antsforschool-blog
antsforschool-blog
Sharing the Ant Keeping Experience
11 posts
Looking at the social media niche of Ant Keeping
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Intimacy
The film Her focuses on a recently separated man going through a rough divorce and falling in love with an operating system. Theodore has a relationship with the AI known as Samantha that makes the audience question what makes love real, or any emotion for that matter. Samantha fills all the traditional roles of a girlfriend in terms of emotional intimacy, and even some physical ones. With so much of our relationships being managed online already in today’s world this film challenges how we view intimate communication without any face-to-face or personal contact.
Dating digital avatars isn’t a new concept. Pettman tells us of dating simulation games popular in China, Korea, Singapore, and especially Japan. Pettman also mentions the Turing Test which is a quasi-experiment in which a person is asked to determine if a text-based conversation is with a Human. The AI passes if it can convince the human it is also human. Dating simulations try to make their avatars as likeable and behave as humanly as possible, but they are still a facsimile. Rather, what Pettman says we can learn from the Turing Test is its digital nature. Luhmann (1998) as appears in Pettman’s article says that, “all sex is cybersex.” This is explained by saying that the codification of intimacy is digital because it has binary responses in the forms of “yes” and “no” standing in for “on” and “off.” In practical terms we ask if a person is lovable or unlovable based on their positive or negative response.
Mediation of communication by technology is nothing new. Building on Pettman we can compare the relationship between Theodore and Samantha to a long-distance relationship. In a long-distance relationship before the internet the phone was a major piece of technology used to convey intimacy. Many couples are able to maintain relationships using verbal intimacy. The primary way Theodore and Samantha communicate is verbal. The internet and social media allow more to be shared across long distance such as photos and video. Samantha is able to see Theodore’s world through his smart phone’s camera. Like in many long-distance relationships that struggle with physical intimacy, so do Theodore and Samantha. The two do have what is essentially cybersex. Even an attempt is made to have a surrogate human stand in for Samantha, which doesn’t work when Theodore looks at the surrogate’s face and sees the person in the flesh, not Samantha.
One thing that Samantha loves about Theodore is his letter writing. Theodore writes letters for other couples. He acts as an intermediary coming up with the poetry of love that makes the letters intimate and “personal.” Poetry has long been a means to capture the heart of a lover, and Manghani looks at texting using the lens of Tanka poetry. Manghani believes that text messaging is a mode of love messaging. He says that texting keeps in mind what is transient and frequent. There is a history to the text conversation between two lovers, and the awkwardness of face-to-face integration is avoided. It can be easy to express love and affection when we are not faced with the anxiety of immediate rejection. Perhaps that is why the “romance” within Theodore is best shown in his work writing for others. Again, It is one of the things Samantha finds attractive about him. He is able to express words of love and joy and intimate connection without ever having to face the consequences of being a part of the relationship.
Intimacy is expressed in many of the same ways between Theodore and Samantha the way real existing couples do. So, the question becomes: does it matter if Samantha is “real?” If all the limited experience is equal to that of a human partner and the communication is authentic how could a person tell the difference between an AI and a human?
There is one last question regarding the film I would like to propose. We know that Samantha has hundreds of lovers she can talk to simultaneously. How do we know that the person with the cat strangling fetish is not an AI? All we here is her voice, and we assume she is human because her fetish is absurd, but isn’t the idea of a computer being capable of love absurd altogether?
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Social Movement Media
The internet may seem like a utopian place of freedom and democracy, where people can freely communicate about new ideas and philosophies, but it is instead a place largely controlled by corporations. Indeed, there are websites and spaces of the internet that are designed to be more open, but the websites with the most traffic are owned by a few media and advertising corporations. Morozov says that earlier generations, “too, were tempted to disregard the bitter lessons of the previous disappointments.” These previous disappointments were assumptions that the telegraph and radio and then television that followed would, if left alone, would be places that raises the level of public debate, and introduce transparency to our society. Instead they were used by large entities to influence the public by controlling content and advertisement.
Morozov, using quotations from Schaniel, shows that new technology does create change, but, “the adopted technology is adapted by the adopting society to their social processes.” Meaning that new technologies are adapted to be used to fit in the culture’s values and traditions. The internet and social media have adapted themselves to fit our society and serve the individuals connectivity needs and the corporations need to profit off the individual. YouTube, which is under the same corporate umbrella as Google, is the site where several of the channels I follow are located, including AntsCanada which reaches 2.3 million subscribers. The primary source of revenue of Google and YouTube is advertising. The hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people who view each video are providing YouTube with valuable information that they sell to advertisers. AntsCanada provides his followers with high quality twenty-minute videos about ants and other related insects that are full of interesting insights and useful information, and in return these followers give up a small amount of personal information to be added to their advertising preferences.
It is difficult to find a place to have a social movement with others that is not controlled by a few large corporations. Morozov says that Fakebook has been a site of revolution is places like Egypt where is had a big impact on real world events. Recently Facebook has become a site full of controversy over privacy and collusion, and according to Morozov Facebook justifies their lack of protecting user privacy by claiming they are following the direction of society, and Morozov argues this should bring scrutiny. Indeed, many young people are growing cautious of Facebook, and Instagram has become more popular among teens. The only problem is that teens are not escaping or rebelling against Facebook by any means because Instagram is owned by Facebook.
Twitter is another place of social activism and is examined by Jackson and Wells in their paper on the political and social discourse surrounding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. They conclude that there is, “potential of public interest to outweigh state interest in setting public agendas and creating terms for debate.” So, while companies like Twitter, Facebook and google might not always have our best interests at heart, they do allow for public discourse to be heard and are at times sites that promote social change.
It is difficult to compare the niche of ant keeping to the use of social media to bring awareness to the killing of black men by police. One is a movement that has the potential to change the way future generations, especially those in counterpublics, live without fear and have access to an equal and democratic society; and the other at best tries to preserve the planets ecology by promoting responsible ant keeping and bringing awareness to the importance of ants. The only way that these two compare is that they utilize communication on social networks to spread their messages.
I think that this shows the incredible and wide-ranging potential social media platforms still have. The #MeToo movement was made possible because of the way social media allowed voices to be spread and heard over established messages regarding sexual harassment. Because of the way social media companies like Twitter and Facebook operate they can harbor hate and oppression as just as easily. Recent white nationalist rallies like the one in Charlottesville were promoted through social media, and the hateful rhetoric that lead to deadly violence was spread by large public figures such as President Trump on Twitter.
Positivity seems to fill the voices of the accounts I follow, so that is the message I want to end on. We should remember to examine and respect the small things around us that have huge effects on our lives, like ants. So, in the words of AntsCanada, “#AntLoveForever.”
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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This large Marauder ant covered in smaller workers isn't a queen, but is in fact just another cast of worker ant called a super major. These huge ants use their large mandibles as tools to cut up food, and also to defend the colony from other ants and predators. Marauder ants show the extreme differences in sizes possible among worker classes within the same species of ant.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Professionals, Amateurs and Fans
According to Lessig there is commercial culture which is the part that is, “produced and sold or produced to be sold.” This would place the AntsCanada YouTube channel as part of commercial culture. Lessig says that the internet can provide a more competitive market for cultivating culture. However, Lessig argues that there is a new battle over copyright on the internet and concerns about piracy and possession of content.
AntsCanada is clearly trying to commercialize and even create a profitable business out of his channel from ads and associated website and products. Many others have followed his example in creating culture and content. Ender Ants and Ants Australia, another YouTube Channel I follow creates similarly styled videos, although much shorter than AntsCanada. However, Ender Ants has yet to have the success of AntsCanada, which is the largest channel on ants on YouTube. Many others also have ant keeping channels, but none are close to AntsCanada’s 2.3 million followers. AntsCanada dominates the culture of ant keeping.
From the Fuchs reading Participatory Democracy is ignored by Jenkins in his culturalistic understanding of participation. This leaves issues of ownership, decision making and political goals vague. Fuchs says that participation means that the people have a right to be a part. Further if only some people have valid rights, then there are no rights.
Regarding YouTube, Fuchs says that participatory internet can be found where they resist corporate domination. Mikey Bustos of AntsCanada promotes a feeling of democracy on his channel, but his channel is not necessarily a site for participatory democracy. AntsCanada in every video reminds his viewers to like and subscribe. In many videos from circa 2017 have him saying, “tired of nature channels not showing nature programs?” and encoring them to watch the channels videos. In addition to commercializing within YouTube, Bustos promotes and sells his own line of ant products though AntsCanada.com. He does not always advertise his site or products in videos, except for ones in which he uses a product and mentions it’s, “Available in the AntsCanada store.”
The AntsCanada channel doesn’t promote participatory democracy as Fuchs suggests by its nature being on YouTube and not a site like Wikipedia. However, he does try to create a place of inclusion by allowing voting and polls. When a new species is added to the “ant room” such as in the video My Dracula Ant Colony: ants that suck bloodBustos asks users to suggest names for the colony in the comments, and he will pick his favorites to create a pole. He then announces the winning name in a future video. He also has a question of the week where followers can win an ebook if they answer right in the comments first. In these ways he tries to create a sense of participation and democracy among his followers on YouTube.
Although he tries to create a sense of belonging, and even refers to his followers as the “AC family,” in the end the videos and production are owned by Mikey Bustos. YouTube limits the participation and democracy of the ant keeping community, and when you search “ant keeping” on YouTube the top results almost all come from AntsCanada and Ants Australia.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Online Minorities
The ant keeping community online does not provide huge opportunities for people to perform their racial or ethnic identity online. However, there is a subculture of ant keeping and within this subculture racism does exist in the comments and replies of accounts I follow.
From our lecture on taste and subculture we learned that subcultures exist in relation to the dominant or “mainstream” culture. I would argue that ant keeping is a subculture for three reasons. First, there is a shared ideology among ant keepers. The account I follow - AntsCanada, Ants Australia, Ender Ants, and Ants853 – all appear to share the same views on only keeping indigenous ant species and respecting the earth’s environment. Along with an environmentally friendly ideology the YouTube channels I’m following share similar taste. That is to say that they have a similar style to their videos and narrate in a similar fashion. This provides AntsCanada with lots of power given his choice of taste, and Mikey Bustos being imitated by others like Ants Australia. This would make Mikey Bustos a trend setter within the subculture of ant keepers. Finally, these accounts have a shared vernacular. They refer to ants by their genus and species such as Solenopsis invitica, and use words to describe artificial ant habitats not found elsewhere like “formicarium”.
One part of taste is identity. The most prominent way that members of this subculture perform identity is by their physical location. Since keeping local ants is seen as ethical, and the sale of ants must be local and cannot be transported, it is important for people to share their location. When AntsCanada’s Twitter replies to followers tweets about mating flights they share their location. Location has become so important within the community that the online handles of many ant keepers include their location. There are AntsCanada and Ants Australia which I follow for this blog, but also an Ants New Zealand YouTube channel, a channel called Nordic Ants, Ants Manitoba, Ants Britania, and several more. Performing identity with location can be more than a name. Mikey Bustos of AntsCanada currently resides in the Philippines. His channel is called AntsCanada because when he started he lived in Canada and has a clear North American accent.
In the YouTube video “My Dream Ant Farm: Leafcutter Ants” Mikey Bustos travels back to his home of Canada and visits an exhibit of leafcutter ants in Montreal. He has brought up in other videos why his channel is called AntsCanada when he lives in the Philippines. When he does travel back to Canada he makes a point to make a video. In “WOW! I CAUGHT SO MANY QUEEN ANTS!” he mentions how he wants to create a video more like his older tutorial videos, and he takes us on a tour outdoors in Toronto Canada where his channel began to catch queen ants, which he let go since he can’t take them to Asia.
Mikey Bustos doesn’t just live in the Philippines randomly, but is of Filipino descent. Racist comments and reply’s get deleted fairly quickly making them difficult to screenshot, but I have seen them. When his housekeeper was shown on video when Mikey Bustos was out of town there was a comment saying something similar to, “no wonder his housekeeper is Asian.” According to Cisneros and Nakayama this blatant remark is more akin to old racism. Mikey has also gotten into some hot water for imitating a Pinoy accent when he is not native to the Philippines in a 2011 video asking for people to vote for him in “Please vote for me, Mikey Bustos as your 2011 WikiPinoy of the Year!.......po!” More recently he was criticized for his parody video of Childish Gambino’s This is America which is called This is the Philippines which is styled like a tourist video. Bustos’ video was released before the country’s National Heroes Day, and critics say he “missed the point” of the original video, a commentary on the darker side of black America, by making a video that looks at the Philippine culture in a positive light. This “ignorance” can be viewed as more of new racism. These videos were uploaded to his personal YouTube vlog channel separate from AntsCanada with far fewer subscribers, and interestingly don’t seem to impact his popularity. 
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Leafcutter ants transporting leaf cuttings back to their nest to grow underground mold farms.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Gender
Technology and the internet have historically been stereotyped as masculine or male forms of media. While plenty of women have been playing video games for decades, I can remember the commotion that would arise when a female voice joined the chat in a video game. Young men would freak out and that person’s identity in the site of the video game would only focus on their gender. This is why I believe many female gamers chose not to use voice chat. Postfeminist culture has encouraged women to be more expressive and embracing of themselves. “Girl gamers” have become much more popular and accepted.
I mention this example because within the niche of ant keeping in social media women are rarely seen online. It was difficult to find women performing their gender within the ant keeping community. However, there are still some interesting observations about the difference of how men and women perform gender in the ant keeping world. Sarah Banet-Weiser mentions that YouTube has evolved from a video repository to a place of performing identity, or “broadcasting yourself.” We can see this in the YouTube channel I am following, AntsCanada. Nine years ago, Mikey Bustos, the vlogger behind AntsCanada, would post informative videos more akin to a repository. Then around four to seven years ago he began to include his face and body more frequently as he would hold things in front of him as he described them. Then starting four years ago his videos rarely show his person except for his hands. Men tend to show things and activities rather than themselves in contemporary social media so that makes sense.
For women, postfeminist media culture is obsessed with the body according to Rosalind Gill. Gill also talks about how there is a persuasive sexualization of our contemporary culture. However, within the niche of ant keeping there is not a trend of women owning their sexuality and embracing it as has been seen elsewhere. According to Gil freedom to choose what you practice and being autonomous is central to postfeminist culture. Surely there are women ant keepers, however they are difficult to find. Searching one forum, formiculture.com, I found that most of the accounts I suspected were female stated no gender selection in their profile, and I don’t want to assume gender. One that I did find was littlebandicoot. Interestingly her posts were more in line with what the men of the site posted; pictures of her setup and ants, and no images of herself. Even her avatar is a cartoon character rather than an actual face picture like many men use on the site. Her pictures are well done, suggesting she may take more care in creating and choosing the right picture to post.
This could be because of the environment in which she is performing her gender. Banet-Weiser tells us that not all online spaces are equal in their ability to allow self-presentation and self-expression. I believe that a hobby such as ant keeping, or keeping insects, is still viewed by mainstream culture as a men’s hobby. So, women being a minority feel pressured to express themselves in the already established ways. Banet-Weiser says that “girl’s self-presentation online is a contradictory practice,” meaning it allows for freedom in crafting an identity as much as it is determined by culture and media of the site of communication. The culture of the ant keeping community is encouraging or determining for her how to express herself in a certain way. One way in which she does perform her gender is in the more outdated traditional roles of being caring and mothering. She is be very positive and encouraging of others.
The expectations of how a woman should perform her gender in a male dominated community is different than how she might perform to a more female audience. Surely this can be said for men as well; who will behave differently around opposite sex, or same sex individuals even if subconsciously done. I think one of the reasons the AntsCanada narration has a caring, nurturing documentary tone to it is because Mikey Bustos realizes his audience is more than men of a certain personality, and he wants to reach as many viewers as possible, ad he chooses his performance carefully.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Trap Jaw Ants species of the genus Odontomachus have mandibles capable of closing in 130 microseconds for hunting prey insects, but still can be delicate enough to care for delicate eggs and larva.
They can also use their jaws to propel themselves into the air like a spring to avoid predators.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Friendship
How we connect with people and form friendships has been completely revolutionized by technology. Online social networks have made it easier to keep in touch with old acquaintances, but are also disconnecting us from our friends by putting technology as a barrier between us. Instead of calling to congratulating a friend on the birth of their child, some people may simply like the picture of the newborn posted for all their followers and friends of friends to see.
This has become somewhat the norm. William Deresiewicz describes sharing as broadcasting our thoughts to whoever will listen, hoping anyone might recognize our existence. Deresiewicz also argues that we have stopped thinking of our friends as individuals and more of as an audience. We have moved from communicating to friendship circles to a “friendship cloud.” These friendships are, “a kind of alternative society,” and are an escape from what Deresiewicz calls a, “fallen world.” The YouTube channel AntsCanada is a good example of addressing a cloud of friends and providing a refuge from the world. In the video “My Dracula Ant Colony – ants that suck blood,” AntsCanada provides an approximate 20-minute look into his new colony of Dracula ants that one subscriber commented, “Your videos make me interested in ants even though i[sic] hate ants.” AntsCanada’s “friendship cloud” for this video has over 1.4 million views and 17,145 comments from people losing themselves for a while in the ant world.
Like many videos on YouTube, the importance of the video is set by each individual. Sure, ants are important to our ecosystem, but why do millions watch videos of them as pets? Bloor quotes Heidegger in explaining that we are in a nihilismage because there is no central, shared arbitrator to determine what matters or what is important. Bloor tells us that “not everything in life has to be ‘for’ something,” and he again uses Heidegger and his examples and to, “simply enjoy the natural beauty in and of itself.” Like in many of the videos, AntsCanada’s narrator Mikey Bustos provides the, “AC(AntsCanada) inner colony,” a, “hidden cookie,” to let subscribers watch extended footage of the new ant colony. These hidden videos lack narration and uses relaxing music to showcase the ants. While the main videos do include ad’s and Bustos does mention new products from the store he operates, they are not the focus. These videos, like many on the internet, are meant to simply be enjoyed.
Looking at Twitter we can see how @AntsCanada encourages a sense of community and participation among their “friendship cloud.” In Figure 1 @AntsCanada is replying to two followers who successfully found a queen and congratulates them. In Figure 2 @AntsCanada expresses enthusiasm in seeing the follower’s ant art and also uses his catchphrase, “Ant love forever!” Both on Twitter and YouTube AntsCanada refers to followers and subscribers and all those watching as the “AC family.” Deresiewicz uses the modern proverb that friends are the family we choose to describe how new forms of friendships replace older structures as we grow. AntsCanada is trying to create a sense of friendship by referring to his “friendship cloud” as his AC family and ends his YouTube videos with a variation of, “as always, ant love forerver,” along with #antloveforever displayed on the screen to encourage others to find the joy of ants that he has (see Figure 3).
Friendship has, to some degree, become addressing a huge audience and hoping for any response, as Deresiewicz describes. He also says that with Facebook and texting, which can be extended to most social media, “the more people we know, the lonelier we get. Does that make Mikey Bustos a very lonely person with 2 million subscribers? Does || Ender Ants || YouTube channel with only 851 subscribers make them less lonely? Perhaps they are disconnected from the people on these social media channels, but it is impossible to gage an individual’s loneliness by their posts alone.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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Intro Post
Ant keeping is a hobby that has seen a huge change because of the internet and social media. The idea of keeping ants as pets has moved past the Uncle Milton ant farm where you mail away for a couple dozen ants and they all die within a few weeks. You won’t receive a queen ant if you order ants through the mail because the transportation of ant queens is illegal in the US to protect our ecosystems. You can try and catch your own ant queen, but that takes time and practice, so using the internet ant enthusiasts created a network where you can purchase ant queens from local ant keepers in person legally. Queen ants allow colonies to produce new workers allowing the colony to live for many years. These colonies can also create specialty cast workers such as repletes and majors who perform special tasks and can be extremely interesting to watch.
Two of social media accounts this blog will be following is AntsCanada’s YouTube and Twitter. The content creator behind AntsCanada is Mikey Bustos, who is probably more famously known for being on Canadian Idol, also helped start the AntsCanada Global Ant Nursery Project (GAN) which is one of the websites used for ant keepers to legally acquire queen ants. I chose to follow his AntsCanada YouTube channel because it has over 2 million subscribers. The most viral video has 30 million views, and is the video that I first discovered in the trending section and inspired me to now have two ant colonies of my own. It is interesting to watch how the channel grew from armature to professional and how the content and style of the videos changed after it became a viral success. The AntsCanada Twitter is interesting to follow because of his frequent interaction with his followers.
Projects like GAN created an opportunity for more people to enjoy the hobby, and these people began to share their ant pets through social media. For example: many people on YouTube share new queens they have caught and how they found them, describe how to start a colony, give instruction on custom formicaria (ant farm terrariums) designs, and discuss many new products that have come to market in the last few years. One of those channels that I will be following in this blog is Ender Ants (styled: || Ender Ants ||) which has short, more amateur videos compared to Ants Australia’s YouTube channel which I chose because it has longer more in depth looks at specific species. I also chose Ants Australia (styled: AntsAus) because of how they mimic AntsCanada in style, monetization, and making/selling formicarium designs on the side.
It is also common for ant keepers to use social media like Twitter or Instagram to post a picture asking if the ant they found is a queen, and to show off their colonies at various stages of development from the first few workers to large setups with millions of ants. AntsCanada’s often replies on twitter to followers asking if they caught a Queen. Ants853 is an account I chose to follow on Instagram because of the quality close up shots of a variety of kinds of different looking ants. Ants853 also has a YouTube channel sharing his ant keeping experience.
Over the coming weeks we will explore how social networks have helped the ant keeping and enthusiast community grow and change in the age of social media. We will look at some examples of how these accounts influence the ant keeping community, how they use these platforms to stay connected with their followers and network, and how such a niche category has managed to grow. Hopefully I can also show how fascinating and diverse the world of ants is, and how much care and thought goes into pet ants.
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antsforschool-blog · 7 years ago
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An fun example of a special cast of ants called repletes. They get the names honeypot ants and sweet candy ants because of their large gasters filled with a sweet honey collored liquid that some culture around the world eat as a sweet snack. Several species of ants around the world have this cast of worker.
Some ant keepers at small amounts of food coloring to the ants food or water to change the color from a light yellow-honey color to several colors like green in this photo from AntsCanada.
My honeypot ant colony has red repletes from coloring the sugar water, but the colony is much younger then the one pictured with just 3 small repletes.
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