#search engine optimization presentation

[tvtdigitalmarketing]

The Vanilla Theory

[laurellala-comics]

To my fellow artists out there, especially ones who are trying to support themselves through art: if you do commissions I really recommend putting your presence out there in some larger way. Whether that's with an etsy listing for commissions or an account on fiver, you should have something that makes you searchable by people who are not in fandom or art spaces. I work in Big Business CompanyTM and I was on call with a customer who was like "wow I want an animated tutorial video to help show people how to use our product but I have no clue what to do, I guess I'll use generative AI" and I was like NOOOOO because like! What he wanted would've been really simple to do with some basic rigging and words moving, but he just didn't know where to go to get that! And I can't be like "oh I follow this animation student that has commissions open, let me show you their account. Please ignore all the drawings they have of spock and kirk making out". But I don't have a good website to direct him to to look... Most people won't go to instagram or tumblr or whatever and look through tags, they will either go to google or if possible a host site that seems trustworthy. So put yourself on places that people will be looking!

Also, be smart with your keywords! People don't always know the word "commission" outside of artist spaces. If you draw animals say you do pet portraits for example or like... describe what furry art is for somebody outside of the furry community (fantasy anthropomorphic animals... idk we can workshop it). I suggest imagining that you are a person looking for an artist to commission and going onto your favorite search engine and think "what would I type in if I was trying to find the art I do" and then use those words in your post. Try suggesting some things your art could be used for (avatars, profile pictures, banners, posters) etc as well. I know people love to include pictures of what they offer and include text in those pictures: PICTURES ARE NOT SEARCHABLE! Make sure you include that text typed out somewhere as well!!

On the commission sheet/post/listing/whatever you also should make the next steps people should take really clear, potentially even give an example of what a commission request should look like. If people are confused they will be less likely to act on it!! And give them concrete actionable background information like "Answer these questions and provide 3 or more reference photos, I will get back to your request within 2-3 business days".

THESE ARE JUST SOME BRAINDUMP THOUGHTS I've never done commissions myself so I'm not sure if there are better sites out there to use. I think with the rise of AI art, if people don't know what other options to use, so they're going to use what's easily accessible. So make yourself and your art easily accessible!!! Making yourself more visible to folks outside of the artist community will help show cooler better alternatives to people AND also make it more likely that you get commissioned! Please I'm begging you don't let me sit through another powerpoint presentation with generated ai art I'm losing my mind here. Give me something I can show to people at work as an alternative!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable – everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[obsidiannebula]

How to Spot AI-Generated Reference Texts

This morning I celebrated a lovely Christmas with my family. My 3 year old was ecstatic, I made my brother tear up, it was a good time. But I received something that at first, seemed like the kind of thing I would very much like to own... until I started actually looking through it. I quickly realized that this book is unmistakably AI-generated slop and should not be used or trusted as an actual reference guide. Having not been written by an actual expert in the field or even compiled by an actual researcher citing sources and synthesizing information, these books are at best three hundred pages of reading the first couple of sentences of a search result for each topic, and at worst full of dangerous misinformation that can get people killed, as with the rise of AI-generated mushroom foraging books. These are in no way reliable reference guides for anything, but especially for anything with potential health risks like ingesting plants and their compounds.

So today I'm going to try and get some good use out of this book I now own by using it to demonstrate how to spot AI-generated scam books.

The first red flags jump out at us right from the cover. This is "The Home Apothecary Full Collection: Your In-Depth Holistic Guide with Natural Herbal Remedies for Long-Lasting Wellness and Optimal Health." Yeesh, what a mouthful. A soulless, artless mouthful, I must add. But hey, maybe this author is a very clinical or verbose type. Except a quick search for the author's name, Megan Morren, quickly makes it clear that this is not a real person. There is one bare-bones Facebook profile for a Megan Morren, and no social media beyond that. No LinkedIn or Pinterest or mentions in an article, nothing. Every other result shows her books: this one, and two others nearly identical to it, with slightly different names but the same "1500+ Remedies/Extra Content" claim in the same corner, utilizing the same fonts and each with a very similar AI-generated background.

That's right, we've got a pretty bog-standard AI-generated image for the cover of this book, showcasing a variety of vaguely herbal plants and jars as well as several nonsensical non-objects.

Okay, so the cover was definitely made by AI, but maybe this author is writing under a pseudonym and visually just not very creative. Let's open it up and took a look at...

Oooookay so that's how we're getting the "40 books in one" claim touted on the cover. What most people would call a chapter is here billed as an entire book, with each subtopic considered its own chapter. There's not more than two or three "chapters" per "book" and most of the chapters are only one or two pages long, which is some James Patterson-ass shit. At least if Patterson had written this book there'd be a little character to the narration and an attempt at wit, but as we'll soon see, the actual writing is... wanting, to say the least.

Obviously the first observation here is that formatting is for the BIRDS. No paragraph breaks or indents, and the paragraphs are all of roughly similar length. Furthermore, the writing reads like a copy/pasted Wikipedia page. Scratch that, I went ahead and typed "history of herbal healing" into a search engine and found the actual Wikipedia page for "History of herbalism," which actually does provide more detail on the topic as well as FIFTY-FOUR ACTUAL SOURCES and some recommended further reading, making it vastly superior to this slop. Because there's not a single source cited in this entire book, nor is there an author bio here or online that remotely suggests that the author might have some experience and expertise from which they are drawing to write or even fact-check this book.

On top of that, there is truly no authorial voice whatsoever. Even if you wanted to be very academic about it and avoid using first-person in your reference book, there should at least be some synthesizing of sources and information, expanding on the ideas presented and combining them to draw new conclusions or illustrate points. But everything here is incredibly surface-level, like someone copied the first sentence or three from the first Google result and stuck it there and then moved on to the next bullet point in the outline.

Seriously, this whole book is just page after page of walls of text. It's a nightmare to try to read if you have any sort of reading-impairing disorder like dyslexia or ADHD, and it's also just kind of ugly. And in a book supposedly about herbalism, there is not a single image or diagram. That's wild to me. There is nothing in here to aid with plant identification or demonstrate the tincturing or decocting processes or anything. I've never read an herbalism book without a single picture or diagram. Granted, I've only read a handful, but still, it seems very strange to me. And god did these endless blocks of text need SOMETHING to break them up.

Also these introductory paragraphs just scream "obligatory" to me. They're all a single paragraph of approximately the same length, providing a perfunctory and colorless overview of the subject matter. I mean, seriously? We're starting off "uplifting herbs for depression" with "Depression affects millions globally. It is characterized by x and y. While it is conventional treated with medication and therapy, there are also some herbs that can improve mood." It's so bland and robotic and uninformative. I think most fifth graders could write a better introductory paragraph, as long as we didn't penalize them for spelling or grammar.

I'd really like to get back to spending the holiday with family, so I'm going to leave it at that. It's just so frustrating to see books like this pushing legitimate texts written by real people with real expertise or at least personality out of bookshelves and searches, propagating useless or even dangerous information in place of sharing real knowledge and traditions. I had to rant a little bit and get it off my chest.I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season, and all the best for 2025. Everyone, that is, except "Megan Morren." Whoever you really are, I hope you step on Legos every day for the rest of your life. It's the least you deserve for publishing trash like this.

[jstor]

I saw something about generative AI on JSTOR. Can you confirm whether you really are implementing it and explain why? I’m pretty sure most of your userbase hates AI.

A generative AI/machine learning research tool on JSTOR is currently in beta, meaning that it's not fully integrated into the platform. This is an opportunity to determine how this technology may be helpful in parsing through dense academic texts to make them more accessible and gauge their relevancy.

To JSTOR, this is primarily a learning experience. We're looking at how beta users are engaging with the tool and the results that the tool is producing to get a sense of its place in academia.

In order to understand what we're doing a bit more, it may help to take a look at what the tool actually does. From a recent blog post:

Content evaluation

Problem: Traditionally, researchers rely on metadata, abstracts, and the first few pages of an article to evaluate its relevance to their work. In humanities and social sciences scholarship, which makes up the majority of JSTOR’s content, many items lack abstracts, meaning scholars in these areas (who in turn are our core cohort of users) have one less option for efficient evaluation. 

When using a traditional keyword search in a scholarly database, a query might return thousands of articles that a user needs significant time and considerable skill to wade through, simply to ascertain which might in fact be relevant to what they’re looking for, before beginning their search in earnest.

Solution: We’ve introduced two capabilities to help make evaluation more efficient, with the aim of opening the researcher’s time for deeper reading and analysis:

Summarize, which appears in the tool interface as “What is this text about,” provides users with concise descriptions of key document points. On the back-end, we’ve optimized the Large Language Model (LLM) prompt for a concise but thorough response, taking on the task of prompt engineering for the user by providing advanced direction to:

Extract the background, purpose, and motivations of the text provided.

Capture the intent of the author without drawing conclusions.

Limit the response to a short paragraph to provide the most important ideas presented in the text.

Search term context is automatically generated as soon as a user opens a text from search results, and provides information on how that text relates to the search terms the user has used. Whereas the summary allows the user to quickly assess what the item is about, this feature takes evaluation to the next level by automatically telling the user how the item is related to their search query, streamlining the evaluation process.

Discovering new paths for exploration

Problem: Once a researcher has discovered content of value to their work, it’s not always easy to know where to go from there. While JSTOR provides some resources, including a “Cited by” list as well as related texts and images, these pathways are limited in scope and not available for all texts. Especially for novice researchers, or those just getting started on a new project or exploring a novel area of literature, it can be needlessly difficult and frustrating to gain traction. 

Solution: Two capabilities make further exploration less cumbersome, paving a smoother path for researchers to follow a line of inquiry:

Recommended topics are designed to assist users, particularly those who may be less familiar with certain concepts, by helping them identify additional search terms or refine and narrow their existing searches. This feature generates a list of up to 10 potential related search queries based on the document’s content. Researchers can simply click to run these searches.

Related content empowers users in two significant ways. First, it aids in quickly assessing the relevance of the current item by presenting a list of up to 10 conceptually similar items on JSTOR. This allows users to gauge the document’s helpfulness based on its relation to other relevant content. Second, this feature provides a pathway to more content, especially materials that may not have surfaced in the initial search. By generating a list of related items, complete with metadata and direct links, users can extend their research journey, uncovering additional sources that align with their interests and questions.

Supporting comprehension

Problem: You think you have found something that could be helpful for your work. It’s time to settle in and read the full document… working through the details, making sure they make sense, figuring out how they fit into your thesis, etc. This all takes time and can be tedious, especially when working through many items. 

Solution: To help ensure that users find high quality items, the tool incorporates a conversational element that allows users to query specific points of interest. This functionality, reminiscent of CTRL+F but for concepts, offers a quicker alternative to reading through lengthy documents. 

By asking questions that can be answered by the text, users receive responses only if the information is present. The conversational interface adds an accessibility layer as well, making the tool more user-friendly and tailored to the diverse needs of the JSTOR user community.

Credibility and source transparency

We knew that, for an AI-powered tool to truly address user problems, it would need to be held to extremely high standards of credibility and transparency. On the credibility side, JSTOR’s AI tool uses only the content of the item being viewed to generate answers to questions, effectively reducing hallucinations and misinformation. 

On the transparency front, responses include inline references that highlight the specific snippet of text used, along with a link to the source page. This makes it clear to the user where the response came from (and that it is a credible source) and also helps them find the most relevant parts of the text. 

[go-go-gojo]

Lifetime, My Time, a Sukuna One-Shot

Summary: Two Thousand Years after the Shinjuku Showdown, Sukuna goes North.

Read/Review on AO3

On December 24th, 2118, exactly one hundred years since of the fateful Shinjuku Showdown, Kenjaku finally succeeded in activating the merger, ending modern Japanese society as everyone knew it.

Despite finally achieving his goal of optimizing cursed energy, Kenjaku was…disappointed. Truth be told, he did not consider what the actual outcome would have been. He had expected something exciting but instead there was…nothing.

Nothing at all. No humans. No cursed spirits, even. The massive outpouring of cured energy caused by the merger had obliterated all life. There were no trees, no grass, even. Even the air around him was devoid of life, replaced by this musty fog, thick enough to cover the sun. Nothing existed but the mass of cursed energy around him. Like a thick fog, it even made the air difficult to breathe. Kenjaku looked at the barren wasteland that was once the Shinjuku district. Japan had spent one hundred rears restoring Shinjuku, Shibuya and all of Tokyo to undue the damage caused by the Culling Games. Kenjaku undid their tireless efforts in less than ten minutes.

"Well, that was boring,"

Kenjaku didn't consider the time wasted, nor did reflect on the countless of lives stolen, He simply changed course - after all, his plans were always flexible. He looked to America, its size and structure very different from the world he was used to. Perhaps a slow merger, state by state, would yield better results than merging the country as a whole. He took the knowledge he gained from the past eleven hundred years, and with tea, snacks, and Tengen's soul, Kenjaku sailed for Hawaii.

With the overwhelming, unmanageable cursed energy and complete lack of life, the country of Japan was from then on quarantined by the rest of the developed world. The years had passed — ten, then one hundred, then tens of hundreds, before the cursed energy caused by the merger finally settled down and allowed for life to return.

Nature, now uninterrupted, broke through broken concrete to bloom, growing trees strong enough to knock down the steel bearings that once filled the city. It took two thousand years for sentient life to return. From the invertebrates to the fish in the river, to animals on land, to mammals, then finally humans. In another thousand years, Man had returned to the top of the food chain, finding their innate instinct of community and growth to recreate society. Japan in the year 4118, save for some technological advances similar to classical society. The scholars, those who dedicated their lives searching for pre-merger records of human history, would call refer to the present day as the Neo-Heian Period.

Of course, with the rise of humans, the return of curses became inevitable.

--------------

The evolution of curses were just as fast, if not faster. Those who manifested near villages were able to take the form of humans, and they quickly evolved to mimic their mannerisms, speech and appearance. They even picked up the dialects of the villages they lived near, making them near impossible to tell apart from humans.

In the fight for the survival of the fittest, curses were catching up quickly.

As a Jujutsu sorcerer, one could never let their guard down. The prudent sorcerer kills them at first suspicion. Nine times out of ten, the assumption was correct.

Perhaps I can start with that , Sukuna thought to himself, mindlessly rubbing the bony gauge that sat in his earlobe. He repeated the script over and over, figuring that would convince —

A sound nearby returned him to the present. While he felt the cursed energy of something, but it was so low that he had a hard time distinguishing it from a curse or an animal. He glanced at Uraume, sitting at the front of the cart with the steering wheel in their tight grip. They leaned over to turn off the makeshift engine, letting the silence settle in.

They heard rustle of the wind through the leaves. Birds, high in the treetops, singing and ruffling their feathers. Nothing more. Sukuna flippantly waved his hand. "Leave it alone." he said. Whatever it was, it wasn't worth their time.

After all, he was already late.

Of course, no sooner did that thought pass through his mind did a several large pieces of something large fall from the trees, landing in front of them with a thump! Sukuna took a step and leaned over what was a man, sliced in half, eyes wide in terror and cries of pain escaping his lips. Sukuna looked at his left, a left arm, and to his right, the bottom half of the mans body, legs still twitching.

"That was fast even for you, Sukuna-sama." Uraume said, as the breath escaped them.

"Heh," Sukuna scoffed. "Wasn't me."

Sukuna turned and stepped into the cart, leaning over towards a wool blanket in the corner. He bent closer and used the hand of his lower arms to tug it slightly open,He met the large brown eyes of the child inside, who stared back at him unafraid. She was a young girl with short black hair styled with a hime cut. He glanced down at the markings that sat just above her cheekbone. They looked more like tattoos than what he suspected they actually were.

Those eyes haven't opened yet, he thought, but still…

She was at the perfect age where cursed techniques began to manifest.

"Chilly?" Sukuna joked.

The girl said nothing but gave a look like she had just been caught with her hands in the bread basket.

"Was that you just now?" Sukuna pointed at the man, still writhing about. "Don't lie."

She pursed her lips, puffing her cheeks out and nodded. Sukuna looked back at the guy. His eyebrows raised and he gave his signature, approving smirk.

"He was following us." the girl finally said, still pouting. "You weren't even looking!"

Sukuna returned his gaze back to his daughter, patting her on the head. He brushed her bangs that lay past her forehead. Little brat was just like her mother.

"Good girl," he said, reaching for the blanket. "I'll do the rest."

He covered her back up and leapt off the cart, standing over the dying man.

"And what's your excuse?"

The bandit tried to mutter something — probably some nonsense about Sukuna looking even scarier up close— but managed to only cough up blood.

Sukuna sighed, cursing to himself. He grabbed the arm, tossing it to the severed shoulder as he used his feet to push the torso closer. When the puzzle pieces of the dying idiot were as close as they needed to be, Sukuna bent down and placed a hand on the man's chest. A white glow left his fingers, spreading through the mans body until he was enveloped in a white light.

Reverse Cursed Technique was difficult technique to use on others— only a handful of Jujutsu sorcerers could use it in such a way. Sukuna would often think of the irony of how easy it was for him.

The bandit gasped as he realized that his body was completely healed. Scarred and sore, Sukuna had no doubt. The fool was lucky that was all he would manage to escape with. He rolled over in an attempt to get on his feet, making it to his knees before he stammered, "Sorry…some guy…offered—"

"Don't care." Sukuna slammed his foot in to the guy's abdomen, launching him off the beaten dirt road into a nearby shrub.

"Get lost," Sukuna called out," before I change my mind."

Sukuna turned around, not giving a damn until he recognized, in hindsight, one of the words he was trying to say.

What guy?

On instinct, Sukuna jumped onto the cart. He grabbed Uraume by the collar, and used both arms on his right to collect the child, still bundled up. As he leapt into the air, Sukuna watched as two giant hands came out of the ground, meeting each other in a loud clap!

Sukuna frowned as he watched the cart be crushed into bits.

It had seemed that someone paid that idiot to distract them. Sukuna wasn't shocked — he had a significant bounty on his head thanks to the great sorcerer families of the Neo-Heian period. It didn't matter how many times humanity started, those in power would always try to seize it. As he landed to his feet and set Uraume down, he had to admit that this failed ambush was the most creative.

"Here," Sukuna shoved the bundled up blanket in Uraume's arms. "Tell Wasuke that I'll be late."

As Uraume turned to leave, they leapt back, narrowly avoiding the giang hand that emerged from the ground, nearly snatching Uraume and the child. They ran back towards Sukuna and stayed behind him, holding the bundled up blanket like it was a precious gift.

"Like I'm going to let that happen!" A shrill voice responded, filling the air like a thick fog. It was high pitched, childish and grating. It was a familiar type of annoying, as if Sukuna had heard this voice before in an unpleasant dream.

Standing in front of them, emerging from the ground, was a young man with long, pale blue hair. He held an monstrous grin on his patchwork face. Everything about this creature, whether it was human or a curse, irritated Sukuna down to his very core.

"Long time no see," said the curse, "Ryomen Sukuna!"

Sukuna paused, eyeing the guy up and down then rubbed the back of his head, then raised a brow. "Have we met?"

"We have," he said, "But it's fine if you don't remember. Curses, unlike humans, remember our previous lives."

"Hm, "Sukuna crossed his lower arms, laying them right below his chest. "Interesting. I went under a past life regression with a shaman recently. But I didn't' see you at all."

"No?" The curse's thick brows furrowed as he kept his crazed smile. "The name Mahito doesn't come to mind?"

"I think," Sukuna gave a condescending grin, "You just weren't that memorable."

Sukuna chuckled at the suddenly angry face the curse name Mahito wore. This curse was a petulant child, no threat against him at all. Deciding to stroke the ire, Sukuna continued, "I do remember a cursed spirit named Jogo. Weak, but he was good for a laugh."

"What!?" Mahito screeched. "You remember Jogo and not me!?"

"You must have been boring."

Mahito tried to shake the aggression and move on with his own taunts. , but Sukuna knew better. He was still irritated.

"Past life regression….does that mean did you got to witness your countless atrocities?"

In every life, Sukuna grew up a cursed little wretch. He grew up feeling powerlessness in his powerful, deformed body. He credited his twin brother, Wasuke, as the only being in his childhood that kept him from performing violent retribution on the world. Wasuke, despite his lifelong frailty, never left his side, and became Sukuna's moral code.

However, despite his deep admiration for his brother, and the subsequent companionship he found in others as an adult, Sukuna struggled to shake his resentment. He felt an innate desire to destroy everything and everyone in sight, a feeling so strong that he felt his own curse destroy him. At that time, he decided to take the advice of his future wife and meet a local shaman.

It was then, in the old Heian era, that Sukuna saw his greatest worst self.

"I did." Sukuna sounded almost nostalgic. "What a sight it was."

"Heh. You told me at the end of your life," Mahito said mockingly, "That next time you would walk a different path. I'm just curious to see if you let your curse immolate you all over again?"

It always annoyed Sukuna when people made incorrect assumptions about him.

"Maybe," Sukuna mused. In that life, he slaughtered without reason. But this time it was different. After the ceremony, in an attempt to release the pain of his past, Sukuna made a binding vow to only kill with reason. Two reasons to be exact.

Not a strong moral code, but one had to start somewhere.

"Back then," Sukuna said, "I refused to allow those who tried to be near me. Suppose my different path has allowed myself to be blessed, rather than cursed."

"You? Blessed?" Mahito scoffed. "And what makes a wretched thing like you blessed?"

"Keh," Sukuna rached into the pocket of his thick, black robe, and removed a stack of photographs, bent and torn at the edges.

"I have brats now," Sukuna said, "Two, to be exact."

He held them up in front of Mahito, who carried a look of confusion and disgust.

"Aren't they cute?" Sukuna asked with a hint of sarcasm. Of course they were.

"I don't care about your ugly brats! " Mahito shouted, throwing up his arms. "I can't believe how boring you've become."

Sukuna watched Mahito throw a tantrum worse than the little girl Uraume held. He slipped the photos back in his cloak, thinking about the two reasons. This guy was obviously a curse, so it didn't' matter whether or not he even needed one. But in a moment of clarity, he found the humor in seeing that he had two perfect reasons to kill Mahito.

Sukuna looked at reason one, the destroyed cart. He frowned. That was for Wasuke and his family, enough food and supplies to last the winter. Sukuna's wife put tremendous effort putting it all together, and will definitely be pissed. In fact, she would most likely blame him for this. All of this was reason enough to kill the guy but whats worse —

Sukuna looked at Mahito's putrid face. How dare that thing call his children ugly! Were Mahito human, those two reasons were enough to sufficiently fulfill the binding vow.

Luckily, the vow wasn't that specific.

"I'm going to fucking enjoy killing you." Sukuna said.

"Careful, now." Mahito held his hands out, ready to attack, "When cursed spirits come back, they return even stronger. What's more," his wicked grin returned, "You've gone soft!"

Mahito's stretched out his arms and they extended out like they were made of rubber. His hands morphed into two long curved daggers and flew towards Sukuna. Sukuna didn't bother to actually move, simply raising his hand to give a finger a wave.

"Kachi."

Using cleave, Sukuna severed Mahito's arms, and the once dangerous daggers shriveled up into nothing. Mahito used the opportunity to appear behind him, but Sukuna was ready, landing a punch straight to his face.

"Trash is trash," Sukuna said, "No matter how many times it returns."

Mahito braced to his feet, ignoring the searing pain to his face. He prepared for another attack when he notices…something. A rustle above caused a few stray branches to fall, landing in between the two. As Mahito's eyes darted upwards, struggling to flow the flow of cursed energy darting back and forth among the trees.

The child in Uraume's arms popped her head of of the blanket, following the flurry of energy along with Sukuna and Mahito. Sukuna glanced at her, impressed. But of course she could follow such fast energy. She was his kid.

His large eyes protruding from the bony structure of his face glanced upwards. His eyes were so sensitive to cursed energy it was difficult for anyone to understand just how precise his vision was. He felt the kid coming from miles away, and before he completely obliterated Mahito, Sukuna realized that this wasn't his battle to fight.

Sukuna was right to be patient and not kill the curse immediately.

He glanced back down, stunned when he noticed Mahito's eyes. They were as wide and white as the dinner plates served in the great palaces. They were filled with horror, a horror that not even Sukuna himself could cause. The cocky, pompous, irritating clown was long gone, replaced with a fragile, terrified child who knew they were about to be punished in the worst possible way.

And then, Sukuna remembered.

The mouth on his belly, so silent this whole time that one forgot it existed, let out a huge, condescending laugh.

As the realization of Mahito's identity hit Sukuna like a bolt of lighting, his stoic composure crumbled. When Sukuna laughed, the world held its shaky breath.

Now, it was Mahito's turn.

"I remember you!" Sukuna exclaimed, darting his eyes at Uraume. "Uraume! You remember this idiot?"

Uraume, who had not done a past life regression, looked at Sukuna like he was nuts. "I--uh…no. I do not. However," They looked at the terrified Mahito and chuckled, "He seems, as you said, completely forgettable."

The girl whispered to Uraume, "Papa's funny when his belly laughs."

The two both chuckled.

"Shut up!" Mahito screamed as he morphed his right hand into a spike and sent it towards Uraume and the child.

Sukuna didn't react. He didn't' need to. Whether it was his talent for recognizing perfect timing or simple trust in the one who shared his blood — the one who seemed be destined to actually surpass Sukuna — Sukuna trusted his instincts.

After all, it was time to put that brat to the test.

Mahito realized too late that he had only hit the afterimage of Uraume and the child, and he cursed as his spiked hand hit nothing but air. Mahito and Sukuna both looked up and saw the being carried by a young boy with messy pink hair and a slim build. His yellow eyes were large, like those of the fawn, holding the same youth and innocence. He landed in front of Sukuna, and gently set Uraume to their feet.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Ah—O-Obviously!" Uraume snapped with burning cheeks, frantically patting their gown down with their free hand.

"Right on time," Sukuna said with a sly grin, "Yuji."

"Yuji!" The girl's arms slipped through the blanket reaching for her cousin. Yuji leaned forward, letting her pat him on the head. He pinched her cheek slightly, then turned to face Mahito.

His boyish face, normally happy and light, held a stern serious look that kept him locked on what lay ahead. He was ready to fight.

"Great Uncle," Yuji said, "Who is that guy?"

An old friend, Sukuna wanted to say.

"He's trash." Sukuna frowned. "Dispose of him quickly, or I ship you back to your worthless father."

"Jeez," Yuji said, cracking a small smile. "What would Gramps say if he heard you?"

"He would agree."

Yuji's smile dropped as he noticed the cart ahead, broken into pieces. He glanced back at his cousin, the frown on his face grew deeper by the moment. He then faced the curse in front of him, carrying not an ounce of recognition. But somehow, Sukuna thought, it didn't matter if the Yuji of now had any memory of his life as Yuji Itadori.

Two thousand years later, Yuji's very soul remembered that promise.

"I'm going to kill you."

Mahito, shell shocked dropped to his knees. He began to crawl, backing away like a terrified dog as Yuji approached him, walking, with no sense of urgency.

Sukuna looked to the sky, watching snow begin to fall from above.

Again, he laughed.

[tobiasdrake]

Verbal Search Engine Optimization.

If you've listened to enough grifters talk, eventually you're sure to run into this. Alex Jones in particular was a huge proponent of it. Verbal SEO is when grifters start inexplicably chaining disconnected ideas together like a blog post trying to reach the widest possible audience.

"Yeah, it's part of the, uh... The Woke LGBT Socialist Chinavirus conspiracy of Globalist Islam."

What the fuck does that mean?

Absolutely nothing. That's just words strung together.

The way Verbal SEO works is simple. I have absolutely no idea how to present this idea in a way that would make sense. But if I just start cycling through keywords, I'm sure to hit at least one that will cause a reflexive disgust response from the person listening to me, who will then be assured that me and my ideas are in community with them.

Some grifters are so used to doing it that they use it like a loading screen. I need time to think so I'll just sift keywords while I figure out what I'm trying to say.

Keep an ear out for Verbal SEO. It's a surefire indicator that the person talking has no idea what they're actually saying.

[mariacallous]

Several of the most prominent alt-weekly newspapers in the United States are running search-engine-optimized listicles about porn performers, which appear to be AI-generated, alongside their editorial content.

If you pull up the homepage for the Village Voice on your phone, for example, you’ll see reporting from freelancers—longtime columnist Michael Musto still files occasionally—as well as archival work from big-name former writers such as Greg Tate, the Pulitzer Prize–winning music critic. You’ll also see a tab on its drop-down menu labeled “OnlyFans.” Clicking on it pulls up a catalog of listicles ranking different types of pornographic performers by demographic, from “Turkish” to “incest” to “granny.” These blog posts link out to hundreds of different OnlyFans accounts and are presented as editorial work, without labels indicating they are advertisements or sponsored.

Similar content appears on the websites of LA Weekly, which is owned by Street Media, the same parent company as the Village Voice, as well as the St. Louis–based alt-weekly the Riverfront Times. Although there is a chance some of these posts could be written by human freelancers, the writing bears markers of AI slop.

According to AI detection startup Reality Defender, which scanned a sampling of these posts, the content in the articles registers as having a “high probability” of containing AI-generated text. One scanned example, a Riverfront Times story titled “19 Best Free Asian OnlyFans Featuring OnlyFans Asian Free in 2024,” concludes with the following sentence, exemplary in its generic horny platitudes: “You explore, savor, and discover your next favorite addiction, and we’ll be back with more insane talent in the future!”

“We’re seeing an ever-increasing part of old media be reborn as AI-generated new media,” says Reality Defender cofounder and CTO Ali Shahriyari. “Unfortunately, this means way less informational and newsworthy content and more SEO-focused ‘slop’ that really just wastes people’s time and attention. Tracking these kinds of publications isn’t even part of our day to day, yet we’re seeing them pop up more and more.”

LA Weekly laid off or offered buyouts to the majority of its staff in March 2024, while the Riverfront Times laid off its entire staff in May 2024 after it was sold by parent company Big Lou Media to an unnamed buyer.

The Village Voice’s sole remaining editorial staffer, R.C. Baker, says he is not involved with the OnlyFans posts, although it appears on the site as editorial content. “I handle only news and cultural reporting out of New York City. I have nothing to do with OnlyFans. That content is handled by a separate team that is based, I believe, in LA,” he told WIRED.

Likewise, former LA Weekly editor in chief Darrick Rainey says he, too, had nothing to do with the OnlyFans listicles when he worked there. Neither did his colleagues in editorial. “We weren’t happy about it at all, and we were absolutely not involved in putting it up,” he says.

Former employees are disturbed to see their archival work comingling with SEO porn slop. “It’s wrenching in so many ways,” says former Riverfront Times writer Danny Wicentowski. “Like watching a loved home get devoured by vines, or left to rot.”

This is a new twist in the grim growing world of AI slop. WIRED has reported on a variety of defunct news and media outlets that have been resurrected by new owners and stuffed with AI-generated clickbait, from a small-town Iowa newspaper to the beloved feminist blog the Hairpin. In the case of the alt-weeklies and OnlyFans listicles, the clickbait is appearing alongside actual editorial content, both archival and new.

It is unclear how this effort has been coordinated between the sites, or whether there are several parallel efforts ongoing to produce OnlyFans-centric listicles. LA Weekly and the Village Voice are both owned by the same parent company, Street Media, and some of their OnlyFans content is identical. Meanwhile, the Riverfront Times publishes its OnlyFans blogs under the byline “RFT staff.”

Street Media owner Brian Calle did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. Chris Keating, the Riverfront Times’ former owner, says he is bound by a confidentiality agreement and cannot name the new buyer, but that he “does not believe” Calle is part of the purchasing company controlling the new Riverfront Times.

Daniela LaFave, an Austin-based SEO expert who is bylined on the majority of the Village Voice OnlyFans blog posts as well as some of the LA Weekly posts, confirmed to WIRED that she is the same person named as the author. She declined to answer whether she used AI tools to create the posts.

Another frequent byline on the Village Voice and LA Weekly posts, “Jasmine Ramer,” has published 910 articles primarily for these two outlets in the past year, according to the public relations platform Muck Rack. (Sample headlines: “Top OnlyFans Sluts 2024” and “Top 10 Finnish OnlyFans & Hottest Finnish OnlyFans 2023.”) There is a profile on LinkedIn listed as a senior staff writer at LA Weekly for an Austria-based woman named Jasmine Ramer, but there is little other digital footprint for the writer. When Reality Defender analyzed the profile photo on Ramer’s LinkedIn account, it found it was likely AI-generated. There is also at least one other account using the same photo claiming to be a digital marketing executive in the UK. (WIRED did not receive a response when it asked Ramer for comment via LinkedIn.)

OnlyFans is an online porn behemoth, one which has spawned numerous cottage industries, like professional proxy chatters who impersonate the platform’s stars. There are marketing agencies devoted to promoting OnlyFans creators, and many social platforms from Reddit to X are swarmed with bots trying to entice potential customers. These efforts are known as “OnlyFans funnels.”

Risqué sex ads have played a major role in the rise and fall of some alt-weeklies. The founders of Village Voice Media, which once owned the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and the Riverfront Times as well as other US-based alt-weeklies, created the classified website Backpage.com in 2004 to compete with Craigslist. It created a lucrative revenue stream, buoying many titles for years, but ginned up major controversy for hosting sex ads.

Vice President Kamala Harris, serving as California attorney general at the time, dubbed the company “the world’s top online brothel” in 2016 and arrested its founders and CEO for facilitating prostitution. With this recent history in mind, the decision to lean into sexual advertorial is especially brash.

It may be that these alt-weeklies are creating these blog posts in an effort to drum up web traffic to their sites, which could in turn help boost digital ad sales. They may also be accepting money from the accounts or from representatives of the accounts promoted, which would mean the posts were unlabeled advertorial. “Online ads, print ads, they all dried up,” Rainey says. “But this OnlyFans stuff is there.”

“OnlyFans has no financial arrangement with these outlets,” an OnlyFans spokesperson who identified herself only as “Brixie” told WIRED via email.

“I think the creators are paying,” says Luka Sek, SEO manager for an OnlyFans promotion company called SocialRise. “An agency that handles multiple models, or someone doing the marketing for such agencies.”

Whatever the reason, it marks a grim new pit stop for declining media publications, one in which blatant SEO bait sits side by side with culturally valuable archival journalistic work and, in the case of the Village Voice, ongoing contemporary reportage.

Tricia Romano, a former Village Voice writer who recently published an oral history of the newspaper, The Freaks Came Out to Write, sees the arrival of AI slop as keeping with the recent deterioration of alt-weeklies. “This is the logical dystopian conclusion,” she says. “But who’s reading it?”

[behindthewox]

Site blogs - five things to try

There is a lot of work that needs to be done in order to make the site blog feature worth the time and effort it takes to regularly create content for them, and most of that work is work that we as a community cannot do. I could go into details but the people who can make the difference already know what needs to be done, or at least I would assume they do. And there are many people within WoX that are far better qualified than me to explain why the current setup doesn't work.

So I'm gonna focus on the things that we as a community CAN do to optimise the site blogs. It's not gonna solve all the problems and magically improve SEO and site visitors overnight but it's small steps in the right direction and it could pay off in the long run. Worth a try, right?

_ _ _

ONE: every blog needs a purpose The overall purpose of the site blog feature (at least in my understanding, but I could be wrong) is to showcase the site to "outsiders" who don't have accounts and can't access all the actual site content, motivating them to create an account to discover more. It's a part of the site that we can link to from our social medias to show what we do and have to offer, and hopefully make non-users join as new users.

Example: make blog posts about site activities, show the world what your site has to offer. Combine with testimonies and examples from users, such as "I love reading homework from this one person who always makes their character make terrible dad jokes at the end of their RP!" to entice new users to join and experience it for themselves.

Wanna read the other four points? Click "keep reading" below!

TWO: longterm planning and strategy A blog without content isn't worth much, and producing that content takes time. But content without a strategy or plan isn't going to get you very far. I've already suggested blog posts about site activities and inspiring newcomers to become users, so consider that the first part of your plan. The second part of your plan should be SEO, search engine optimisation. Basically, pick keywords that people are likely to search for in relation to your fandom. The more keywords and key phrases your site contains in total, the more likely it is to be in the top search results. PS! This isn't just a SoMe and blog thing, SEO is something teachers and journalists need to work on too!

Example: "Who is [greek god]?" with a presentation of the character. Squeeze in your keywords as much as possible without making it feel fake and cringe. If it feels like an A.I.-generated SEO slop, that is what your readers will think your site is.

THREE: social media All site users will get a notification about new blog posts, but if you recall the first point you'll know that it's not the existing site users that you're aiming for. They already have accounts; it's the potential new users you're really after. But no account means no notification about new blog posts. Unless you make one, that is, on your social media profiles. Let your blog content and social media content work together, directing people from one to the other. Use CTAs (call to action), links and "clickbait" for optimal effect.

Example: on social media, make a post about an interesting shop item. Use the item picture, write a brief caption like "you're handed one of these but you have no idea what to do with it. help! don't worry, today we're sharing the instruction manual on our blog: worldofsomething.com/blog". On the blog, remember to link to your social medias (and your site!) at the end of every blog post. SEO isn't just about keywords, it's also about links.

FOUR: graphic profile Freestyling is fun, but sometimes you need to limit yourself to what works best. It's a good idea to set up a few basic templates with simple designs that match the rest of the site and gives a professional but casual vibe. First impressions matter, after all. Avoid "busy" patterns and bright colours, use fonts that are easy to read, and structure your text with paragraphs and headers. Keep in mind that some users might be visibly impaired or dyslexic and might struggle with decorative fonts and certain color combinations. "Boring but accessible" should always win against "decorative but potentially difficult to read and decipher".

Example: light background, dark color text (or vice versa, it's the contrast that matters), sans serif font for paragraphs and a decorative but easy to read font for headers. The letters should be separate from each other (not "holding hands" like in cursive writing) and sometimes it's helpful to increase the spacing. Tip! Sit back and try to read your formatted text from a further distance than usual. If you feel like it's a strain on your eyes or struggle to make out the words, you might wanna adjust your formatting to make it easier to read. If the font and color is good, try changing the sizing and spacing.

FIVE: quality control Impressions matter, remember? That goes for writing as well. Bad writing can make for a bad impression, especially if the reader is used to higher standards. Many of the potential users you're trying to lure in will be avid readers, meaning that they will be used to the standards of publishing and anything less is... well, less. So it's pretty important that you're on the top of your writing game and maybe even get your blogs looked over by a grammar police before posting...

For SoMe team leaders: take the time to put together some good online resources to use for grammar rules, writing tips, spellchecks and anything else your team might find useful. Be gentle with your corrections, focus on the biggest ones and don't adress it as a "fail" but rather a "try this instead". If you can explain why it's wrong and how to do it right, take the time to explain it (easier said than done, I know, you might need to read up on grammar yourself first). And while quality is important, it's more important to have a good relationship with your team so don't hesitate to let the smaller mistakes slide in favour of keeping the writer encouraged and motivated.

_ _ _

This is the best advice I have to give, based on my experience and my amateur studies on social media. If you have the resources to give it a try, feel free to give it a try! And if you have more (or maybe better) suggestions, please share! But if your site doesn't have the resources to make it work right now, I'd argue you're better off focusing on social media platforms and actual site content: the site blogs should be in the lowest tier of priority because they are not worth the effort unless changes are made and you actually have effort to spare.

[nurjahan774]

Importance of digital marketing:

Reach your target audience where they spend their time. The average person spends over 6 hours a day on the internet, so it's important to be present where your potential customers are. Digital marketing allows you to reach your target audience on a variety of platforms, including search engines, social media, email,and websites.

Target your ideal audience. With digital marketing, you can target your ideal audience with laser precision. This is because digital marketing platforms allow you to collect data about your audience, such as their demographics, interests, and online behavior. Once you have this data, you can create targeted marketing campaigns that are more likely to resonate with your ideal audience.

Measure your results and optimize your campaigns. Digital marketing is highly measurable. This means that you can track the performance of your campaigns and see what's working and what's not. This data allows you to make adjustments to your campaigns in real time to improve your results.

Cost-effectiveness. Digital marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business. There are a variety of free and low-cost digital marketing tools and platforms available. Additionally, you can scale your digital marketing campaigns up or down as needed, depending on your budget.

Compete with larger corporations. Digital marketing levels the playing field for businesses of all sizes. With digital marketing, you can compete with larger corporations for the same keywords and target audience. This is because digital marketing platforms rank your website or content based on relevancy, not budget.

In addition to these five importance, digital marketing can also help you to:

Build brand awareness

Generate leads and sales

Improve customer relationships

Increase website traffic

Boost SEO rankings

Establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry

Overall, digital marketing is an essential tool for businesses of all sizes. It allows you to reach your target audience, measure your results, and optimize your campaigns to achieve your business goals.

[black-arcana]

GARBAGE Announces New Album 'Let All That We Imagine Be The Light'

GARBAGE will release its eighth studio album, "Let All That We Imagine Be The Light", on May 30. The LP was recorded at Red Razor Sounds in Los Angeles, Butch Vig's studio Grunge Is Dead, and Shirley Manson's bedroom. The record was produced by the band and longtime engineer Billy Bush.

"Let All That We Imagine Be The Light" is the follow-up to 2021's critically acclaimed "No Gods No Masters", which charted at No. 5 on the U.K. album charts and led to some of the best reviews of GARBAGE's career.

Speaking about GARBAGE's new album, singer Shirley Manson says: "Going into making this record, I was determined to find a more hopeful, uplifting world to immerse myself in. The title of the album, 'Let All That We Imagine Be The Light', is the perfect descriptor for this new record as a whole. When things feel dark it feels imperative to seek out forces that are light, positive and beautiful in the world. It almost feels like a matter of life and death. A strategy for survival."

She adds: "Our last album was extremely forthright. Born out of frustration and outrage — it had a kind of scorched-earth, pissed off quality to it. With this new record however, I felt a compulsion to reach for a different kind of energy. A more constructive one. I had this vision of us coming up out of the underground with searchlights as we moved towards the future. Searching for life, searching for love, searching for all the good things in the world that seem so thin on the ground right now. That was the over-riding idea during the making of this record for me — that when things feel dark, its best to try to seek out that which is light, that which feels loving and good.

"When I was young, I tended towards the destruction of things. Now that I'm older I believe it's vitally important to build and to create things instead. I still entertain very old romantic ideals about community, society and the world. I don't want to walk through the world creating havoc, damaging the land and people. I want to do good. I want to do no harm."

"Let All That We Imagine Be The Light" is unmistakably GARBAGE. All the hallmarks and signatures for which they are known are present here. Big angular guitars, precise, propulsive beats and cinematic soundscapes all lurk beneath Shirley Manson's unmistakable voice, her lyrics bristling with attitude. This is the sound of a group at the peak of their creative powers — characteristically harnessing sonic juxtapositions and moods to create an album that thrums equally with both light and shade.

Butch Vig says: "We used a lot of analogue synths and sound design on the album, as they seemed to fit the dystopian vibes we were all experiencing. We started recording the album with a clean slate, although given what's happening in the U.S. and the rest of the world, it's inevitable that the madness starts to infiltrate the songs. But we definitely wanted the record to have some hope, some light, to convey the feeling that people have the power."

Speaking about the album's opening track "There's No Future In Optimism", Shirley says: "I really wanted that song to open the album. It starts out with an anthemic call to arms, a clarion call. It's pretty much a rallying cry to all likeminded people. If you are interested in meeting this world with love, if you are willing to invest in tenderness and not violence or hate, then we are with you. You should come with us."

She adds: "I have to believe that music and art can still impact culture. I know it still impacts me — that mysterious power which no government on earth can co-opt or buy. Great music exists entirely within its own microcosm in a way — without any interference or corruptive influences. That's what always makes it so pure and precious. Even though all the pointers in our society say otherwise, I do feel music still has the power to shift atoms, shift thinking and shift positions."

Discussing the record's final track, "The Day That I Met God", Shirley adds: "This is the opus on the record and explores the grand theme of great love, something I haven't written about very much before now. The idea came to me when I was recovering from major surgery and I felt so raw, vulnerable and scared. I was on the treadmill for the first time following an operation when I suddenly felt this powerful sensation of healing love around me — it was a moment that uplifted me. It took me out from what had felt like hell. The vocal you hear is the writing demo, the first take. Just me sitting on the edge of my bed, in recovery, singing into a handheld microphone. I was feeling so vulnerable and I think that's what lends the song added poignancy. It's really a song about mortality but it's also an expression of gratitude. Gratitude for getting older, gratitude for the longevity of our band, for good health, for the great mystery and for the ongoing, creative adventure of life."

GARBAGE consists of all four original band members, Shirley Manson, Duke Erikson, Steve Marker and Butch Vig. Over the 30 years since their inception in 1995 they have sold over 20 million albums. Their unique sound, songwriting and electric live performances have inspired worldwide adoration, chart success and critical acclaim. They are considered one of the most influential bands of their generation.

"Let All That We Imagine Be The Light" track listing:

01. There's No Future In Optimism 02. Chinese Fire Horse 03. Hold 04. Have We Met (The Void) 05. Sisyphus 06. Radical 07. Love To Give 08. Get Out My Face AKA Bad Kitty 09. R U Happy Now 10. The Day That I Met God

[rohithaseoanalyst]

Significance of digital marketing in modern industries

The scope of digital marketing in the present industry (2025) is vast and continues to expand rapidly due to technological advancements, changing consumer behavior, and the increasing dominance of online platforms. Here's a breakdown of its current scope and relevance:

🔍 1. Widespread Industry Adoption Almost every industry—from retail and finance to healthcare and education—is leveraging digital marketing to reach customers. Key sectors include:

E-commerce (e.g., Amazon, Flipkart)

EdTech (e.g., Byju’s, Coursera)

FinTech (e.g., Paytm, Razorpay)

Real Estate

Healthcare

Tourism and Hospitality

📈 2. Core Areas of Digital Marketing Digital marketing encompasses a range of strategies and platforms:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Using platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X

Content Marketing – Blogs, videos, infographics, podcasts

Email Marketing – Personalized outreach and lead nurturing

Affiliate Marketing – Performance-based promotions through third-party partners

Influencer Marketing – Collaborations with social media influencers

Marketing Automation & CRM Tools – Tools like HubSpot, Mailchimp, and Salesforce

Analytics & Data-Driven Marketing – Using tools like Google Analytics, Hotjar, and AI-powered insights

🤖 3. Integration of Emerging Technologies AI and Machine Learning – Personalization, predictive analytics

Voice Search Optimization – With rise of Alexa, Google Assistant, Siri

AR/VR Marketing – Interactive product experiences

Video Marketing & Livestreaming – Especially on YouTube, Instagram Live, and TikTok

Web3 & Blockchain Marketing – Emerging in niche communities (NFTs, decentralized platforms)

🌎 4. Global and Local Reach Digital marketing allows for:

Global branding for startups and SMEs

Hyper-local targeting through geo-targeting, localized ads, and regional influencers

👨‍💼 5. Career and Business Opportunities High demand for skilled professionals – Digital marketers, SEO/SEM experts, content creators, analysts

Freelancing & remote work – Increasingly common

Entrepreneurial scope – Digital marketing agencies, affiliate marketing, dropshipping businesses

📊 6. Measurable ROI and Flexibility Real-time tracking and campaign optimization

Budget flexibility – effective even with modest ad spend

A/B testing and audience segmentation improve performance

🧠 7. Challenges & Evolving Landscape Ad fatigue and privacy concerns:

Algorithm updates affecting reach and engagement

High competition – Constant need for creativity and innovation

🔮 Conclusion: Digital marketing in 2025, t's a necessity. It offers:

Cost-effective outreach

Better targeting

Real-time feedback

High scalability

It will continue to evolve with AI, data analytics, immersive experiences, and consumer-centric personalization at the forefront.

[xhikatsu]

Topaz’s Awareness

I feel like people don’t give Topaz enough credit on how aware she is about her surrounding… It is easy to think she just blindly believes the IPC is good, or that Jade means well based on what she states. But there’s some nuances that shows her thinking is far more complex than that.

For example, just in her character stories alone, she goes against IPC rules in what she doesn’t believe in. This is shown through her rebellious behavior of purposely failing the business formality exam, or going around the rule regarding pets.

She didn’t agree and found it won’t harm her if she didn’t listen exactly to those rules according to her contract. She also tries to beef up her reasoning by proving it won’t hinder her capabilities to get her job done, making it harder to question her “exclusion” to said rules.

In a way, despite being stuck in a lifelong contract, she seems to try and go around the system as much as possible to operate the way she believes instead of blindly following the rules set.

For someone who was molded at a young age, you would think she wouldn’t be this rebellious. Especially if she truly did think that the IPC is ultimately good (added: which she actually has never out rightly stated). It’s more like she believes you can do good in the company, and she tries to take advantage of it to try and do that.

There’s only so much she can do at the end of the day, as the IPC clearly has specific conditions and goals in mind she still has to follow. However, she tries her best to examine all parties involved and present a solution that tries to make majority happy or satisfied.

This showed quite a bit in her approach with Jarilo VI. She did start off rather roughly with her initially engagement. Though she backs off to be able to assess the planet, trying to find evidence and proof for the IPC to say they can get a better deal because they have more value.

During her talk with Svarog as well, she states that she went out of her way to do extra research on seeing if planets could recover on their own from a Stellaron, indicating the possibility of not needing the IPC’s help.

For someone who claims that the IPC can help, this little action of hers shows that she doesn’t necessarily agree with the company’s method and would rather them recover on their own without the deal as long as they have proof to backup the claim.

If the planet is able to recover on their own, why sign a deal with the IPC and possibly be put on a lifelong contract like her? Topaz goes out of her way to try and find proof that they can recover on their own. However, she states her results were all negative about that search.

Going into the end of the Jarilo VI’s case when Bronya reveals the Engine of Creation, Topaz genuinely takes into consideration that the planet has a chance to recover without the IPC, giving them her full support by even taking a demotion to her position to ensure they don’t sign a deal.

This only occurred though because the planet appealed to Topaz’s rational/logical (added: risk-averse) side with proof, something she seems to value when making decisions. Without proof, she can’t take the words at face value and treats it as a note to maybe consider with some skepticism.

Now, this leads to her dynamic with Jade. Her voice lines about her does hold her in high regards, but most of it talks about her business skills and support she can provide (with a hefty price). (Added: Note that this is only EN TL, which is inaccurate as in CN, she actually refers to Jade as a benefactor and not “nobility”.)

In a logical and business standpoint, Jade’s skills are widely known and similar to Topaz’s style of getting things done (added: better to say she prefers to optimize things as her methods aren’t always efficient, but rather she hopes for it to be effective) efficiently. Especially as her student of sorts, she takes her teachings of business but places her own twist to it by adding in her kindness as a factor.

However, despite seeming to “idolize” Jade’s achievements and skills, Topaz has made points to show that she is aware Jade is not exactly who she tries to present herself to be as. In 2.3, she reminds her team to not call Jade “big boss”, saying they would get punished if so.

It hints that she is aware that there’s more to Jade than what she shows, especially knowing that Jade didn’t want Topaz to see her negotiate with the Family after learning how greedy they were to try and push the IPC out.

It was further hinted as well that despite seemingly knowing Jade for a decent amount of time and even being mentored by her, Topaz creates this “distance” with Jade when interacting with her. She would stay very formal ironically to her, calling her “Madam Jade” instead of “Miss Jade” until told not to.

Even when Jade insists that they are equals and there’s no need for such titles, Topaz still mentions that Jade is her senior. Even during their other talks, Topaz seems to try and strictly keep their topics to business, seemingly a bit cautious when Jade brings up Aventurine.

This is really seen specifically when Jade mentions Topaz’s trust in him. She seems to divert the topic to her logical business reason to why she would bet her cornerstone in this mission. But the minute Jade seems to casually speak about Aventurine, Topaz tries to go back to business.

It shows that Topaz is mindful with how she should behave in front of Jade, not wanting to divulge more into personal topics and strictly staying professional. This hints that she is aware of Jade’s manipulation and tries to extract what she learns from her.

What I mean is, she takes Jade’s teaching with value in a business sense. She clearly remembers her lessons and how to approach negotiation well. However, she doesn’t follow all of it by heart, changing it according to what she believes in and how she adds kindness to it.

She does value what she can learn from Jade, as it helps her strive and excel in her goal of helping others. But she navigates cautiously and seems to keep her guard up when gaining knowledge. It’s similar to Aventurine where he knows about Jade, but values what he can gain from her.

This doesn’t even go into the Keeping Up with Star Rail trailer where Topaz was co-hosting. She has always been good at analyzing and assessing. But it’s interesting she mentions not to test Jade, even hinting she was close to being “swallowed” by the abyss while looking nervous…

Ultimately, I just think Topaz is far more complex than she presents herself to be. I really don’t think she is that blinded as her words make her out to be, and her actions do seem to be contradicting to that as well.

This is just how I’ve come to interpret her behavior as I found it really off despite her words. She makes for an interesting character to analyze.

Original Date of Posting on Twt/X: Jul 3, 2024

[digitalaachayas]

Mastering Local SEO for Business Growth in 2025

In the digital environment of 2025, Local SEO has become a decisive factor for businesses that plan to conquer their geographical markets. Theano, a local store owner, a service-based business or a startup, it still doesn't matter optimising your online presence for local search is not an option any more—it's a must. Employing AEO GEO and taking advanced SEO training in the best digital marketing course in Pune, businesses have got the green light to reach their nearby customers with absolute accuracy.

Local SEO is the go-to tactic for your online presence visibility in location-based searches. When users type queries like “best bakery near me” or “top urologist in Kharadi,” the local algorithm on Google's end presents a list of businesses that are closest to their location.

2025 has come, and Google's AI-powered local ranking algorithm is still placing a lot of emphasis on:

Local content

Voice search optimization

Mobile-first indexing

Business reviews and NAP consistency (Name, Address, Phone Number)

By tracking consumer behaviour better and using technologies such as AEO GEO (Answer Engine Optimisation + Geographic Targeting), companies can still be more specific as far as content creation is concerned, while also geo-targeting the right audience.

Key Local SEO Strategies for 2025

1. Optimize Google My Business (GMB) Profile

Make sure your GMB listing is accurate with the correct NAP information, business hours, services, and regular posts.

2. Use AEO GEO to Target Voice & Local Search

AEO GEO aims at making content that provides specific questions (AEO) together with geo signals (GEO) that help your business to appear in the local results such as:

“Where to buy organic skincare in Pune?”

“Top digital marketing course in Kharadi?”

3. Create Local Landing Pages

Generate location-specific landing pages for every area your business covers. These pages include:

Local keywords (e.g., “best hair salon in Viman Nagar”)

Customer reviews from that area

Directions and embedded Google Maps

4. Earn Local Backlinks & Citations

Put your business on local directories such as Justdial, Sulekha, and IndiaMART. Ask for backlinks from local blogs or community sites.

5. Mobile-First & Voice Search Optimization

Make sure your site is fast, has a mobile-friendly layout, and includes conversational keywords for voice search such as “where,” “how,” and “near me.”

Learn Local SEO Like a Pro with Digital Aacharyas

To truly master Local SEO in 2025, hands-on training is key. That’s where Digital Aacharyas, the best digital marketing course in Pune, comes into play.

Why Choose Digital Aacharyas?

Learn how to implement AEO GEO for hyperlocal reach Get certified with real-time projects and business case studies 100% Placement Assistance Google Ads + SEO + Local Listing strategy in one complete module Located in the heart of Kharadi, Pune – 411014

At Digital Aacharyas, you will not only learn to rank businesses locally but also convert local traffic into paying customers using expert SEO tactics.

Conclusion

In 2025, Local SEO is no longer just a marketing tactic—it’s a survival strategy. With consumers searching for everything on the go, appearing in local search results can determine whether your business thrives or fades into obscurity. Enroll in the best digital marketing course in Pune at Digital Aacharyas, and master the art of AEO GEO-powered Local SEO for sustained business growth.

[contactplumbingseointheus]

Blue Crocus Solutions: Pioneering SEO Services in Plumbing

In today's hyper-competitive digital landscape, visibility is everything. Blue Crocus Solutions, an industry leader in SEO for plumbing companies, asserts its dominance through an array of specialized services tailored to plumbing professionals. Established in October 2019, this company's foundation is rooted in profound expertise and a distinct focus on cutting-edge solutions. Blue Crocus Solutions prioritizes innovation, real results, and a transparent client relationship, making it a top-choice SEO partner for plumbing businesses aiming for unparalleled online success.

The Art of Plumbing SEO

Understanding Plumbing SEO Basics

In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, plumbing SEO is crucial. For services like drain cleaning, water heater repair, and emergency plumbing, Blue Crocus Solutions employs sophisticated techniques to boost visibility. Keywords such as "plumber SEO agency" and "affordable plumbing SEO" are strategically utilized to ensure that client websites rank high on search engines.

SEO Strategies for Local Dominance

For local businesses, ranking in search results for queries like "plumbing SEO in [city]" can be challenging. Here, Blue Crocus Solutions excels by optimizing Google My Business profiles, creating geo-targeted content, and building local citations. These tactics significantly enhance visibility and draw in a local audience, transitioning seamlessly to wider market approaches.

Integrating Plumbing with Digital Marketing

Crossing over into broader marketing strategies, Blue Crocus Solutions offers comprehensive packages that blend plumbing SEO with PPC and lead generation services. Effective integration of these elements ensures not just visibility but also engagement, capturing and converting the target audience efficiently. With these tools, businesses can expect dramatic improvements in online interactions. As these nuances are mastered, we move on to addressing common industry pain points.

Solutions to Plumbing SEO Challenges

Tackling High Competition

The plumbing industry faces stiff competition. Blue Crocus Solutions counters this by employing advanced SEO methodologies-such as long-tail keywords and tailored SEO packages-ensuring their clients remain ahead. Our approach is both strategic and effective, moving from resolving competitive pressures to bolstering client credibility.

Ensuring Sustainable Growth

Achieving immediate results is vital but not enough. Blue Crocus Solutions' sustainable growth strategies, including link-building and consistent content updates, focus on longevity. Transitioning from growth tactics, we aim to reinforce foundational SEO.

Enhancing User Experience and Conversion

Aside from search rankings, user experience plays a pivotal role in plumbing SEO services. Blue Crocus crafts seamless, user-friendly websites that convert visitors into clients. The focus now shifts to how innovative history supports SEO. Success in addressing SEO issues sets the foundation for a strong online presence. Our strategic innovation timeline presents our consistent drive for industry excellence.

Case Studies Demonstrating Success

Arch City Sealcoating's Transformation

Blue Crocus Solutions reshaped Arch City Sealcoating's site, driving immediate lead increases through improved design. A modern website not only enhanced client interaction but also solidified online reputation. This success story flows into a broader narrative of effective SEO solutions.

Smedley Plumbing's SEO Revival

After inefficient marketing investments, Smedley Plumbing sought Blue Crocus Solutions' expertise. Within months, they witnessed a 291% rise in clicks, showcasing impeccable results over past approaches. Our next step reinforces this success through comprehensive SEO tactics

[shehinaseoanalyst]

Google Analytics

Google Analytics (GA) is a free web and app analytics service from google that tracks how users interact with your website or mobile app. It Collects data like visitor numbers, page views,session duration, bounce rate, and user demografics, and user demographics,and presents it in easy to understand reports.By analyzing traffic from Search engines , advertising platforms, and social media , you can evaluate the impact of your marketing efforts.

Key Features

Visitor Statistics: Measure overall site traffic and Segment it into new users versus returning users.

Behaviour Tracking: Find out which of your Pages draw the most attention, see how long Visitors Stay on each, and map out their paths through yor Site.

Acquisation Insights: Discover where your User Come from- organic Search, paid ads, referals, or Social media.

Conversion & Goals: Track Specific actions you define as goals.

Real-time Reporting: It display data on active Visitors and their actions during the last 30 minutes , updating live- usually within seconds to a few minutes.

Why It's Useful

Optimize your Website: Find exact Pages where users are leaving, and refine their content and design to reduce dropout.

Improve marketing ROI: Track which campaigns drive the most Conversions.

Understand your audience: Segment users by demographics,interests and device type.

Make informed decisions: Utilize data to guide content,design,and business Strategy.

Use Cases Across Industries

Whether you run an e-commerce store, a B2B company, a news website, or a nonprofit organization, Google Analytics enables you to:

Monitor sales funnels

Identify high-performing pages and drop-off points

Segment users by behavior or source

A/B test content and features

Refine marketing strategy using real-time and historical data

Conclusion

Google analytics is a powerful and accessible tool for understanding your Website's audience and performance. It uses AI-powered insights, real time reporting , and predictive metrics -like purchase Probability and Churn risk- to help businesses understand User behaviour deeply and act on it quickly. It helps you make smarter decisions-from marketing to Site design-based on real user behaviour and trends.

To know More: Google analytics