davidd's A DOLL A DAY 2024

[davidd]

I hope we aren't the only ones left on the doll forum because we're the only ones left alive. 

There are two or three stragglers remaining at the Figurvore site. And four or five at Dollieh Sanctuary. Outposts holding out in the face of the Dollpocalypse.

A lot of (mostly very young) people made, and continue to make, buckets of money, millions, providing content for online platforms,....

Uggghhh... maybe that's why the young fellow I saw on "Renovation Aloha" tonight had $3.8 million CASH to drop on the featured house?? 
I'm sure it must be very hard putting in all that time and effort stressing over whether a bunch of strangers "like" what you post online.  Life is tough (eyeroll).
Having zero interest in "social media influencers", I'd have minus interest in reading about them, but the diversity of book tastes on the forums is often entertaining.

Yeah, I had heard of only a few of the "influencers" and "creators" mentioned in the book, and even then, I've never watched any of their stuff. It is mind-blowing to me the way the tech companies shovel money at these people. The book was very sparse on details as to why certain ones become popular, or are selected be become popular (it turns out a lot of "amateur" online videos have production teams behind them).

I was not familiar with the "Renovation Aloha" show. I looked it up and found this episode description:

House Held Up by Car Jacks
Kamohai and Tristyn buy a house that's so termite eaten they don't even need a hammer for demo. And more problems appear as they peel back the layers as they discover a deck being held up by a rope and a foundation that's on car jacks.



So true! So true! Foundation? What foundation? My house sat on wooden posts (termite-eaten wooden posts) on concrete blocks set in to the sand. "Peel back the layers?" Ha! There were no layers to peel back! The old "plantation style" houses were "single wall construction." The plank you see on the outside is the same plank you see on the inside. Drive a nail too deep to hang a picture and it pokes out the side of your house! Electric wires had a little wooden conduit over them, otherwise they were surface mounted. Decks and porches held up with random bricks, cinderblocks, or yes, the occasional car jack were common sights in da neighborhood.

I miss it.

If I knew then what I know now about "fixing stuff" I might still be there. "Fixing stuff" isn't all that hard if you don't have to deal with inspections and permits. Once the permit people show up, you can't afford to fix things "up to code," especially when things weren't "built to code" in the first place because "codes" didn't exist.

Now, I know enough to have taken care of the drain issues. I could have upgraded the water lines. I could probably have fixed the foundation well enough to get another couple of decades out of it. I could have even upgraded the electrical wiring. For about forty bucks in plastic pipe and some digging with a shovel, I could have even fixed the neighbor's entire clogged-up drain system which would have shut him up about needing to pump the septic tank (because it was his iron drain pipes that were rusted shut, not a problem with the septic).

But back then, I didn't know how to do that stuff... or I thought it was somehow "specialized" and required "ex-perts."

As for the young guy on TV dropping four million bucks in cash - yeah, maybe a YouTuber, maybe a "Bitcoin Billionaire." I still haven't figured out how the "cryptocurrency traders" convert totally fake online cryptocurrency in to cold hard real world cash.

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13 March - A Doll A Day 2024:

DSLR Version

ISO 800
f/11
1/6 sec
18-55mm lens at about 35mm
Hand-held