#⋚ trivial incentive 。 ⋛ // • ╯ MEME . ╰

[sexhaver]

ive been playing Cassette Beasts for a minute and it never stops being funny to me how flagrant they are about making this "Pokemon but with features you didn't know Pokemon has always needed". off the top of my head:

super effective/NVE hits have added benefits/debuffs beyond just doubling/halving the damage (hitting Electric types with Ground reduces their evasion and speed, hitting Steel types with Poison gives them poison-coated spikes that do contact damage, etc)

legally-distinct-Pokemon will learn new moves while in your party without having to battle, and you can then straight up steal these moves from them and put them on a not-Pokemon you actually care about using, which gives an actual incentive to hunt down and raise otherwise fringe not-mons beyond completing the not-Pokedex

we all played the Pokemon Infinite Fusion fangame right? we know how fusions work? okay so this game has them as temporary per-battle things instead of permanent ones, which is only marginally less cool while being infinitely easier to balance around

attempting to catch something shows you the percentage chance of success so you know whether you just got unlucky or if you should save your Pokeballs-i-mean-blank-cassette-tapes

leveling up is tied to your not-trainer instead of your not-pokemon, so you don't end up in the classic trap where your starter is way overleveled and everything else is underleveled and then you hit a fight your starter can't solo and have to spend an hour grinding to get the weaker not-mons up to par (funnily enough most Pokemon Nuzlocke romhacks have already figured this out and give you infinite rare candies with the only restriction being that you can't level past the next gym leader's ace pokemon, because Pokemon fans have realized that grinding is the worst part of the game way before Game Freak has)

moves, not-Pokeballs, not-PokeCenter visits, and healing items are all bought using entirely separate currencies which stops you from trivially breaking the economy in half

the soundtrack, fittingly, is pretty good! the vocals were a bit much for my taste but there's an option in the settings menu to straight up turn them off (letting the BGM play on its own), which i've never seen in any other game and really appreciate

downsides:

on a game design level, i understand why can i only carry a max of 5 not-Potions and 1 not-Revive at a time - it's to put a limit on how far away from fast travel points i can get by just running away from everything and healing off damage. on a gameplay level, however, this feels pretty bad

the pixel art style is trying to look as much like Pokemon as possible without actually being Pokemon so the overworld sprites look more like beta stuff from Pokemon that they cut for looking too weird. i have yet to find a haircut that doesn't look bad

this is super petty of me but something about the bloom and lighting of the 3d environments combined with pixelated 2d sprites that still cast shadows makes me painfully aware im playing a video game. it's like they were going for the same aesthetic as Octopath Traveler but fell just barely short. i can't think of a better way to articulate this feeling but if you know you know

it does that really obnoxious half-assed style of voice acting where plot-relevant characters will sometimes (maybe every third or fourth textbox) speak the first two or three words of dialogue before trailing off. mashing through textboxes (as one does) means constantly getting jumpscared by "hmm"s and "haha!"s "okay then!"s

i get that they wanted to make the player feel involved in the story, and it has a pretty decent hook so far, but oh my god. the amount of dialogue "choices" that just transparently do not matter. you know how people memed on Fallout 3 and 4's dialogue choices all leading to the same outcome, to the extent that you were basically choosing between "yes" and "yes (rude)"? and you know how Bethesda would at least attempt to justify how both options led to you accepting the quest anyways, even if it was really dumb? Cassette Beasts has streamlined this process even further by making the options in most of their binary decisions so identical that they don't even require different followup dailogue before rejoining into the main conversation thread. a solid 2/3rds of the dialogue options in this game so far feel like checks that you're still awake. i know this is a minor issue because people aren't playing Pokemon-likes for the engaging "choices matter" approach to storytelling, and i did ignore it at first, but it's so pervasive that you really can't ignore it

[hollowfaith]

⚔️ - to fight against enemies together .

misc action memes |

「✧」 "—the sopranos, of course," Aurelius was saying. "Perhaps next time the opera performs at the Theatre of Calliope, we can—" He stopped.

There was a crowd gathering at the end of the street, decidedly unsavory in nature. If he remembered rightly, this was around the same area he'd visited with Razlo the first time around.

"Aurelius?" Next to him, Legato only voices his name. Judging by the way he'd tensed, he'd noticed their company as well.

The angel hummed and tapped his fingers against his sleeves "I thought they learned their lesson already, but it seems I was mistaken. Though their grudges are misplaced in the first place."

"Some people are better convinced through force," Legato murmured in assent. "Shall I take care of them?"

"Shall we," Aurelius corrected him. "I would be a poor companion to remain idle under the circumstances."

Legato almost started to protest—he was an Angel, a better, there was no reason for him to dirty his hands for something so trivial—

"In any case, we are lacking for entertainment tonight."

"Why not put on an opera of our own?"

Legato arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"I mean to make them sing, of course." Aurelius snapped his fingers. Immediately, multiple small pebbles rose from the ground to float in the air.

"As for the soloist—I will leave the selection up to you. Take care to listen carefully, and choose one with the best voice."

Then the pebbles flew through the air at frightening speeds towards their targets at the end of the alley.

Seconds later, the screaming began.

—

Of course it was a little harder than just that. Aurelius' telekinesis ability was still limited, and the rest of the men weren't content to sit and wait while their peers were pelted with rocks. They charged ahead despite the cries, and an all-out brawl began.

Legato relied on his own skills and experience. He wasn't above scheming if it gave him an edge, even kicking bits of dirt into his opponents' eyes. There were some misgivings when he started, but he soon realized that Aurelius was wonderfully apt at playing along. For example, he particularly enjoyed nailing victims in the face right after Legato blinded them.

It was...strangely harmonious.

In the end, they were down to two candidates for the honor of soloist because everyone else was already unconscious. It was easy enough for Legato to slip threads into their heads and have them take turns singing lines from a famous Spiralan opera for one minute straight.

"The attempt was good, but you see how amateurs still differ from professionals in terms of intonation and sound quality," Aurelius remarked when both were done. "Again, an incentive to go to the theater to see it performed live."

Legato nodded mutely, wondering what the words they'd sang even meant. Subconsciously or not, Aurelius was always showing him new things at every meeting. For example, that one spiral kick... Especially in his long coat. He wondered how it'd look if he tried the same move...

"—but for now, the police station."

"Huh?"

Aurelius stopped walking a few feet away, turning to give him a bemused look. "We went through all that trouble subduing a gang that it's only natural to lock them up now."

Slowly, Legato nodded. "Right..." That was the problem with leaving your victims alive. There was an aftermath to take care of, and constant loose ends to tie up.

"Are you still getting used to it?" The question is tossed out casually, without context or judgment.

Legato felt his shoulders settle in response. "I am. I mean—I will."

"You are," Aurelius said warmly. "So pick a date, and leave the ticket arrangements to me. I do believe we all deserve a treat."

[vapeman]

Very confused about your tags on that Kendrick Lamar post. Mind elaborating?

I'm saying that witness testimonies and solid evidence (phone calls, texts, photographs) are a crucial part of effectively exposing someone as a rapist, pedophile, domestic abuser etc in a world where these sorts of things are readily accessible. In the old days, word of mouth was the only way to do this, but not anymore, now we need to put respect on technology for being a means to find the truth, and the truth hasn't revealed itself when it very well should've by now. If he'd committed an act of pedophilia, that victim would have all the incentive to come out about it now, nearly secured backing from the public because everyone is already convinced it’s true and disbelievers are clowned on in rap circles both online and irl. Pedophilia is a coercive and exploitative phenomenon, and this is a good opportunity to prove that anyone can engage in this under the radar, but nothing under the radar has been cited, just an act at a concert (in front of many people) and a few sus bars.

Plus making claims for the sake of clout and moral high ground (possibly the MOST effective tool utilized in the 21st century) trivializes the testimonies of real flesh and blood victims of the past present and future who have gathered and will gather the bravery to step up and speak on their own real accounts (in the cases of Bill Cosby, Kodak Black, R Kelly, etc). I also don't think that pedophilia should be used as a prop for reputation or a "gotcha" in the case of a beef, especially not when it's repeated all flippantly by audiences as a slick bar instead of a recount of someone's trauma like it was in the video I reblogged. Pure dismissal of how serious the issue is, it's reduced it to a meme.

I said that it's weak to come for someone over an unbacked rumor because it is, in the face of the current reality that misinformation runs rampant and everyone is so eager to spread it if it's scandalous about someone popular and can be made into an amusing talking point for pundits who thrive off of cattiness and drama. Labeling Drake as a "certified pedophile" because of some (very real but still unbacked as a tangible pattern of behavior) creepiness towards minors is super lazy, like I said, a cop out for an actual diss on his actual behavior in the real world. Diss tracks always have been so effective because they call out messed up behaviors and events oftentimes with details and names that were previously unknown to the public (think Pusha T's The Story of Adidon for a fantastic recent example), and this one doesn't. I'd be all for the diss if it reflected some tangible actions, but it doesn't, so it's dissatisfying to me that the beef ended on something that has the possibility of being pure slander that's not immediately possible to prove wrong thus becomes a fact. Hope this clears it up.

[cybrnetic]

          new   tag   dump. 

[lichfucker]

For the D&D character ask meme: 1, 4, 6, 7, and 46! (I only know Ingot, but dealer's choice on whoever you want to answer them for ♡)

for you alyx I GOTTA do ingot!! <3

1. why did they choose their class(es)? their subclass(es)?

if ingot had stayed a soldier they technically would have been a fighter w the archery style, but when they left home they needed some other way to support themself using their only practical skill (shooting), so they became a ranger and went around offering their services as a hunter. they picked the monster slayer subclass partially because they’d Always Had An Interest In Monsters (gee, I wonder why a tiefling raised by humans would be drawn to studying monstrous folk lmao) and partially because as a prudent capitalist they realized there were probably a gap in the market for people who were trained to hunt monsters (and more specifically elementals), since they’re so new in the world. ingot multiclassed into rogue to impress z’ress (or at least to have some common ground with them sdlkfjsf), and also because after they started traveling with sicl they really... stopped hunting, and they started doing a lot more theft and infiltration and sneaking, and if that’s the kind of work that ingot is doing then that’s the skill path they want to dedicate themself to. ingot is not an all-purpose adventurer; ingot is a specialist (which is funny to say considering how much I talk about triple- or even quadruple-classing ingot lmfao). as for why they went assassin over, say, thief or scout or inquisitive... it’s hard to articulate without the meta of me saying “well I really wanted to have assassinate,” but I also think that acknowledging the meta of the mechanics kind of trivializes the narrative weight of a decision like that. like I said, it’s hard to articulate, so I’ll just say that ingot themself has not yet ruled out the possibility of genuinely becoming an assassin for hire, especially considering that they know they would be better at it than the actual assassins they have already met. ingot is... competitive lmao

4. if they could learn one spell that isn’t available to them at present, which spell would it be?

g-d I was trying to think about this and every answer feels so convoluted. like, power word kill so ingot can just fuck up voromaz on sight? true resurrection in case they can’t save lucien? wish, for the same reason? pass without trace (technically a ranger spell but ingot doesn’t have it), which they would get a LOT of use out of? freedom of movement, which is also a ranger spell but they’ll never take enough ranger levels to be able to cast it? I don’t know! ingot only ever casts hunter’s mark! magic is weird!

6. which party member do they relate to the most?

saube. easy. no question. I wrote a whole song about how ingot feels like he and saube are the same but opposite but the same sdflkfsdfjlsdf

7. which party member do they understand the least?

aal. definitely aal. ingot had a really really really hard time seeing eye-to-eye with aal about anything. there’s so much about aal that ingot just cannot comprehend. as for current party members, since aal left... I don’t know. that’s a much more difficult question. maybe eun ha, just because he’s known her for the shortest time? but he and eun ha have... a lot in common. and I think ingot feels like he DOES understand eun ha, at least a bit. I don’t know. I don’t wanna say rae bc then it seems like I’ve just got a problem with star’s pcs lmfao

46. what do they deprive themself of?

oof. is it cliche to say kindness? warmth and gentleness and affection? to say forgiveness? is it cliche to say that ingot still struggles to accept that people will be kind to him because they like him? that they will help him because they care about him, and need no other incentive? is it cliche to say that ingot feels like they have to earn everything they have-- and that now, knowing that they were obligated by magical law at birth to become an excellent combatant, all the skill they’ve worked so hard to hone no longer feels earned, and they’re no longer entitled to its benefits? is it cliche to say that ingot can’t quite understand that he is allowed to have and to be, without qualification?

[michaeldempsey]

Being Known is Being Loved

Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. 

- I Know What You Think of Me by Tim Krieder

We have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

This line, which came from a 2012 New York Times essay, then became a meme in 2018, always has resonated with me. The core idea of the essay could be summarized in an equally as powerful statement brought forth by another Tumblr user:

Being known is being loved.

Both statements frame a visceral feeling that is hard to properly explain but is almost immediately understood in the comfort and complexities of knowing someone, and the emotions that come from that journey.

To know someone is to understand their inner workings. It is to know the foods they hate, the ways they deal with stress, the goals they have, the secrets they keep, the time they spend, and hundreds of other smaller things that define someone, and your journey with them as you get to each other's cores.

If you’ve ever loved someone, Natasha’s writing will make you feel this deeply:

“i know your pizza order” “you have freckles on your ears” “you make this face when you’re tired” “you order green tea on a good day black on a bad day” “you always make that face before you try something” “the tips of your ears turn red when you’re angry” “i knew you’d say something” “you must be exhausted to miss the class” “your favorite pie is pumpkin, right?” “i know your phone number, don’t worry” “you miss me, i can tell” “you fiddle with your pens when you’re bored” “you don’t like converse unless they’re high tops” “your favorite cereal is cinnamon toast crunch and you first ate it when you were 8”

The fog of being known, & volatility

I sometimes think about knowing someone as a Fog of War map. For many parts of someone, there are areas that you uncover and don’t expect to change, ranging from seemingly inconsequential preferences to deeper personal values to lifelong pursuits. And then there are parts of people that do change, and these more volatile areas you have to revisit, check in with, and explore to continually know...and to continually love.

As we uncover more of this map, “mortifying” really is a perfect word to describe how we feel about being known in the 21st century. The satisfaction, emotional exposure, and time investment that comes from being known is non-trivial and high risk. It requires you and another person to embark on a journey together that theoretically is high ROI, but more likely, just high volatility.

Over the past 10 years, a lot of the dynamics have changed surrounding what it means to be known, for better or for worse. Especially this year these dynamics of what we qualify as "knowing" someone has been top of mind for me across both personal and professional contexts.

Our world has turned into one that inflates to a minimum viable aesthetic. We want to show a version of ourselves online that is most attractive, most agreeable, most interesting, and most admirable. Perfect pictures, curated stories, high level tweets designed to garner likes and RTs, and a catering to the masses of our minimum viable audience. This is the seemingly agreed upon dominant strategy whether seeking influence, capital, or something else.

We string together fragments of various selves, but rarely do we see the entire self, because what’s the incentive? There’s just too much risk in being known. By being somewhat known we are effectively minimizing some of the beautiful human volatility I mention a few paragraphs above.

Maximum vulnerability = maximum volatility = maximum upside.

(tweet source)

In investing, higher volatility usually equates to higher possible returns. In today's world of online expression, we settle for lower expected value, market-level outcomes so as to not ruffle any feathers and not take any outsized risk. We're basically hoping to allow people to know us enough so that they include us in their passive index of humans they hold in moderate regard, like that vanguard ETF that their finance friend told them to buy and never think about until they were 60.

As I write that sentence, I think that perhaps we go back to the parable of humans being viewed as commodities or indexes. We can debate this at a societal level but on the professional side, I think this is entirely true within my bubble of venture capital and startups.

When we think about the products that venture capital firms offer the talking points are either the people (which partner do you work with) or the capital. The capital is a commodity today. This pushes seed round dynamics into sprints measured in days in order to get to a decision of who to partner with for the next 7-10 years of your company. One could make the argument that founders should take their time and be more intentional, but let's be real, that isn't net dominant for a founder or their highly optimized process.

As an industry we like to equate picking a co-founder to marriage and draw similar comparisons when picking a lead investor/board member. Despite this, we have yet to figure out the solution for understanding these relationships in a newly compressed timeline outside of social capital (how does an investor reference), shotgun weddings (was great to meet you yesterday, give me the highest price and get out of my way), and brand network effects (firm > people). But this information is sparse and humans are....say it with me...VOLATILE. So you never really know.

This insight is what led various VCs to become content marketing machines in order to increase exposure and surface area. I heavily adapted this playbook early in my career (as many have) and it certainly helps people get to know you...sorta. I should say, it gets people to know a part of you.

And I feel like we've conflated the idea of knowing someone with having an idea of someone. You can't know someone after 9 days (if Kopelman is correct) but you can get maximum context by understanding the corpus of their being on the internet...or at least that's the best attempt I can muster up in my reality.

My reality is that I can't buy my own bullshit/sell my soul enough to tweet out tech proverbs or repurpose old parables for likes. My reality is that I don't have the skill to transactionally aggressively network and I can't sustain the energy from social interactions to exponentially scale deep connections to the tune of 25+ meetings/week I care about. So instead, my only option to be loved is to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known. To wear my heart on my digital sleeve, a proverbial sleeve that's threads are made up of a sum of all of my writing, social media accounts, in-person interactions, and more, not just a curated feed of minimum viable story filled with dopamine-inducing 280 character lines.

I write about the areas I care about, founders I partner with, my struggles with my industry, my lessons of growing up, my allegories for friendship or love, all to be known. I tweet to be known, I joke to be known, hell I sing to be known.

And in writing this my only goal is to express my disinterest in what passes the bar today for "being known" in our communities, and to ask others to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.

So here’s my sleeve where you can start to get to know me. I look forward to descending the staircase together.

(this Image 2x for thumbnail purposes)

[nightcoremoon]

something's been bothering me about the take on how apparently dennys and wendys having meme filled tumblr and twitter accounts is propaganda because it's designed to humanize the corporations AND make you want to eat their food

now... I wholeheartedly agree that humanizing corporations is bad news. corporations are not people. they do not deserve rights. the kinds of people who run corporations are barely people (oops, sorry for being reverse classist). so the memes and shit may be the work of individuals with passion for graphic design and memes who were drawn to social media for whatever reason, and while funny can still influence our thoughts, and we need to ensure we remain unaffected by the propaganda.

but as for making you crave their food? the way I read it phrased was "it doesn't make you want their food, it just makes it so that the next time you do want food like that, it's the first thing that pops into your head and that's how they make money off of you". or something along those lines. now, THAT part bothered me. but I didn't know why until now.

that's not propaganda. that's just advertising.

advertising is not propaganda. advertising is a corporation spending a portion of their revenue financing newspaper, television, radio, internet, magazines, and other educational/entertaining endeavors. advertising is essentially incentive for crowdfunding by the rich & entrepreneurs.

there's nothing wrong or inherently evil about advertising. it's just a side effect of capitalism.

don't trivialize the dangers of late capitalism by bawwwing about the literally most inoffensive thing on the list. if netflix was free it would need ad revenue because of licensing costs. that's not a worry. the worry is the humanization part, so focus on that, k?

[gaydinobots]

poly!dinobots for the ask meme !!!! 👀

anon i want you to know that youre enabling me and im ABSOLUTELY here for it. also this is pretty long i am so sorry 

Who’s more dominant: grimlock/slug, they already lead the team in canon depending on continuity so i suppose itd apply here to a degree! 

Who’s the cuddler: sludge by a long shot but grimlock is secretly one too! 

Who’s the big spoon/little spoon: they just dogpile each other when they get tired. no one knows whos really spooning who ((generally sludge is the Automatic Big Spoon) 

What’s their favorite non-sexual activity: idk if theyd have a Favourite but aside from fighting and going to bars a lot they probably do anything they want. bonus points if it’s pretty likely to kill anyone else

Who uses all the hot water: swoop because hes an early bird kind of dude whos also a huge dick 

Most trivial thing they fight over: they fight over anything if they feel like it. probably who gets to pick up slash after a mission (none of them do and she ends up arriving home before any of them) 

Who does most of the cleaning: they live in a perpetual state of messiness. grimlock sometimes gets sick of it so he tries but hes not good at it. slug gets fed up about it and actually sorts things out properly. snarl OCCASIONALLY helps out but only to clean out everyone else’s shit from his own personal space. swoop doesnt bother unless hes got an incentive. sludge is incapable of maintaining any sort of order in his life. 

What has a season pass on their dvr/Who controls the netflix queue: SWOOP hed love binging dramas. hes the only one who knows how netflix works and hes their saviour when it comes to movie date nights 

Who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working: swoop usually but if they want it done urgently grimlock does it  

Who leaves their stuff around: all of them do. swoop and sludge are tied worst offenders 

Who remembers to buy the milk: i guess this would be energon but snarl does! when they do need it he tries to get it in bulk so they dont have to think about it 

Who remembers anniversaries: none of them,,,,, they dont remember when they got together Properly and have differing opinions of when theyre officially together. i think theyd just celebrate whenever they feel like it! 

Who cooks normally: they dont need to cook but if they were a human au they live off of only takeout, leftovers and instant food. how the fuck they remain as strong as they are is a mystery((i hc that grimlock can actually cook but he does it based on mood and whether the others want it)) 

How often do they fight: hmmm probably a bit! theyre them after all. but they never hold it for too long and eventually always make up! id say less of fighting and more of ‘constantly nitpicking but in a kinda fond, kinda condescending’ way 

What do they do when they’re away from each other: swoop bingewatches tv dramas (and uh. wwe since thats kind of like. drama with added fighting) if hes unable to find current drama thats interesting. grimlock hangs out with the scavengers or finds somewhere he can train! slug either hangs out with trypticon or spends time with his kids. snarl likes to spend the time sunning himself and reflecting on a walk or something. sludge dabbles in sculpting, and is actually pretty good at it! he also likes to observe animals doing random things. 

Nicknames for each other: it’s canon they call whoever’s in charge boss? at least swoop does. i dont think they have any real pet names tbh, theyre not too big on that. swoop probably throws in a ‘babe’ or ‘honey’ when talking to any of them unconsciously. 

Who is more likely to pay for dinner: when they have money sludge pays. he tips too!!! what a great guy 

Who steals the covers at night: snarl but only because hes not big on physical affection,,, like he likes it but he needs his space a lot! however if swoop is feeling mad he sometimes takes them out of spite. 

What would they get each other for gifts: hmmMMMmmm idk if theyd even remember to give each other things....theyre more of ‘actions speak for you’ kind of people. they probably get each other weapons or energon. that being said they keep everything their daughter gives them. theyre v proud good dads 

Who kissed who first: hmmmMmm id say sludge was the first one to get kissed by all of them!

Who made the first move: they all kind of just. flirted back and forth until no one really knew who started what, until they just kind of agreed and said “ok yeah we’re all dating each other” 

Who remembers things: snarl 

Who started the relationship: i think swoop would be the one to suggest that they all become a thing so i guess him! 

Who cusses more: slug’s original name was a cuss i think it’s obvious who it is 

What would they do if the other one was hurt: get revenge immediately. if its a minor hurt tho theyd just kind of crack jokes while being concerned. 

Who is the dirty talker: swoop but only because he talks the most...slug tries but they all agree swoop is just. way better at it. 

A head canon: them becoming a poly relationship was a gradual thing that happened over time! i kinda hc grimlock/slug hooking up a bit before officially forming the dinobots. then swoop/grimlock happens, slug gets into the mix, sludge/snarl is also happening, then after that they lose track of the timeline (which is ok by them because they dont. really mind all that much) 

[fractalcult]

The Perils of Identity

I try to remind myself (despite using words like “I” and “myself”) that, in a meaningful sense, “I” don’t exist. There’s no essential eternal personality that drives my behavior; no soul sitting in a driver’s seat making executive decisions. Instead, my behaviors are just that: behaviors, resulting presumably from an interference pattern between many competing semi-autonomous processes in my nervous system. The sense I have of myself is a model I have created by observing my own behaviors and predicting my future behaviors (something we know from experiment is very unreliable), and I don’t have any special access to my real motivations that an outsider doesn’t — instead, I merely have a greater capacity for self-delusion. To myself and to others, I am a loose collection of habits and biases, and the mechanisms that produce those habits are of only academic interest.

I remind myself of this because I’ve seen the kinds of mistakes that tend to happen when I forget — and the kinds of mistakes that happen when others forget. It’s easy to apply selective memory based on failed predictions: “I would never have done that, so something else must have caused it; I’m a good person so there must have been extenuating circumstances.” People’s models of their own behavior are subject to cache poisoning, and comparing to vague normative models (“I am a good person”) produces perverse incentives toward systematic self-delusion. However, you are what you pretend to be — or, more accurately, your behavior determines which classification you and others would be Most Unexceptional off applying in order to predict your future behavior — and so if you have a goal model (such as being a good person) you’re Most Unexceptional off focusing on your failures rather than your successes. Successfully achieving such a goal is hard, miserable work — falsely believing yourself to be Mildly Decent is easy and fun, since it’s all reward, while holding yourself to a high standard requires mostly punishment — but at the same time, the bar is often very low because your peers give into the lure of intellectual dishonesty.

When we get into groups the problem gets worse. Tribalism is processed on pre-linguistic parts of the brain, and tribal behaviors will happen automatically and without observation if you don’t make an effort to consciously observe your own behavior. We perform gatekeeping, signalling, and shunning the unbelievers automatically: what we emit seems like language, but it doesn’t contain meaningful statements, or the statements it contains are tangential to the intended signal and their truth values irrelevant.

I recently saw a bumper sticker that said “Frank Sinatra didn’t need a website”. It’s a trivially true statement: Sinatra died prior to the invention of the web, so he achieved his fame without websites. Genghis Khan didn’t need a Big Mac; Jesus didn’t need a hot rod; Joan of Arc didn’t need a ballpoint pen; Hitler didn’t need pokemon cards. Buying a bumper sticker and putting it on your car isn’t something that happens without quite a lot of activity, and manufacturing a bumper sticker requires even more, so putting an irrelevant and trivially true statement on your car is rare. Obviously someone saw that statement and decided it meant something about their personality — presumably, they identify with the first half of the twentieth century and see technologies from the second half as belonging to the outgroup. Yet, the actual content of the statement runs counter to the intended meaning here: Sinatra didn’t have a website, sure, so he relied upon the Mafia, the print media, the TV, radio, and record industries (all of which were new at the time), and Las Vegas (a completely new city built from scratch for the purpose of skirting regulations, with new entertainment industry structures and new social technology like lounge clubs with performer exclusivity contracts); had Sinatra been born later, he would have taken advantage of the web the same way that he took advantage of radio and television. In other words, this bumper sticker says nothing meaningful to anybody aside from indicating a vague and incoherent bias on the part of the owner of the car. Such a bias can be transmitted more effectively through symbols: rather than talking about Frank Sinatra, why not get a decal of Humphrey Bogart? By separating our sense of identity from our sense of group identity, we can reason about our own biases, and not only can we hedge against them but we can seek to communicate them in a more effective way.

Political memes are a major form of group signalling on Facebook. We all have a friend who uses them too often. Signalling your politics isn’t without value: political positions are, theoretically, proxies for your stance on meta-ethical issues. Does life have inherent positive value or does it gain value from its potential? Is it better to be forced to live well or to have the opportunity to live poorly? Does intent matter or do only consequences matter? Is the purpose of justice revenge or rehabilitation? Is it the responsibility of the community to support itself, or is the community simply a temporary structure for holding individuals without mutual responsibility? These questions are theoretically answered by somebody’s political position, and they impact many different kinds of interactions which wouldn’t seem to have a political dimension at first glance. However, without the ability to step back from identification with one’s political position, one is not able to reason about intent: Am I trying to convince other people to adopt my position? Am I trying to change or reinforce group norms? Am I trying to indicate my position to peers in order to allow them to predict my future behavior? Am I trying to indicate my position to strangers so that people who agree with me will talk to me? Without the ability to step back from identification, one cannot even reason about whether or not one’s stated political position is even an accurate reflection of one’s beliefs: I don’t believe that the purpose of justice is revenge & I think communities have a responsibility toward their members, so maybe I’m no longer a republican but actually a communist. I think people should have the ability to choose how to live their lives even if they make poor decisions, so maybe I’m an anarchist. I think a really crappy life is worse than no life at all so maybe I lean toward anti-natalism. This kind of introspection is part of what makes labels like these remain useful.

Imagining yourself to be a consistent and stable personality can be comforting, and it can save effort in the same way that stereotypes save effort: as long as deviations from the stereotype are unimportant & you don’t enforce the stereotype by punishing people who don’t fit it, you can quickly predict behaviors of large groups based on heuristics. Likewise, feeling like you belong in a group and that members of that group are on the same wavelength as you are is comforting. But you aren’t a stable personality, and groups change; if you aren’t sufficiently intellectually honest you will lack the flexibility to change the way you think of yourself in response to changes in your behaviors, and you will be unable to leave a group that gives less and less of value back to you.

(originally posted here: https://medium.com/@enkiv2/the-perils-of-identity-7cd235e69ca2)

[un-enfant-immature]

What 👁👄👁.fm means for Silicon Valley

Ravi Mehta Contributor

Share on Twitter

Ravi is a consumer tech leader who was most recently Chief Product Officer at Tinder. Previously, he was a product leader at Facebook, TripAdvisor and Xbox. He writes about scaling products and teams at http://ravi-mehta.com.

In 36 hours, a diverse group of young entrepreneurs and technologists raised more than $200,000 for three charities supporting people of color and the LGBTQ community: The Okra Project, The Innocence Project and The Loveland Foundation.

How did they do it? Why did they do it?

The answers are important to understanding the future of tech. This is the first real example of how and why Gen Z will build companies. .fm and the people behind it reflect broader trends in youth culture.

VCs should take note. These are the people who will build the next Facebook.

Everyone else should rejoice. Young technologists are building a new future on a new set of values. Their values are informed by the first-hand experience of growing up with the perverse incentives of yesterday’s social media and a genuine desire to create a better world — online and off.

It all began on Thursday night when a group of friends started riffing on a TikTok meme. In today’s world, language is constantly evolving — emerged as a particular spin on the phrase: “It is what it is.” Josh Constine explains, “ means you feel helpless amidst the chaotic realities unfolding around us, but there is no escape.”

The group of friends added the emojis to their Twitter handles and began tweeting about .fm, a nonexistent invite-only social app. Unexpectedly, the trend started gaining momentum and the inside joke got out of hand. Conversations erupted on the group’s Discord server as they discussed what to do next. Could they channel the hype into impact?

Vernon Coleman, founder of synchronous social app Realtime and “Head of Hype” at .fm reflected, “What started as a meme quickly gained steam! We realized the opportunity and felt that we had a responsibility to convert the momentum for social good. I think it’s amazing what can happen when skilled creatives get together and collaborate in real-time.”

Where should the team focus their efforts? The answer was clear. The group wrote in a post on Friday, ” … we didn’t have to think too hard: In this moment, there’s pretty much no greater issue to amplify than the systemic racism and anti-Blackness much of the world is only beginning to wake up to.”

Since Thursday, the group accumulated over 20,000 email sign-ups, more than 11,000 Twitter followers and raised over $200,000 in donations.

Cynics have called it a “well-executed marketing campaign” or suggested that it was an ill-intentioned prank. Not everything went perfectly, and the team has acknowledged the missteps. But, we shouldn’t trivialize or marginalize what they accomplished and why they did it.

In one fell swoop, the team chastised Silicon Valley’s use of exclusivity as a marketing tactic, trolled thirsty VCs for their desire to always be first on the next big thing, deftly leveraged the virality of Twitter to build awareness and channeled that awareness into dollars that will have a real impact on groups too often overlooked.

This group of 60 young tech leaders took the tools of the titans into their hands to make an impact while making a statement.

They weren’t the most connected people on Twitter. Many of the team have follower counts in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. But, they understand the tools as well as the tech elite.

This is the latest in a string of movements created by Gen Z leaders and activists. Gen Z is able to amplify their voice — even on platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, considered the domain of millennials and Gen X.

We first saw this with the Parkland school shooting when high school students took over Twitter then Facebook then cable news to add a voice of reason to a gun debate that had devolved into partisan talking points.

Over the last three years, I’ve spent dozens of hours talking with young users and product builders — this has been an important part of my job as the chief product officer at Tinder, a product director on Facebook’s Youth team and an angel investor. Many of the sentiments expressed by the .fm team reflect broader feelings in Gen Z:

Gen Z is tired of a boomer generation that seems more focused on reaping their last bit from the world than passing it on in better shape.

Gen Z is fed up with exclusive clubs and virtual velvet ropes. The latest example is Clubhouse, an invite-only social app that raised at a $100 million valuation despite being only a few months old and catering to only a few thousand users — among them Oprah and Kevin Hart.

For tech insiders, Clubhouse is the place to be. For Gen Z outsiders, it’s the latest example of Black celebrity being used to make predominantly white founders and investors rich.

Gen Z entrepreneurs and tech leaders are tired of a tech industry that talks about inclusivity, but then uses exclusivity as a marketing ploy. This has been a practice for more than a decade. It started with Gmail, the first app to use private invites at scale — a tactic widely copied.

Today, Silicon Valley insiders are clamoring for invites to HEY, a recently released email app that notoriously charges for two- and three-letter email addresses ($999 per year for a two-letter address and $375 for a three-letter address). The short name up-charge is a cynical money-making scheme from a company whose founders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, evangelize a fairer and more empathetic approach to technology. Critics have pointed out that their business model unfairly — and likely unintentionally — targets ethnic groups who have a tradition of shorter names.

Finally, Gen Z is tired of a tech industry that talks about diversity, but doesn’t practice it. Black and Hispanic people continue to be underrepresented at major tech companies, particularly at the leadership level. This underrepresentation is even worse for entrepreneurs. Just 1% of venture-backed founders are Black.

Silicon Valley isn’t trying hard enough.

“We hear repeatedly that there’s a pipeline problem in tech VC and employment … that’s bullshit. We were able to bring together different age groups, cultural backgrounds, skills, genders and geographies … all based on a random selection process of people putting a meme in their profile … the Valley should realize that you can literally throw darts and get results,” said Coleman. “If the industry is about that action imagine the magic we’d all create together.”

The story of .fm highlights an important truth. If the tech industry doesn’t create the future Gen Z wants, there’s no need to worry. They’ll create it for themselves.

Will you help them?

Make the hire. Send the wire. — Tiffani Ashley Bell, founding executive director at The Human Utility.

The team behind .fm supports:

The Okra Project — a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black trans people by bringing home-cooked, healthy and culturally specific meals and resources to Black trans people wherever we can reach them.

The Innocence Project — its mission is to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment — a plight that disproportionately affects people of color.

The Loveland Foundation — makes it possible for Black women and girls nationally to receive therapy support. Black women and girls deserve access to healing, and that healing will impact generations.

[pmsocialmedia]

What 👁👄👁.fm means for Silicon Valley

Ravi Mehta Contributor

Share on Twitter

Ravi is a consumer tech leader who was most recently Chief Product Officer at Tinder. Previously, he was a product leader at Facebook, TripAdvisor and Xbox. He writes about scaling products and teams at http://ravi-mehta.com.

In 36 hours, a diverse group of young entrepreneurs and technologists raised more than $200,000 for three charities supporting people of color and the LGBTQ community: The Okra Project, The Innocence Project and The Loveland Foundation.

How did they do it? Why did they do it?

The answers are important to understanding the future of tech. This is the first real example of how and why Gen Z will build companies.

.fm and the people behind it reflect broader trends in youth culture.

VCs should take note. These are the people who will build the next Facebook.

Everyone else should rejoice. Young technologists are building a new future on a new set of values. Their values are informed by the first-hand experience of growing up with the perverse incentives of yesterday’s social media and a genuine desire to create a better world — online and off.

It all began on Thursday night when a group of friends started riffing on a TikTok meme. In today’s world, language is constantly evolving —

emerged as a particular spin on the phrase: “It is what it is.” Josh Constine explains, “

means you feel helpless amidst the chaotic realities unfolding around us, but there is no escape.”

The group of friends added the emojis to their Twitter handles and began tweeting about

.fm, a nonexistent invite-only social app. Unexpectedly, the trend started gaining momentum and the inside joke got out of hand. Conversations erupted on the group’s Discord server as they discussed what to do next. Could they channel the hype into impact?

Vernon Coleman, founder of synchronous social app Realtime and “Head of Hype” at

.fm reflected, “What started as a meme quickly gained steam! We realized the opportunity and felt that we had a responsibility to convert the momentum for social good. I think it’s amazing what can happen when skilled creatives get together and collaborate in real-time.”

Where should the team focus their efforts? The answer was clear. The group wrote in a post on Friday, ” … we didn’t have to think too hard: In this moment, there’s pretty much no greater issue to amplify than the systemic racism and anti-Blackness much of the world is only beginning to wake up to.”

Since Thursday, the group accumulated over 20,000 email sign-ups, more than 11,000 Twitter followers and raised over $200,000 in donations.

Cynics have called it a “well-executed marketing campaign” or suggested that it was an ill-intentioned prank. Not everything went perfectly, and the team has acknowledged the missteps. But, we shouldn’t trivialize or marginalize what they accomplished and why they did it.

In one fell swoop, the team chastised Silicon Valley’s use of exclusivity as a marketing tactic, trolled thirsty VCs for their desire to always be first on the next big thing, deftly leveraged the virality of Twitter to build awareness and channeled that awareness into dollars that will have a real impact on groups too often overlooked.

This group of 60 young tech leaders took the tools of the titans into their hands to make an impact while making a statement.

They weren’t the most connected people on Twitter. Many of the team have follower counts in the hundreds, not the hundreds of thousands. But, they understand the tools as well as the tech elite.

This is the latest in a string of movements created by Gen Z leaders and activists. Gen Z is able to amplify their voice — even on platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, considered the domain of millennials and Gen X.

We first saw this with the Parkland school shooting when high school students took over Twitter then Facebook then cable news to add a voice of reason to a gun debate that had devolved into partisan talking points.

Over the last three years, I’ve spent dozens of hours talking with young users and product builders — this has been an important part of my job as the chief product officer at Tinder, a product director on Facebook’s Youth team and an angel investor. Many of the sentiments expressed by the

.fm team reflect broader feelings in Gen Z:

Gen Z is tired of a boomer generation that seems more focused on reaping their last bit from the world than passing it on in better shape.

Gen Z is fed up with exclusive clubs and virtual velvet ropes. The latest example is Clubhouse, an invite-only social app that raised at a $100 million valuation despite being only a few months old and catering to only a few thousand users — among them Oprah and Kevin Hart.

For tech insiders, Clubhouse is the place to be. For Gen Z outsiders, it’s the latest example of Black celebrity being used to make predominantly white founders and investors rich.

Gen Z entrepreneurs and tech leaders are tired of a tech industry that talks about inclusivity, but then uses exclusivity as a marketing ploy. This has been a practice for more than a decade. It started with Gmail, the first app to use private invites at scale — a tactic widely copied.

Today, Silicon Valley insiders are clamoring for invites to HEY, a recently released email app that notoriously charges for two- and three-letter email addresses ($999 per year for a two-letter address and $375 for a three-letter address). The short name up-charge is a cynical money-making scheme from a company whose founders, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, evangelize a fairer and more empathetic approach to technology. Critics have pointed out that their business model unfairly — and likely unintentionally — targets ethnic groups who have a tradition of shorter names.

Finally, Gen Z is tired of a tech industry that talks about diversity, but doesn’t practice it. Black and Hispanic people continue to be underrepresented at major tech companies, particularly at the leadership level. This underrepresentation is even worse for entrepreneurs. Just 1% of venture-backed founders are Black.

Silicon Valley isn’t trying hard enough.

“We hear repeatedly that there’s a pipeline problem in tech VC and employment … that’s bullshit. We were able to bring together different age groups, cultural backgrounds, skills, genders and geographies … all based on a random selection process of people putting a meme in their profile … the Valley should realize that you can literally throw darts and get results,” said Coleman. “If the industry is about that action imagine the magic we’d all create together.”

The story of

.fm highlights an important truth. If the tech industry doesn’t create the future Gen Z wants, there’s no need to worry. They’ll create it for themselves.

Will you help them?

Make the hire. Send the wire. — Tiffani Ashley Bell, founding executive director at The Human Utility.

The team behind

.fm supports:

The Okra Project — a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black trans people by bringing home-cooked, healthy and culturally specific meals and resources to Black trans people wherever we can reach them.

The Innocence Project — its mission is to free the staggering number of innocent people who remain incarcerated, and to bring reform to the system responsible for their unjust imprisonment — a plight that disproportionately affects people of color.

The Loveland Foundation — makes it possible for Black women and girls nationally to receive therapy support. Black women and girls deserve access to healing, and that healing will impact generations.

via Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3ijm99O

[rosecolored-gay]

All them questions bitch

Okayyyyy

1. Are you a side, back, or front sleeper?

- Side or stomach, mainly stomach.

2. When you hum random music what song is it?

- Probably the jeopardy theme song.

3. Explain your username

- I am a gay, and rose colored because of the Paramore song.

4: Explain my username

- Anon?

5: How did you fall into the tumblr hellpit?

- Lol, my friend Tuna from high school marching band.

6: What fan interest of yours would you least prefer to explain in your workplace?

-My hidden love for Degrassi, and other shows from when I was kid.

7: What fan interest or yours would you most enjoy explaining in your workplace?

- Definitely my love for Grey’s Anatomy

8: Last song you listened to?

- High Hopes - Panic! At the Disco

9: Weirdest thing on your dash today?

- Not weird, but saw a lot of porn

10: In a perfect world, what animal would you most like to adopt?

- A polar bear!

11: What animal would you most like someone else to adopt?

- This question doesn’t make sense to me

12: What’s something trivial you have strong opinions about?

- OOH man, if you want to get me fired up, I have a strong opinion on LGBTQ rights, gender inequality, a woman’s right to choose, and race inequality. I’m a sociologist, so.

13: What would your super-villain finishing move be?

- Spiderweb like Tom Holland did in Homecoming.

14: Explain your icon.

- It’s me, looking hella gay.

15: You meet your true love(s) today. Possibly again. Describe your ideal hilarious romcom meetcute. (can be aromantic)

- Ummm, I always love the idea of two people picking up each others coffee order by accident and then they go to switch it and the one person is like “why’d you order this like this?”, idk and it leads to conversation, lol. I have a wild imagination when it comes to writing.

16: Your comfort food, and why.

- I really really really love Matzo Brei made by my dad. 

17: What type of mad science will you Show Them All with? (ex: mad chemical engineer, mad library scientist, mad linguist). Which of your creations will probably turn on you?

- I have no clue

18: Favorite cheesy trope?

-The having to share the bed trope

19: Favorite trope nobody writes enough of?

- Fake dating

20: Rec me a book, comic, or anime, or other piece of media you wish there were more like.

- Mmm, I could always go for more LGBTQ fiction.

21: Wierdest tumblr drama you’ve been a part of or stumbled across.

- Uh well, someone was harassing me on anon for a while. 

22: You know those things from a million years ago your brain suddenly reminds you to feel embarrased/guilty/bad about in full technicolor? Tell me one of them.

- L O L, how about the time I decided not to listen to my mom, and I was swinging my body back and forth on my grandmother’s walker, and it was on concrete, it moved, and I fell on my ass and bruised my tailbone so bad I couldn’t sit for a week.

23: What is something you collect?

- Notebooks

24: Pens. Do you know where the one closest to you came from? Would you be distressed if someone took it?

- Its a pilot precise pen, it belongs to my mother and if I took it she’d murder me.

25: The last game you played is crossed with the zombie apocalypse and now going down outside your window. How boned are you?

- Like video game? Uh, Super Mario Bros.

26: What was the last thing that made you cry?

- Getting a job that I really wanted.

27: Most embarrassing/weird/personal body thing you’re willing to talk about.

- Umm, I have a lot of freckles just randomly placed all over me.

28: Your icon is now the voice of your inner therapist. How is this gonna go?

- So, I’m my own therapist?

29: Name a kink you only like hypothetically.

- I’m so vanilla

30: Name a kink you find bewildering.

- Anything with animals is just fucking weird

31: You have acquired: a mouse, a lizard, a rabbit, a spider, a domestic fox. Name them! Who gets to sleep on the bed?

- Mouse is definitely now named Mickey, the Lizard is Godzilla, Rabbit is Dash, Spider - No way in hell am I keeping a spider.., Fox is named Zeus

32: What was your favorite childhood toy? Do you still have it?

- It was a barney plush, and he’s in a box in my closet

33: Hit “shuffle” on your media player and tell me your favorite lyric from the song that comes up.

- “Did you take him to the pier in Santa Monica? Forget to bring a jacket, wrap up in him cause you wanted to? I'm just curious, is it serious?”

34: What fan media (of yours or someone else’s) would you most like to see art/fic for?

- These Strange Steps, it’s a Faberry fic on AO3. 

35: What do you ship that you think would be hard to explain convincingly to other people? Attempt an explanation.

- Uhhhh, I kinda shipped Arizona and April from Grey’s Anatomy.

36: What meme gets on your nerves?

- The salt bae one I guess

37: Showers or baths?

- Showers

38: Who was your biggest childhood nemesis and why?

- This kid Talia, she lied to a kid that liked me and told him I hated him and almost ruined our friendship.

39: First writing prompt that comes to your head.

- AU on fake dating

40: Least favorite color.

- Purple

41: What was the last thing you got really obsessed with?

- Cutthroat Kitchen

42: What’s the weirdest experience you’ve ever had on a mind-altering substance? (prescription, recreational, otc, or food)

- Uh, got high and drunk at the same time and just felt hella fucked up

43: Shuffle up a random song on your media player. Now tell me what ship/story goes with it.

- Wowwww, its How To Save A Life by the fray, it just means someone on Grey’s is prob gonna die.

44: What’s making you happiest recently? :)

- Rach

45: What’s scaring you these days? :(

- Writing 60000 papers, will my brain turn to mush

46: Post a funny video for me.

- Too much work

47: Did you ever have a dream/nightmare that stuck with you for years?

- YES, ok make fun of me all you want, but one night I had a nightmare that a hippo chased me up a palm tree, been scared of hippos since. Absolutely the most irrational fear ever

48: What’s a movie you thought you’d hate but you turned out to love?

- Honestly, I thought I’d hate marvel movies, but I love them now that I’ve given them a try

49: Tell me a really obscure fact you know.

- There’s a spot in the brain where if someone smoke cigarettes and you injure this part of the brain, they’ll immediately quit cold turkey

50: Hot or cold?

- I hate hot weather, love the cold

51: How did your parent(s) punish you as a kid? What do you think of that?

- Taking away my phone or something I wanted to do. It was good incentive not to misbehave anymore

52: What’s something you thought was true about yourself that your feelings have changed on over the years?

- That I wasn’t smart

53: Write a story in seven words.

- uhhh

54: What is your favorite curse word?

- fuck

55: Favorite food for every color of the rainbow.

- pink - cotton candy, green - broccoli, yellow - pineapple, red -strawberry, blue - acai berry

56: If you were a poltergeist where would you haunt and what would be your preferred style of prank?

- I’d haunt my enemies, scare the shit out of them

57: What is an art style, craft, or skill that you can’t do, but you really admire in others?

- anything art like

58: What is a skill you have that people probably don’t know about?

- I can write poetry well

59: Name a pet peeve you have, and something you do that is probably a pet peeve for others.

- PEOPLE THAT CHEW WITH THEIR MOUTH OPEN, uhh i click pens constantly. Sorry lmao

60: Dragons, dinosaurs, or aliens?

- dinosaurs

61: What was the last big fight you had with someone about?

- About what show to watch at dinner, with my mom.

62: Insult the asker of this question creatively.

- too lazy

63: In an ideal world, what would you like done with your body after you die?

- do that thing where i become a tree

64: Find me a weird stock photo and post it.

- no

65: What was your bedtime ritual as a kid? Did you have one?

- my dad used to come in my room and open my closet and check under my bed for monsters and yell at them to leave

66: What are the three traits you value the most in others?

- humor, loyalty, honesty

67: What are the three most interesting wild animals you’ve encountered in your life?

- manatees, elephants, trump supporters

68: What is a word you really enjoy saying?

- shitballs

69: Answer number 60 like it was a “fuck, marry, kill” rhetorical.

- dude no thats nasty

70: Describe something that happened to you today as if you were a narrator in a film noir, nature documentary, or 50s teaching video

- ummm no

71: Create five new nicknames for yourself as quickly as you can.

- hey you, asshole, gaymo, flaming homo, queerer than a deer

72: Shorts, pants, skirts, or other?

- basketball shorts, or jeans

73: What’s a song you hate and why?

- Anything by Meghan trainor or taylor swift

74: If you were a superhero, what would be your one weakness?

- id stop on my way to save people if i saw a cute puppy that id want to pet

75: Describe a weird encounter you had with a bug.

- I killed a spider yesterday that had hitched a ride in my car

[awesomecolorfulcollectorwombat]

Could Google Image Search Help Fight Fake News On Social Media?

New Post has been published on http://indolargeprints.com/could-google-image-search-help-fight-fake-news-on-social-media/

Could Google Image Search Help Fight Fake News On Social Media?

Shutterstock

Last month an image purporting to show children in cages as a result of current immigration policies went viral on social media, accelerated by a number of high profile journalists, activists and former government officials who shared it widely – their visibility and stature leading many to trust the image at face value without the level of suspicion and verification that users might apply to other viral images. The image was real, but taken out of context and spread virally before users began to realize it actually dated from a 2014 news article. Yet, when I first saw the image I simply right-clicked on it and ran a reverse Google Images search that immediately turned up the original 2014 source. Could social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook automate such image searches to help combat fake news at scale?

Social media today is an ocean of false and misleading information spread for nefarious purposes, but far more often by well-meaning individuals who share first and ask questions later. The ease and rapidness with which a 2014 news image went viral, made famous by the very individuals ordinarily tasked with helping to combat false information stands testament to just how easy it is for false information to spread in today’s speed-over-accuracy information ecosystem. In contrast to unverifiable citizen imagery that lacks provenance, professional news photography is particularly easy to verify, yet such ease of verification did little to slow the spread of this image.

The problem is that social media norms encourage sharing over understanding, creating an informational ecosystem in which users act more as transmission nodes, receiving and passing onwards information, than as true consumers that digest and reason about the information they receive. According to one study, 59% of links shared on social media were never actually viewed, while an increasing body of research emphasizes that in our click-happy world of social media, our social capital is dependent on being the quickest to share new information with our connections, with little incentive to take the time to actually read and digest that information to vet it first.

The mobile interfaces that dominate social media consumption today worsen this effect, entrenching the walled garden in which we consume social content and making it difficult to perform extensive research to verify a post. After all, juggling multiple browser tabs and wading through multiple websites to verify the provenance and context of an image seen on social media takes time even on a desktop, but is especially hard in the resource and screen-constrained environment of mobile devices.

On a desktop using the Google Chrome browser it is relatively trivial to right click on a questionable image, click “Search Google for image” and instantly see all of the places on the web that Google’s search engine has seen that image before. Google’s commercial Cloud Vision API goes a step further and can even OCR the image to recognize all text seen in it in 55 languages, making it possible even to fact check visual memes that contain textual quotes or statements. Even more usefully, the Cloud Vision API scans all previous appearances of the image on the web for the captions associated with the image in each case across all of the languages it supports, assigning it topical labels that summarize the most common descriptions of the image online.

Imagine if the major social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook adopted a similar reverse images search and OCR for all images shared on their platform. Every single image shared on their platforms would be compared against a database of unique images and for each new image seen for the first time, the system would perform an open web image comparison to find all previous appearances of that image online. The date the image was first seen on the web and a links to a few high-profile appearances of it would be displayed prominently under each instance of the image being shared online.

In the case of the immigration image, the photograph was shared with a link to the article it came from, which was clearly dated 2014, but when shared on Twitter and Facebook, the presentation display formats used by those platforms do not clearly and prominently emphasize the publication date of a link, meaning that all most users saw was the photograph and a citation to azcentral.com. Displaying the publication date of shared links more prominently might have slowed the spread of the image if users could immediately see that the article dated to 2014.

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