has a huge FAQ thing in the description of all his live streams, because people asking him what kinds of music and movies he liked OVER and OVER. Let him breath!!! I'm writing as I watch his stream and there's a 3 minute slow mode enabled because people fangirl out so much.

And teenagers are painfully transparent even when they try not to be. You can plainly see that the media questions are just "PIROPITO SAN <33 DO YOU KNOW ABOUT (totally not my personal favorite metal band)??? LOVE YOUR WORK!!!" and fishing to see if he has similar esoteric alt not-like-the-other-girls anti-normie tastes.

the average black eye contact girl  

If it was questions about art and the techniques, asking lots would be calm, but it's all idol fansite questions. It's uncomfortable as viewer so as the target it has to suck.

My even bigger worry is that these sort of  mentally unstable audiences tend to be really fickle and vindictive. Think about how many internet horror creators had their fanbases blow up in their face because one of them got irrational and made up a strange rumor and the rest believed it because they're all 14? It makes me nervous.

edit: self fulfilling prophecy

.☙🕁♤🕁❧.

sighing, rambling

Sometimes (a lot of times) I think about switching my whole "persona" (as if I really have one haha) and the aesthetic branding of the blog and YouTube and stuff. But honestly trying to overhaul everything would be really annoying. Besides, I can't change the URL of this blog page anyway.

Sigh. 

Although I cycle through the stuff I like every 3 months or so, so keeping it "up to date" would just be a drag. Blah Blah. TBH I spend a lot of my time bored, thinking about videos that I never wind up making. I also used to film a lot of videos that I never feel like finishing.

Most recently, I filmed a little "catch up" type video. Not much of a "catch up" though because I never have too much to say. However I had also been doing some crafts and spoke about that a bit. I didn't finish editing. No point to, it wasn't interesting enough to even want to finish.

I'll probably rework it into a more craft centric one when I finish what I was working on. I don't feel like working on it though.

It was my sister's birthday Saturday. The few friends she invited cancelled on her. Even the girl who my sister went across the country for her birthday trip with. It was so depressing. Why do modern day people flake out on plans so much? We decorated and celebrated ourselves Sunday. My mom even made a really cool cake that looked like a candle. 

Wednesday is me and my boyfriend's anniversary and we still don't have plans. How annoying. Honestly making plans for anything between us is kind of a pain because he's the type who if left alone would sit in his room all day. Doesn't really like much. I guess that's just one of the pains of Gen Z society. If people aren't pretending to like things for a tiktok persona, they just sit around hobbyless.

BORN TO DIE

WORLD IS A FUCK

苺 Kill Em All 2004

.☙🕁♤🕁❧.

Feeling sick! Feeling unproductive!

 AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!! ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ ლ(ಠ益ಠ)ლ 💢💢💢💢

I've been sick for like weeks and it's been throwing off all my content plans!! I've got all this sh*it to edit and post that I haven't gotten to because all my energy has just been DRAINED. 

And because I've been DRAINED, my work has piled up! Now I'm OVERWHELMED! and due to personal lore, the reoccurring illness makes me DEPRESSED!

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE IN THESE CONDITIONS!!!!

BORN TO DIE

WORLD IS A FUCK

所労 Kill Em All 2004

 I am trash immune system

410,757,864,530 WHITE BLOOD CELLS

Anguish, everlasting. Mine illness concurs for more than a fortnight. My head spins and my sinuses sizzle.

Although! I did go to that convention I mentioned! Shikkaricon was fun! still working on the content surrounding that, but we'll get there, dattebayo!