#1 more thing i think media literacy is dropping too

[vvh0adie]

can i tell yall something i hate when reading?

explaining real world culture too much

if i’m reading a book set in the south and the main character is african american and the author starts explaining bottle trees, miming in the church, or why you don’t put yo purse on the floor for a whole page, i close it

what is already understood doesn’t need to be explained…

unless you wrote this book tryna capture a whole nother demographic

that’s why i hate blackish cuz almost every episode we explaining shit

don’t market to black people then give us a book with a bunch of filler info😭 i know all this shit now just tell me how you finna use it to progress the story

if you must, put a glossary in the back for the non-AAs

like not once have i opened a piece of classic black literature and been preached to about my own culture

but honestly i think this is a symptom of trad publishing cuz we’re starting to get contemporary and modern black literature but a lot of it feels like they’re tryna get nonblack people into the book by explaining every little detail

and i can’t place all the blame cuz a lot of people won’t even pick up our writing if it doesn’t somehow cater to them a tiny bit

[kaypeace21]

[The future of this BLOG]: SHOWS I'm planning on analyzing here & on YouTube

Interview with the vampire

Invincible

House of the dragon

The boys

Umbrella acadamy

Bridgerton probably (still haven't had time to watch part 2 yet)

stranger things: I have mixed feelings about reviewing it given what certain staff has said and done. I oscilate between wanting to review the final season or wanting to boycott it (especially as someone who has been part of the BDS movement for 1/2 her life). But, on one hand, It's not the fault of the underpaid (and talented) writers and staff who don't have these views. And I do believe some of the writing staff may have good intentions and want to give us a positive and powerful message to the audience about healing from childhood tr*uma. However, other members of the writing staff may just want to go down the stereotypical and popular-easy route. We'll just have to wait and see what happens in the last season. If I hear the ending isn't simply another re-hashing of prior seasons and it's more like s1-2 (without the cliches of s3-4). I'd be more inclined to review it by *cough* and watching it elsewhere. Once I was logged back on to tumblr: I did have a whole draft saved about my politics since I was a kid and why I still feel so strongly about such conflicts, today . But, I shouldn't make the topic about me- and I'm not sure anyone wants to hear my life story XD. So, the big point (to my followers) is regardless of whether I chose to watch it or boycot it-

I'm not deleting the old ST content: so do what you want with it (like, reblog, add details to reblogs I didn't notice). Have fun :D !

Analyzing ST certainly helped me improve in terms of media literacy (and it'll be beneficial for the future content I make). So even if it sometimes got messy here, I do appreciate all the positives the ST blog and followers brought to me.The kind words meant a lot. For those who want to unfollow me for my political beliefs , that's totally fine. That's your prerogative. For those who want to unfollow cause again ST was pretty much my whole blog: again I TOTALLY understand and I wish you the best :). I'm not going to judge, take away, or guilt anyone, for their choice of media they like. Enjoy it (I truly mean that).

For those who continue to follow my blog . I appreciate you SO MUCH! I've been gone from this blog for such a long time cause of school (and I appreciate those who stayed and were excited to see me again). The positive words meant a lot over the years. Everyone have a lovely day. Take care of yourselves.

Sincerely, Kay

ps: I'm open to other media suggestions too so you can drop them in my message box (recent films/ shows, mini/limited series, animation, heck i'm open to comedies and foreign media too).But, analyzing them will most likely be after the shows listed above .Right now I'm focusing on my national exam and my mental health. My first video will probably be in late August or early September. My test is August 20th. Hope everyone is doing well .I'm feeling much better mentally. Hope everyone is feeling the same way :)

for my 1st video I’ll just post it to youtube . But for other videos I may make a early access patreon (like a week before the next video comes out free on youtube). Have to google how all that works (or if there's better alternatives) . Totally fine if you can't afford it (you'll get to see it for free on youtube regardless :D) . I'll be honest . I'm primarily thinking of doing it cause I need to pay off those student loans and I'm trying to hopefully move out of state in a few years. Plus, I love analyzing media anyways (so making it a part time job would be a dream come true .

[professional-idiots]

TBHK Ch.110–Thoughts and feelings

1. I don’t even know what to say about this. LIKE!!?!!?! Especially because Akane always said that supernaturals only ever think about themselves!!! GUYS… I wonder if this is gonna affect him as a character and his outlook on the supernatural (anyway they’re literally siblings and I was sobbing)

2. SOOO CURIOUS ABOUT THIS!!!! What’s the significance?? Is it a functional key? Probably… and if so what does it open?? Maybe it controls the clock somehow???? So many possibilities 😭

3. WHEN I TELL YOU I WAS SO HAPPY TO SEE HIM. This is my SON. I love him so much and I was so happy natsuhiko went to go find him 😭😭😭😭

4. He trusts him so fully!!! He genuinely thought natsuhiko was coming to save him!! He thought they were—if not friends then at least *friendly* HE THOUGHT HE COULD TRUST HIM

5. When I tell you my heart DROPPED (but I am excited by all this yorishiro talk—more on that later)

6. TBHK character stop shoving strange substances into Mitsuba’s mouth challenge (level: impossible)

7. MYYYY BABY MY BABY YOURE MY BABY SAY IT TO ME!!! IIIII BET ON LOSING DOGGGSSSSS

(AND ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF HIS PREVIOUS ALMOST DEATH)

8. Friendly reminder that Teru is the worst boyfriend ever (he’s actively watching Akane eat shit)

9. I need someone with better media literacy than me to explain what the FUCK is up with these guys bc I feel like I know but like I don’t…. Every time I think I understand shit gets weird again. Like I’m following the story but I cannot analyze this

10. HIS FACCEEEEE 😭😭😭😭😭

OK THIS CHAPTER WAS AMAZING!!! I’m so scared for 111 bc WHAT IS GONNA HAPPEN!!!! I have so many theories and ideas and ughughughugh it was so good (even though everything that happened was bad) 8/10 (I’m giving this rating kind of arbitrarily so don’t read into it too much)

So on the yorishiro thing: I think Kou might become Mitsuba’s Yorishiro. Now I know people can become them but can living people… I dunno. However, I think it’s really likely. I’m wracking my brain on what all this Mitsuba would have to value. Not his camera because that was Sousuke’s thing. And if not his camera, then what? Kou is the one thing/person that Mitsuba has grown truly attached to.

So I think next chapter Mitsuba will be dying, but Kou will somehow be able to break from the time thingy (either he wills himself awake—like has a power flare in defense of Mitsuba—or maybe someone helps him—but who 😭) and goes over to Mitsuba and while he’s crying and being all Kou, Mitsuba is gonna like think about Kou (maybe call him his friend for the first time) and somehow in the moment Kou will become Mitsuba’s yorishiro. TRUST GUYS TRUST.

Also on Mitsuba and Kou:

POOR KOU. He looked up to natsuhiko so much when they met right before the severance 😭😭 if he’s close enough, he would’ve SEEN everything happening to Mitsuba.

And also POOR MITSUBA. He trusted natsuhiko!!!!! The good news is that Mitsuba will probably fully shift sides now and possibly make a more direct effort to help Kou Yahsiro and Hanako. Genuinely though, his mom is hurt, *he* is hurt, his friend(ish) betrayed him. My poor baby 😭 why do AidaIro hate himmmm.

I would say something super smart and informed about the twins now, but as I said: nothing about them makes any sense to me.

Ugh I seriously don’t think I can wait till next monthhhhh!!!! If AidaIro lose it and actually kill off Mitsuba…. I don’t even know what I’m gonna do. 111 better be good or else 😭

[sharonccrter]

Do you think there’s still a way they can fully redeem Lestat’s character for those viewers that don’t get past 1x05? I’ve never read the books so it kinda annoyed me that they would add a scene like this and potentially ruin the future of the character without it even being canon. I felt there was a chance they could have retconned it as a memory manipulation or something (I was fully expecting the memory to be a mesh of what Armand did to Lestat in the books (presumably??)) but that’s not gonna happen now.

Tbh it doesn’t bother me personally, I loved the apology scene and that it was clearly shown as something inexcusable and Lestat himself acknowledges it, but im not sure if it’s enough.

Another thing that I think the writers were trying to portray but some people aren’t really seeing is that Louis is a bit of a hypocrite. He attacks Lestat pretty brutally for putting hands on Claudia, but he himself does it later in the show. And then he excuses Armand for threatening Claudia and also doing the exact same thing?? But a lot of the audience won’t see those things as wrong because of how graphic and horrible that drop scene was in comparison (Which it totally was, it’s just that the writers don’t seem to see that they’re not comparable?).

On the other hand, I like Lestat being a complex character. There’s a lot they can do in s3 with his back story (I. e. Cycles of abuse with his father and maker that they hinted at). But I feel like there’s a big portion of the audience that won’t be accepting of it.

Basically I feel like the writers are a bit out of touch with their audience and how they’re writing is perceived, which is worrisome going forward😬

Sigh. This turned into a a word vomit and I apologize lmao but I was curious on your take

Eh, some people will never get over it, and that's their loss; in my opinion, they haven't ruined anything about Lestat's character. Yes, the scene was not in the book, but I understand why they did it, even if I'm not in love with the idea. It was for shock value but also to give Lestat more of an 'arc'.

I think it comes down to the fact that none of the characters are good people, Lestat has always been a deeply morally grey character who's done fucked up things, but he's such a compelling and exciting character that Anne Rice literally made him the main character and wrote 14 books from his POV.

She never claimed he was a good person, but he is a good character to write and read about. And yes, while I don't excuse Lestat's actions towards Louis. I do agree it's hypocritical for fans to say, "Louis was justified to act violently to Lestat because he laid hands on Claudia," when Louis has also laid hands on Claudia himself. Not to mention, Louis sat back and let Armand treat Claudia badly, and when she called him out, he had the audacity to say, "That doesn't sound like him."

Louis has always centred himself as the victim of the story. He even admits in episode 2x07 that he made himself more passive in the telling of how Claudia was made. Because he wasn't ready to face the bad shit he's done, and that's Louis's whole freaking character. I have to be honest here, Anon. I hated Louis in book 1; I do love him in the show because Jacob Anderson has done a fantastic job, but sometimes I just meh about the character.

If Lestat has a lot to atone for, and he does, he's not a good person, then Louis has a lot to atone for, too. I mean, hell, I even love Armand, the messy bitch that he is, because they're all bad people; that's literally point. And Yes, some people may not be able to get past 1x05, and hey, I do think there is still more to the story since Sam and the writers hinted at it being revisited in S3; but that's their problem.

I don't think the writers are out of touch; I think media literacy is dead, and people just don't know how to have fucking fun anymore. They also clearly don't understand what gothic horror is. But honestly, anon, I'm reaching the point where I don't care. They can either get on board or get off the train.

Also never apologise for sending long anons, happy to chat as long as you like :)

[cherish--these--times]

Okay. BUCKLE UP.

To the people who say that we have no media literacy because we hoped til the very end that Ted and Rebecca would end up together: you can FUCK RIGHT OFF.

Recently, Hannah W. declared: "Is there chemistry beyond friendship? Yes, I think they do have that as well."

But beyond that, there were A MILLION OTHER WAYS they could have done the last season (and arguably season 2) differently than what they did to avoid any ambiguity as to Ted and Rebecca's relationship. They could have had them hang out all the bloody time and be the rock solid best friends in the world. Ted and Rebecca were never more than friendly co-workers since season 1 ended. That BFF, platonic bullshit was never a thing. If that was true, Ted would have had NO PROBLEM hugging the shit out of her in the stands in the last episode when she begged him to stay. Or again in the airport. They would have gushed over how they made each other's life better and it would have been beautiful and moving and perfectly reasonable. Instead it was loaded with unsaid stuff between two people who never dared to get too close to one another. Keeley was Rebecca's rock. Beard was Ted's. Ted and Rebecca were something else. They were connected in unfathomable, cosmic ways. A perfect set up for a romcom, even if you dislike the idea.

But okay, playing the devil's advocate here, if the platonic soulmates shtick was always the intent (and I don't care what people think, I'm not sure it was), why not have them fall in love with other people early on but keep them as a tightly-knit tandem? Why keep them apart so much throughout the show and both single for most of it???? Why even establish they were born to meet then they never see each other again at the end?? Romance aside, what was the fucking point of that??

Let's address your fucking condescension, shall we? I'll tell you what media literacy fucking taught me:

That Rebecca immediately sensing Ted was having a panic attack, following him, and missing him by a hair, is a classic trick for lovers in a "right place, wrong time" kinda way. If they didn't want to leave any space for ambiguity, she would have found him, comforted him and took him to Dr Fieldstone's office herself without this need to overdramatise and make us long for said comfort that she was unable but clearly desperate to provide.

That Ted texting her for the first time on screen (15 times!!!) because he wanted to hang out at night in a foreign city JUST WHEN SHE LOSES HER PHONE IN A CANAL is a classic SEE ABOVE!! Fuck all of you, honestly.

That one half of the equation carrying a matchbook in his pocket the other half had been obsessing over for months means he is the answer to her romantic quest. And before you go and say that everyone got a matchbook that night, THAT'S NOT THE FUCKING POINT. They chose to show that Ted, of aaaaaaall the people in the restaurant that night, had been carrying Rebecca's hopes and dreams in his pocket THE ENTIRE BLOODY TIME. It was an intentional, purposeful decision. They decided to drop that hot potato later on but you can't blame us for thinking it would lead somewhere!

That one half of the equation carried a trinket in her bag the other half gave her YEARS BEFORE, means he is the one for her. Why? Because this was something he gave her to make her feel safe! Letting someone wonderful love her without fear of being safe was the thing she canonically admitted she was afraid of in a ROMANTIC relationship! The fact that the army man happened to be stuck in the green matchbook was frankly TAKING THE PISS.

That Ted's official love interest having admitted she disliked his puns and having Rebecca laugh at one of his puns IN THE SAME EPISODE is meant to convey she's the one and right under his nose!

That her love interest for the night unloading his marital struggles on her unprompted just like Ted did, loving the same songs as Ted and making her tea that had the same impact on her as Ted's first biscuits means that what she looks for in a partner is right under her nose!

That having her bump into Ted in a corridor and both sensing each other in a choreographed dance MOMENTS after Higgins gave her a whole ass speech about how psychics could help her see in herself what she's missing means IT WAS ALWAYS TED. Don't even get me started on the fact that during said speech, the pink biscuit box was very conveniently placed just behind the green matchbook! A speech about her not seeing something about herself?? Uh??? FUCK OFF.

That Rebecca being told she will have a family and have her instigate Ted getting closer to his son and gushing over his mother is a clear indicator that she would fit in the Lasso household like a glove!

That having Ted canonically never ask for help and Rebecca being the one who doesn't need him to because she always knows when he is unwell means she's framed as being the right person for him. She also uses a trick his EX-WIFE used in the past for that exact purpose.

That their baggage matching right up meant they would have been perfect for each other. His biggest fear is being abandoned and hers is ending up alone. Ted and Rebecca were the logical option for a couple. Ted even had to begrudgingly admit it worked for Jane and Beard. The only canonically happy couple at the end (and ain't that fucking mental...).

That having the line "Remember to let her into your heart" from the Hey Jude song coincide with Ted looking down at his phone and seeing Rebecca's name means that she's the woman he should allow himself to end up with.

Why keep them both single and desperate for love until the very last episode? Why not have Michelle beg Ted to come back and Dutch Guy find Rebecca thanks to newspaper clips about football in Holland 10 episodes ago and be done with it?? Why even not have Rebecca pine for him on screen ever since they parted ways??

Everything in this show was intentional. You can't marvel over this fact for everything BUT Ted and Rebecca and suddenly claim we read too much into things! We were played. Multiple times. At various degrees. And it doesn't take being a fan of the show to see it:

An LA Times journalist made an article about the hints and clues in the show after she interviewed TedBecca fans. And she BELIEVED IT. She got convinced. She told Hannah W. in an interview.

Another journalist on CBR.com (male, so you can shove your "desperate women wanting the straight couple to be together at the end" where the sun ain't shining) lamented the way the TedBecca shippers were treated.

Keep your passive-aggressive posts to yourselves. We've been dangled a carrot since day one and just because we never got to eat it doesn't mean it was never there.

[writergracethepanda]

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥 Secret Shanghai Edition

the character everyone gets wrong

Marshall. He is canonically an excellent cook, s why are we convinced he'd set something on fire if left alone in the kitchen?

a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

no comment

screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

EVERY SINGLE DAMN TIME I have seen Alisa and Phoebe shipped (let aroace people live and bisexuals are still bisexual even in a seemingly hetero relationship) or those takes I've seen on TikTok of people shipping Rosalind and Benedikt and Celia and Marshall if I weren't on my computer I would put sooooo many barf emojis here

what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

luckily nothing yet I believe

worst discord server and why

mine with my friends its sooo annoying how we have incredibly amazing and intelligent and sometimes incoherent conversations like guys we're the worst (sarcasm)

which ship fans are the most annoying?

like I said, anyone who ships the above things needs to stay 10 feet away from me at all times and undergo intense media literacy training

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

I think everyone's answer for this is Oliver. I'm so sorry we (especially me tbh) did you so dirty pre fhh I promise we've learnt our lesson!

common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

Oliver loves cats. incorrect. Cats are his entire life. there is a difference, and we need to recognize it.

worst part of canon

roma and Alisa's dad just disappeared before I could beat him up

worst part of fanon

we're too funny my stomach literally hurts from laughing too hard sometimes. Seriously though, the above ship takes that make my blood boil, as well as some complaints about how a lot of us talk about how we think certain characters are neurodivergent/disabled. While I think some of those are actually considered canon, I don't understand why people are so made that we (a relatively neurospicy bunch) are identifying the parts of characters we relate to and labeling them. We're doing you no harm and not interfering with your ability to enjoy the characters. Shouldn't it be a good thing that we're able to identify with the characters? Just mind your business. (also anyone who erases Rosalind's and Alisa's aroaceness that is indeed canon and I hope both sides of your pillow are too warm)

number of fandom-related words you've filtered

I don't think any

the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

I don't think anyone hates these guys, but why don't we ever talk about the couple from LVC? They were so sweet, and I'm kind of sad we didn't get any mention of them in FHH.

worst blorboficiation

I feel like a bad Tumblr user, but I don't know what this means. is this like uwu-ification?

that one thing you see in fics all the time

@typingwithmyhandstied 's GENIUS

that one thing you see in fanart all the time

Juliette always has the appropriate amount of knives thank you very much for that guys :)

you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

I personally don't get into the Rosalind is a vampire thing, but I'm cheering you guys on from afar (im just not into vampires lol)

there should be more of this type of fic/art

idk I should probably work on my university au

it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

the fact that not only did she feel comfortable falling asleep around Orion (see one of @no-1-rosalind-lang-apologist 's recent posts) but Rosalind was also muttering in French in that scene. Her dominant language. She was both out of it enough/comfortable enough with him that she dropped the I was raised in American fake accent and just started speaking normally in this essay I will- basically we need to talk more about the use of multilingualism in the ss books

you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

past me would be horrified to know that I like Oliver now

part of canon you found tedious or boring

I think TVD can be a bit boring sometimes, but that makes sense, since it was Chloe's debut, and she's grown immensely since then

part of canon you think is overhyped

the seagreen trio is overrated (they are literally my favorite characters)

your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

THE MULTILIGUALISM

ship you've unwillingly come around to

Olivercelia. Like I said, I was his strongest hater pre fhh. Now I see what she clearly sees in him.

topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

discourse on ss Tumblr is mostly joking. my personal favorite is when @marsneedstherapy and I pretend to yell at each other in different languages

common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

"no one appreciates x enough" I do. I love them.

[nhi-theuser]

One Piece Book Club: Chapters 1-3

Chapter 1:

Yippie!!!! One Piece begins with everyone’s favorite execution😁😁

New guy: Gold Roger, who is instantly executed lmaoooo

Our first look at Luffy!

New guy: Red Haired Shanks, who, presumably, has red hair

Luffy wants to be a pirate but he’s a little goober who can’t swim yet, approx 7 years old I think

New guy: Shanks’ first mate(unnamed so far)

They’re all pretty cool so far ngl

New guy: Makino! She’s the barmaid!! And Luffy puts everything on a treasure tab it seems. Also! Makino is very strong!! Look at that barrel of beer! (She’s holding a barrel labeled beer when introduced) A barrel of liquid is Not light

LUFFY YOU IDIOT WHAT ARE YOU EATING <- (i know exactly what he ate)

New guy: Higuma, some kind of bandit who loves terrorizing normal civilians

I think this line is really funny given Luffy exclusively has like crazy ass people as role models(to me)

I wanted to mention really quickly—but shanks got hit over the head with a glass bottle, which in real life is typically a life threatening attack. Realism is irrelevant given that this is one piece, but things like this are too common and underemphasized in media, so I wanted to bring it up in the off chance someone got the bright idea to recreate that move irl. Be careful not to kill people!!! It’s worryingly easy!!

Rest of the chapter goes something like this: Luffy defends shanks and his crews honor against higuma and gets beat for it, and the shanks and his crew pull of to stop that!!

Luffy gets snatched and eventually dropped into the sea, about to get eaten by a sea monster when shanks turns up and quite literally glares at it until it fucks off. Unfortunately, shanks lost an arm during the ordeal. Fortunately, Luffy gains a hat!

Ten year timeskip finds Luffy sailing away to become a pirate in his own!

Chapter 2:

Ah.

LUFFY ARE YOU ACTUALLY TWEAKING RN THATS GONNA KILL YOU

New guy: Lady Alvida of the… pirate ship. I’ll get back to you when I find out the name of the crew

New guy: Koby! My traumatized little guy!! No spine whatsoever but I think that’s a trauma response😁

New guy mention: Roronoa… Zolo. Because the translation hasn’t been updated I guess. Like, you know, just the official translation that I’ve been reading legally.

KOBY WHAT DID THEY DO TO YOU😭 YOURE TOO TRAUMATIZED TO USE YOUR OWN GETAWAY BOAT😭😭😭

Luffy they’d never make me hate on your dreams (doesn’t mean I won’t hate on you though be prepared <3)

Rest of chapter is Koby being like “I wanna be a Marine!” And alvida pulls up like “🤨😡you wanna do what?? You said you were gonna capture ME?!” And then luffy punches her and makes the other crew give him and koby a little boat to sail away (we also get quick lore that to get/find the one piece you gotta go to the grand line, which people refer to as the pirates graveyard)

Chapter 3:

Luffy and koby pull up at the marine town where ‘zolo’ is located, and have a quick meal cause food is important yeah.

This combination of panels is insane😭

“Maybe they just got carried away” listen little bro(this statement is funny for meta reasons) but that is a crazy ass assumption😭😭 like the thought process is genuinely interesting though yk like “oh, they reacted like crazy when hearing about the scary guy! Maybe they went overboard and also reacted hearing about the captain morgan guy”

New guy: Captain Morgan!! Some random guy that’s running the show in this town apparently

New guy:(officially) Roronoa Zoro! That very first panel of him the page before his full body that’s a partial side profile goes hard as hell, super menacing frfr

Also he’s like strung up like a more normal (“normal”) version of like idk jesus getting crucified?? I don’t know why I was thinking of it but??? Something about it feels like it’s supposed to be symbolic of something but I have a hard time displaying media literacy during first reads so let me come back to this one after witnessing parallels or something thanks gang

Zoro says he’s been up there for nine days!😟 which would kill a normal person I’m pretty sure because dehydration kills after like three days.. I’ve heard of cases where people can survive longer under very specific circumstances but that’s neither here nor there, bro looks like he has a head wound and a line of blood out the corner of his mouth so like realism for the loss lmao

New guy: little girl! Who I don’t know the name of, but she’s trying to feed Zoro and has a very kindness aura, though I would probably use a different word if I could recall a better one

New guy: Helmeppo, some guy with like an evil version of a Karen cut and the son of captain morgan. Bro is an ass stomping on that little girls food just because she made it weird😭😭

Yk what I AM seeing parallels but between all these panels where the background whites out and its two people (one of which is always Luffy) let me cook real quick I’ll come up with something later on trust trust

Also Luffy is wild, it’s so so interesting that he’s trying to decide if Zoro should join or not due to his having a bad reputation, makes it interesting to see his psychology regarding life as a pirate. He sees piracy as freedom to chase dreams and happiness and stuff, while most others perceive it as the ability to evade the law and do illegal acts/crime as you please

Zoro displaying good character as Luffy casually is so funny for no reason—though quick mention it’s pretty interesting that to me from my general perception of Luffy is that he’d like to eat anything, though food stomped into the ground is a reasonable line, just interesting given, again, his I’ll eat very many things attitude

Luffy tells the little girl Zoro ate the food she made for him and has a quick chat with her and koby about being good and stuff, and Luffy later punches Helmeppo after he(helmeppo) declares he was super lying about making a deal with Zoro to free him

Luffy declares he wants Zoro on his crew!!

Chapter 1-3 summary and thoughts:

- Luffy backstory where he gets devil fruit powers and how he got his hat from shanks

- Luffy meets Koby(wants to be a marine as his dream), saves him from alvida, and pulls up at a marine town

- Enter Zoro! Luffy decides he wants Zoro on his crew after judging him to be a good character and witnessing what it’s like in the marine town

Not much to say that I haven’t already, but I like it a lot! Pacing is pretty fast given the reputation regarding the length of one piece, if I had no clue what was to follow from this point, I’d claim it(the pacing) similar to that of CSM, but, yeah we all know lol.

Be back next time to commentate on the next couple chapters!

[hrmphfft]

controversial opinion time I guess but

hey gang? hey, gang. gang, hey. blaming your fans for them not reblogging your content enough (and saying that they’re Directly Responsible For Tumblr Dying) is an extremely passive aggressive, mean thing to do, and also completely ignores so many other reasons as to why engagement has changed on this site and posts don't circulate like they used to.

for one thing, whenever I see these posts, I rarely see the ops acknowledge the HUGE HIT to tumblr's userbase following the 2018 policy change/implementation of tumblr's terrible content filtering algorithm. tumblr lost roughly 1/3 of its engagement (https://mashable.com/article/tumblr-lost-a-third-of-its-users-after-porn-ban/) and countless content creators with it. some of them migrated to twitter and other sites, some of them seem to have straight-up vanished into thin air, and countless others lost their biggest or main userbase with barely any time to shift gears to something else. that's a huge, website-shaking change! but so often in these 'reblogs vs. likes' posts I don't see anyone acknowledging that and it makes me really upset!

you can't talk about the ways tumblr has undoubtedly changed these last few years and NOT address the nsfw ban! it's completely unfair to your fanbases to shift the blame of the biggest displacement of users the site has ever experienced on...the users who had no say in the policy change and reacted accordingly when the site started softbanning everyone, and filtering all sorts of tags from the search function (including important sfw ones, lest we forget The Entire Furry Fandom on tumblr discovering that basic-ass tags like #furry and #anthro were being blocked when the ban rolled around), and making uploading anything vaguely beige-colored a dice roll. tumblr still hasn't recovered from that, and unfortunately probably never will, not without some hail mary of policy changes and overhauls.

I've seen some pretty ageist shit regarding content engagement as well that tries to paint younger users as just Not Getting how tumblr functions vs. other social media sites like instagram and twitter, and on top of that just showcasing a really uncomfortable disconnect/animosity towards new users whose only crime is being younger than op and also more experienced with other social media platforms, it also is just. it's really unkind? it's super rude? how can you call your followers too clueless to know how reblogging works and then expect them to support your content via reblogging and not feel like you're insulting them until they give you the result you want?

moreover, lots of young/new tumblr users get the gist of tumblr's controls and get it very quickly! technology literacy is becoming more and more a part of everyday life for everyone, and if you really think that a teenager can't understand that reblogging puts a thing on their follower's dashboards, one of the main functionalities of the site (and also very similar to twitter, one of tumblr's main competitors), I really don't know what to say. sometimes people just straight-up don't want to reblog stuff to their blogs, and that's okay.

there's also a tendency to ignore the ways that blogging on tumblr has changed as its userbase has became more well-versed in its functions and, frankly, a portion of the userbase has grown up on this site. when I first started blogging on here, I was 17, I didn't use tags, I commented unrelated (and frankly sometimes really regrettably rude) replies directly onto artist's posts, and I basically just reblogged whatever I vaguely liked, and a lot of things I didn't totally get but thought Looked Cool/Funny so I reblogged anyways.

and that's fine, that's pretty par for the course of being young on the internet and doing whatever you want and having a good time (barring the rudeness, being respectful to people is the ideal), but as time went on my interests changed, my time spent online changed (I went from highschool to college to a full-time job that limits my time on social media), and I began engaging with tumblr's content differently. I made sideblogs for interests and content themes I didn't want on my main blog, I started liking stuff and then going back through my likes to reblog posts later, and generally speaking my number of posts a day dropped and I stopped being able to catch up on my dashboard every single day. and I'm sure my experience isn't unique for some other people on here.

a lot of the tumblr users I've known for a while just don't have the same level of intensity in fandoms like we did years back, not because of any malice or selfish, content-hogging intent, but because our priorities have changed. I definitely miss a lot of things about years past on tumblr when fandoms were booming and new Big Name Creators were cropping up all the time, and to be fair that's still happening on parts of the site if you know where to look! it's just different now. time has passed. people have changed!

that isn't to be defeatist and say that we can't show up for content we enjoy and reblog it, but instead that people can feel differently about stuff they used to adore, and be more particular about one thing or another they reblog, and straight-up miss stuff that they would have really liked but just didn't catch up on for a myriad of reasons. and that's also okay. engagement on tumblr is really, really tied up in personal preferences, and sometimes it feels like it does that more than most other social media sites. this is kind of the wild west of internet presences and everyone operates differently on here as a result.

and probably the most touchy point of all: no one is obligated to give you validation on the internet. no one. not even if they've read all of your fanfics you've worked really fucking hard on for forever and a day, or your comics that you've spent months, years, a lifetime researching and creating, or your beautifully, painstakingly timed and masked fan videos. they can absolutely consume any of these, and more, and they're still not obligated to reblog your work or promote you. it's not fair, yes, and it's completely understandable and super relatable to want recognition for the work you've done and the ways you've brightened other people's lives, but online most of your fans are still total strangers to you, and trying to control the behavior of total strangers because you’re owed their acknowledgement isn’t a healthy mindset to have.

and you can say that any fan of yours stops being a fan after they drop you for you lashing out at them for not unquestioningly giving you space on their blogs like you're owed, but being upset at being accused of bad behavior for what amounts to not wanting to reblog something this time around and changing your opinions based off of that is also a very understandable thing to do.

and that isn't because of any sort of innate cruelty, or pointed attack towards you. it's just because there is always a disconnect between the creator and the creation, and some people will never bridge that gap and engage with you more, or build a parasocial relationship with you, or seek out ways to support you. and plenty of others will do the exact opposite! it's a total dice roll because you're dealing with a lot more people than you realize scrolling past your content, and every person is different, and some of them don't fully understand how reblogs help a creator, and some of them do but just don't want that content on their feed, and none of them are inherently bad people for that.

I'm not saying creators have to be perfectly kind and civil and praise their fans all the time, but when you engage with your followers like it's a battle where you have to keep devising new ways to get them to share your content, it just comes across as super disingenuous, and people cop to that very fast. 

it also, frankly, can make longtime fans who reblog your work regularly feel like their interest doesn't matter, and wasn't good enough, and that then it really is their fault that other people (other STRANGERS ON THE INTERNET) don't engage with your content the way you wanted them to. you don't owe them perfection, but that doesn't mean it isn't still an unkind thing to do.

so like. what can we do about this?

asking users to reblog your work is totally fine and can help! calls to action work more than nothing at all. it's possible to be respectful when asking people to reblog your work without also guilt-tripping them with "likes < reblogs" banners and passive aggressive tags/comments. generally speaking guilt is a really shitty motivational tool, and tends to breed more resentment than actual outcomes people want. like this post for example! I wouldn't have sat down and typed this all out if I didn't resent the hell out of being told I'm, personally, the reason tumblr is demonstrably not an ideal website for building a fanbase anymore. if I had that much power over this website I would have given the whole thing to the xkit team years ago and reveled in a functional website instead.

changing the way you post content might help! every site has its ideal posting days, times, and reasons for why some are ideal for one site and not another. doing a little research (https://sproutsocial.com/insights/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/) will yield some potentially helpful tips and tricks that might result in a post reaching more people. utilizing tumblr's search function is also important, and understanding the limits of the tag function (ie. only the first 5 tags of a post are used for tag searches) can help change one's habits to something a little more effective. this is why I tend to leave my tag babbling until after the main fandom/category tags on my posts, so that tumblr's jankass search has a better shot, haha

broadening your online presence can definitely help! this is by far the most terrifying option since it involves branching out onto other social media platforms, some of which really don't lend themselves to whatever fandom/content one produces, so like the other two above it's only a suggestion.

I keep coming back to twitter and instagram, but that's mainly because they're the two other powerhouses of social media right now, though admittedly they only really cater towards visual media (and mainly imagery, not longer video pieces), and they have their own weird quirks to learn and jank to deal with. but given how precarious tumblr's status has become in some ways, trying to build a presence on multiple sites means that you reach more people across the internet, and also means that if tumblr does yet another website-shattering policy change, your eggs aren't all in one basket.

of course these options aren't foolproof, and won't work for everyone in some cases or not at all for others, but my main point in all this is this: tumblr has irrevocably changed, its userbase has changed, and we are limited in the ways we can directly influence it, but there are still options. I'm by far not a social media expert, but then again none of the posts I've seen so far were made by social media experts either, so I honestly don't feel too bad for throwing my hat into the ring while we're all thrashing about in confusion

y'all aren't wrong that things have changed, but I'm begging you to have some compassion and to try not to turn the relationship between creators and consumers of content into a battleground, especially when a lot of the influences on these changes are things entirely outside of any of our's direct control.

also because it makes y'all sound exactly like this:

[thealogie]

u said the other night that u would explain the "you go too fast for me" line, i'm not the anon that asked about it but if u would be willing to do so still, i would love to hear ur thoughts. i have a straight friend who laughed at it bc they interpreted it as the surface level "crowley drives really fast" and thought it was intended as a joke and i don't know how to explain to them the depth of that line and i was hoping ur reading ur thoughts might help me articulate mine. thank u

oh yeah absolutely. I should have known that my adhd would get in the way of me remembering to explain it without that ask there to remind me!

Ok I feel like you’re asking me to explain it to people who literally do not have any media literacy so let me take it truly step by step.

Step 1: writers, actors and directors use subtext in film. Literally all stories have SOME KIND of subtext because stories suck without subtext. subtext can be things that are implied about a character’s feelings (eg we kind of know han and leia have feelings for each other before they tell us so), it can be symbols you use to encode your story with political/ideological messages (famous example: the eyes in the great gatsby...the light in the great gatsby...gatsby in the great gatsby), and you use it to create tension and raise the stakes in a scene by making the scene be about two things at once, a surface level thing that moves the story forward and s secondary thing that moves character forward...I wish I could think of any other famous example off the top of my head but the one they use in so many writing classes is basic instinct...the detective interrogates sharon stone “what’s your new book about?” She says “about a detective who falls for the wrong woman.she kills him.” She’s implying he’s gonna fall for her etc. This is super obvious but there can obviously be subtler examples

Ok so premise 2: it’s more likely that a scene or piece of dialogue or plot point serves a purpose beyond its literal meaning when reading it literally (and only literally) would render it completely superfluous to plot or character. This is especially true of gay coding in film. is there any point to Plato having a picture of Alan Ladd in his locker or swinging around a rubber hose like that in Rebel without a Cause if NOT to tell us he’s gay? 10/10 film teachers (all across the Kinsey scale) say nope all of that is there to Drop Hints He’s Gay. Ok at this point if your friends go “obviously that’s just a prop not a plot point that has another purpose as well”...he’s a great example. in BBC Merlin when Arthur is dying he gives his seal to someone to take back to Guinevere, naming her as his successor and then he goes off with Merlin who is trying to cure him and then he dies in Merlin’s arms...on the dvd commentary, as he hands off the seal, the writer of the show said “oh there goes the last vestige of his heterosexuality—i mean marriage!”...like yeah he was half kidding but writers absolutely know this stuff and they know use of subtextual cuss creates a subconscious impression in the viewer’s mind, leading them to the right emotional place (in the Merlin example, even if you don’t read the handing off of the seal as a symbol of him saying “goodbye to his heterosexuality,” it gives you the mental impression that he is easily parting with Gwen and going with Merlin).

Finally in the context of that actual scene: 80% of the conversations aziraphale and crowley have in that montage are completely unnecessary to plot. it’s all about character. By the time we get to the car specifically, we already know aziraphale is anxious about rules but willing to break them, we know these two like each other and we know crowley likes to be nice to aziraphale. So what possible new thing could they communicate? well, lots. even without a gay reading...we get that aziraphale cares enough about crowley to specifically break a rule for him, that he’d rather do this than see crowley in danger, and we also get that crowley wants to hang out and is disappointed that aziraphale won’t come with him. Up to the point where crowley offers to give aziraphale a lift as a thank you, you can be like “ok even if I read this at a surface level, I’m getting new character information, this all makes sense and is communicating new information to me” but it’s utterly pointless to have crowley offer a SECOND TIME and insist “I’ll give you a lift anywhere you want to go” and it really serves no purpose for aziraphale to say “you go too fast for me” in THAT voice if NOT to tell us a subtextual GAY story. What does it add to the story for crowley to offer again and for aziraphale to say I can’t come with you because you go too fast if NOT to also communicate to us something about their relationship? even if you don’t read it romantically it’s just so clear that it communicates crowley being needy and aziraphale being unwilling to get on crowley’s level about breaking the rules/being friends. But it’s clearly romantic (like deliberately meant to build up subtextual “oh it’s forbidden” romantic tension). Look at the performances and directing choices! They matter! he doesn’t say this line in a funny way...this could have been played as a joke. Like aziraphale was using heaven as an excuse the first time he said no to the ride but actually he’s been trying hard to hide that he’s scared of cars going too fast!! I know it doesn’t sound like a good punchline but I could 100% direct that scene to be incredibly funny with no dialogue change. You just need to change the tone and pacing to set up “you go too fast for me crowley” as a comedic reveal...but he says it softly....he says it super seriously and sadly......why.....WHY......

[dippedanddripped]

It was in the beginning of the global Covid-19 pandemic when Brice Partouche decided to pull the seasonal collections of Satisfy — the upscale running brand he founded in 2015 — from every single one of its 60 stockists. While it has opened an online platform where wholesalers can order select products, it meant saying “no” to nearly $1 million of turnover in a single season, a dicey move for a label still in its infancy.

For Partouche, the fashion calendar dictating how product is delivered and sold no longer made sense with the needs of his tight-knit community of runners who, unlike many hardcore fashion fanatics, simply weren’t looking for products six months in advance. Their calendars were dictated not by fashion federations, but by training goals and races.

“We made a bold move to stop wholesale, basically,” says Partouche, a skateboarder at heart. “I don’t want for things to go back to normal. The retail process has been the same for over 30 years, and it doesn’t make any sense. And so we’ve decided to shift our model to a direct-to-consumer business where we’ll still work with select wholesalers, but on our conditions.”

Satisfy is now shifting to a monthly drop model where each new drop will exclusively launch in partnership with a single department store or multi-brand boutique, allowing a closer collaboration. The first one being with SSENSE later this month. “Wholesalers are now becoming storytellers,” Partouche says of the strategy. The collection complements the content they will be creating for SSENSE’s site, not the other way around.

Satisfy isn’t alone in seizing back control from third parties that have long dictated individual brands’ narratives, both on the shopping floor and through media. At a time when a brand like Gucci has more than 500 monobrand stores and over 40 million followers on Instagram alone, there is little it can’t do — or sell — through its own network. This is why the Italian megabrand already generates 85 percent of sales from its own channels and is looking to increase that number. It’s also why the brand directly communicates new campaigns, products, and collaborations to its followers through its own social media accounts. Media coverage is just the icing on the cake.

Many brands that long relied on middlemen to promote their products and brand values — including Louis Vuitton, Cartier, and Nike — are clearly adapting similar models. The Swoosh, for its part, has projected that its direct-to-consumer business – bolstered through its Nike+ membership app, flagship stores, and e-commerce – will reach $16 billion in sales by the end of the fiscal year, up from $10.4 billion just two years earlier.

The effects of Covid-19 on fashion consumption have dramatically accelerated the number of brands shifting how they communicate with the customers on the daily, and what their overall retail strategy will look like going forward. Not only does speaking and selling directly to consumers increase margins, give a brand better insights into their clientele, and allow them to better control markdowns — most of all, it allows them to own the touch-points and interaction with its audience from A to Z. Many department stores, popular boutiques, and glossy magazines are already folding as a result. It doesn’t mean brands no longer need multi-brand retailers or publishers, it simply means that, in order to be relevant, third parties need to become cultural producers in their own right. Those who can’t innovate through rich brand-fitting storytelling risk being bypassed by the brands themselves.

“The customer is really the one in control, not the retailers and editors. And that’s been a big recent shift, and one that’s been very reluctantly recognized within the fashion world,” says Robert Burke, founder and CEO of retail and fashion consultancy Robert Burke Associates, which works on brand development with clients including Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs, and Dunhill. “It’s really all about access. The brands that are smart are giving the customer control and providing them with the information and knowledge they crave”

Now that the traditional gatekeepers of cultural authority have extended beyond just the top tier buyers, editors, stylists, photographers, and celebrities to the cultural engineers that reside on the consumer side — and with fashion moving away from seasonal trends — the brands themselves are going to be put to the test.

According to “Culture, Culture, Culture,” a new white paper by Highsnobiety and Boston Consulting Group that quantifies the value of cultural credibility brings to brands, the biggest drivers of purchase decisions for Gen Z and Early Millennials is wanting to live the full lifestyle of individual brands right from the start. “Brand journeys” were so important to this cohort that they accounted for a quarter of all purchasing occasions, and beat choice, person of influence, value, impulse, and convenience as reasons to choose a specific brand.

So now that the brands have the megaphone, what comes next?

Brand Loyalty 2.0

In the DTC era, the most important objective brands have is increasing brand loyalty among their audience, and that isn’t easy in today’s extremely oversaturated fashion space. Forward-thinking brands are now increasingly looking beyond loyalty measuring metrics like clicks, engagement, and conversions.

Instead, some are doubling down on the credibility that helped them become relevant in the first place. Although less tangible in nature than data-driven statistics, broader cultural interventions are what stand to benefit brands the most. And the essence of credibility is community, the goal of “engagement” that sometimes gets lost in the search for clicks. Those who engage with brands as a community member carry its message forward in those silent moments between brand-owned flashy events, advertising campaigns, and product drops. In other words, they’re loyal members of the tribe.

“I come from the generation where you would read a magazine and have media come at you, telling you things, and you accepted it. And if you didn’t like that point of view, you would move on to the next person or outlet to connect with,” says Eva Chen, director of fashion partnerships at Instagram. “I think that the difference is that the conversation nowadays with followers isn’t one-way anymore.”

Partouche agrees: “If you don’t have a community, don’t start a brand, because you can’t expect a community to fall in love with just your product. It won’t happen. The mistake that a lot of brands are making is thinking that people will just find them.”

Brand tribes have long existed. In the 1990s, they centered around the personality cults of designers like Helmut Lang, Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, and Jean Paul Gaultier. Like the religious devotion of football fans, loyalty for individual fashion houses and the creative directors that led them ran deep. Yet with the growing prominence of fashion conglomerates like LVMH and Kering in the early 2000s came the global expansion of the many luxury brands they owned, and with it a loss of exclusivity around its community. Today, there are only a handful of non-legacy brands, including Rick Owens, Telfar Clemens, Thom Browne, and Raf Simons, who have built up dedicated tribes.

Now that we are heading into a new frontier of DTC, we’re about to see the rise of brand loyalty 2.0. But how have things changed? First, with the big multi-brand retailers and publishers dissipating, we are going to be fully focussed on the individual brands at times of engagement, whether it is scrolling through a brand’s own feed and e-commerce website, or making the trek to its brick-and-mortar store, without distractions.

Secondly, with the product itself becoming just one touchpoint of a brand, the most loyal consumers are going to want to dig deeper with fellow brand aficionados. Yes, there will always be shoppers whose relationship with a brand stops with the purchase of a logo-ed product to signal status, yet for loyal fans, developing cultural literacy around their favored brand will increase in importance.

What’s more is that this group is about to get a lot bigger with fashion houses going global and the fashion brands becoming media presences in and of themselves. Now, the lesson is simple: Brands need to capture audiences and not just consumers.

“These days, the equivalent to literary fan fiction is when people create a fan Instagram account. It’s a level of fandom that’s somewhat consummate with the brands,” says Chen. @newbottega, a fan account run by Italian fashion student Laura Rossi dedicated to creative director Daniel Lee’s output at Bottega Veneta, has 300,000 followers, @raf_simons_archives has nearly reached the same number, and as of publication, @chanel_archives fans number 130,000. London-based emerging designer Mowalola — recently hired by Kanye West as the design director for Yeezy’s invasion of Gap — has one, too; @peoplewearingmowalola just hit 1,000 followers.

We’ve seen this before. The fan communities now surrounding luxury bear a close resemblance to those dedicated to Supreme, Bape, Palace, and the many original forums on street fashion that came before them. Like the secondary sneaker market being a more accurate sign of a sneaker’s success than the primary market, the most successful brands understand that fan accounts are where credibility around a brand is created through opinionated discussion about product, new campaigns, and real people wearing the brands.

The next step for brands in this new terrain is understanding that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to different communication and retail channels. “Alessandro [Michele] from Gucci does a good job at this,” Chen adds, also crediting Pyer Moss and Jacquemus. “They use every surface in such a specific way. On their IG feed, it’s more curated and polished, and where they collaborate with artists, illustrators, and writers. But on Stories, they do offbeat things with takeovers. What they do on IG Live is different from what they’ll do on IGTV, and hopefully with IG Reels and IG Live shopping when these launch. The ability to story-tell is going to be the most important thing in building a successful brand.”

The Rise of Brands as Curators

Despite brand tribes already growing beyond megafans, the rise of DTC 2.0 will see the scope of what brands address, discuss, and endorse grow as a bid to reach an even larger audience. The long outdated realization that consumers don’t just have one favorite brand will result in businesses broadening their brand universes through the curated endorsement of products, people, and places outside of their owned realms.

Covid-19 has accelerated this change, compelling brands to get more creative with the content they put out in lieu of stores being shut and events cancelled. Giving their online platforms to creatives that fit their brand universe, whether through digital cooking classes, musical performances, or activist lectures, has meant letting go of control, becoming more relatable to its audience in the process.

“What’s really key is that the consumer doesn’t want to be hard sold, acting like the only product that exists is [from one brand]. They expect to get a glimpse into what that personality of a brand and its creative director is, and it goes far beyond just branded products,” says Burke, who adds that brands should take it even further.

Some are already testing the concept out. At The Row’s store in Central London, a rack of hand-picked vintage from designers including Chanel, Comme des Garçons, and Yohji Yamamoto — as well as a selection of vintage lighters and ashtrays — can be found next to curated artworks of James Turrell, John Chamberlain, and Isamu Noguchi, and The Row’s own products. Similar concepts can be found at Los Angeles-based brand Sophie Buhai, who (next to her coveted jewelry) sells a curated assortment of furniture and homeware. Over at Dior.com, alongside sneakers, expensive ready-to-wear and flashy accessories, the brand now offers cotton towels, steel water bottles, and decorative porcelain plates and mugs, all made by streetwear legend Shawn Stussy. It also sells limited concrete artworks crafted by Daniel Arsham.

The obvious next step will see brands act as concept stores, one-stop shops that showcase their entire universe and cater to the wider cultural hunger of consumers today through products and services of others. The place for exploration, introduction and connectivity will differ per brand and can include art, music, food, tech, sports, performance, and more. It will be different to the classic standalone monobrand extensions that you see today, including Versace homeware, Bulgari hotels, Ralph Lauren restaurants, and Armani bars. Rather, we might see a Prada grocery list with the brand’s favorite products, a talk show created and hosted by Gucci ambassadors, a Dries Van Noten flower shop, or a Supreme video streaming subscription. The opportunities become endless.

What Are Brands Even Selling?

If brands moving into curation is done innovatively, a brand will see an expansion of its audience and universe. The territories they once competed in will equally grow. We already see what happens when brands widen their offering. Rimowa, known for its signature aluminum luggage carriers, now sells phone cases and small accessories. Just last week, it ventured into sunglasses.

The bubbles in which these brands now operate are becoming so big, they’re touching the bubbles of brands that were not even competitors to start with. Byredo is no longer a challenger of other perfume and scented candle brands — today, it’s competing with everyone from luxury houses and streetwear brands to home goods businesses and office supply makers, with its wide offering of leather handbags, sneakers, blankets, and even scented paper. What it’s really competing for, however, is a consumer’s time, money, attention, and ultimately loyalty, putting it at direct competition with any brand at a similar price point, from streaming services to restaurants and bicycle manufacturers.

No one seems to just want to be a fashion brand anymore — and this isn’t a Richard Branson-esque shift toward them having phone companies and airlines. Rather, beyond physical products, the ultimate goal of the modern day business is to trade in the intangible. A brand’s universe, its visual identity, and loyalty are what bring it value more than anything else. Products, then, simply represent trophies of belonging and cultural literacy.

“I’ve always said the best Instagram accounts are the ones where you can put your hand over the handle, and, without seeing anything but the grid of photos, know what brand it is,” says Instagram’s Eva Chen. “Jacquemus is one of them, and in the beauty space, when I think of Glossier, I think of a very specific aesthetic. I think of a certain shade of pink. I can imagine the kind of furniture that person would have, where they would go on vacation, what their outfit would be. And the best fashion brands truly have a lifestyle, and an ambiance associated with them.”

Having not just a brand but a universe means you are able to now sell anything, even the intangible, beyond physical products. And in the future, some brands will.

“I love the entertainment media business, the hospitality travel business, the health and wellness business, the tech business,” Tommy Hilfiger tells Highsnobiety in an upcoming podcast. “I think a lot of people don’t think about those things [together] because they think their company name is [just] the company name, and they’re going to make certain product lines and stay within those confines. [But] I really believe that reinvention is evolution.”

Selling the intangible is how a once niche Dutch streetwear brand like Patta has been able to grow its entire business. “Before Patta was founded, there was already a community. ‘Downtown Worldwide’ we used to call it, where our founders Ed and Gee connected with [likeminded] people from New York, Tokyo, London, and the Amsterdam hip-hop scene,” says Lee Stuart, Patta’s brand director. “Yes, it’s cool to look good and sell great product, but it’s even cooler if you help people from our world to the next level.”

Patta has a dedicated running team (founded in 2010) that frequently runs for charity, in addition to a popular blog that releases new music mixes via Patta Soundsystem, talks about upcoming cultural events, and publishes its “Get to Know” interview series that features friends and family of the brand, including photographer Shaniqwa Jarvis, musician Rasharn Powell, and local Amsterdam hip-hop café owner Daniel Eeuwens. It also gives lectures and offers mentorship at universities around the country.

About a year ago, it started Patta’s Book Club in partnership with The Black Archives — a literary collection dedicated to Black history — in which books exploring racism and the historical oppression of the Black community are discussed. The club is currently being expanded into Patta Summer School, a youth program where, three times a week, young people between the ages of 12-21 can learn about wide ranging topics from entrepreneurship and talent development, to art and nutrition. “Each one, teach one,” Lee calls it, where once the door has opened, you let as many of your people in. “You wouldn’t expect a fashion brand to do these things, but it’s important,” he says. “And I really think that often it’s not even the clothing that speaks to our audience, it’s this whole ethos that attracts them.”

Chen agrees: “I think that brands very much should think in a direction where it’s like, ‘I’m not just selling a product, I’m selling my voice, I’m selling a vision, I’m selling a point of view.’ The brands that adopt that will be the ones that succeed.”

From this point onwards, the bottom line of brand loyalty will be about reinventing what it means to sell the intangible, through services, knowledge, and even community. It’s what true fans care about — and being hardcore has become mainstream.

[giraffesinprogress]

Nobody is a Lost Cause

Hello.

I’d like to start 2018 by sharing some stories about my life.  

That’s why I made this place: Giraffes in Progress.  It’s a place where I can share stories about tough times.  I’m hoping that sharing these stories will be healing, and that it will help me (and maybe a person reading this) work some things out.   

Here we go.  Giraffes in Progress.

This first one will be a heavy one.

It’s a story about trauma and shame and hurt, and (hopefully) change.  So if you’re not looking to get into that sort of thing right now, heads up.

Specifically, it’s a story about me coming to terms with the fact that my old ideas about consent were wrong.

I’ve decided to share it for a few reasons.  

First, while the story is no secret among my friends and family, it is a secret to the world at large.  And secrets can eat you alive if you keep them for long enough.  Especially when they involve being hurt or hurting others.

Second, stories like this one have been going around a lot lately.  In the past few months alone, I’ve spoken with a surprising number of friends and strangers on both the giving and receiving end of a similar situation, and nobody is quite sure how to move forward.  Maybe one way to start is by simply sharing our stories.

Finally, I’ve only got a handful of beliefs that have stuck with me through the years, and one of them is that while humans are capable of terrible things, they are also capable of change, when given the chance.  I hope it’s true.  I think it is.

So:

A little over two years ago, a friend emailed me with a screen shot from a private facebook group that anonymously discusses people who have hurt them.  The post was short, but essentially said that at some point in the past, I had slept with a person after a party, and that I had crossed a line for them in the way that I pursued it.  It said, “He used the broken record technique when I said no to having sex with him while we were making out, until I broke down and said ok".

I was devastated to receive it.  Until that point in my life, I’d assumed that all of my relationships with sexual partners were 100% consensual.  I had no recollection of the encounter in question, the technique described, or who the person could be, which was terrifying.  I thought: How could my perception be so skewed that the described event didn’t even register in my brain, yet it was something that hurt another person to such a degree that they are still carrying it with them years after the event?

I immediately shared the email with my partner, band mates, and closest friends.  The friend who shared the post with me was kicked out of the facebook group for sharing it with me, after letting the poster know that I was willing to talk with them if they would like to, and that I would like to try to make amends, if that is something they would want.  The poster said that no, they did not want anything from me, that they would like to keep the entire thing private, and that they had merely wanted to get the experience out into the open.

From that point on, I went through a few different stages of coming to grips with everything: acknowledgement, denial of wrongdoing, anger at the anarchist/punk community for creating and nurturing a culture of "burn the witch" rather than rehabilitation and understanding, and eventually, acceptance.

A few days after receiving the email, my partner asked me to move out for a little while to give them some time to think things through.  I went to go live inside a windowless shipping container that I'd recently bought, sleeping behind a bail of hay on the floor surrounded by a few candles.  The nights in that container were the loneliest and lowest point of my life.  I contemplated suicide, and went so far as to jog three miles to a part of town where I knew you could buy a gun at any hour of the night for 100 bucks.

Thankfully, I didn't go through with buying that gun.  A few nights into sleeping at the container, my buddy Jeff came to see me.  Jeff was a guy in his '60's, a handyman with a thick New Jersey accent, who had seen a lot of stuff through the years.  He told me, among other things, that "nobody is a lost cause".  He told me that I owed it to myself and my loved ones to try to make it out.   

Tragically, a few months later, Jeff himself committed suicide.

Jeff's words and subsequent death gave me resolve.  I decided a few things: 1) that I would seek long term professional help from a therapist, 2) that I would examine myself and my past actions to see if there were any other similar patterns of harmful behavior that I needed to change, 3) that I would give up alcohol completely, as alcohol was one (of many) things that may have led to the anonymous poster's experience the night in question, 4) that i would throw myself into service to others for the rest of my life.

#4 was what helped eventually bring me back into the fold.  I threw myself into my job as a GED teacher and volunteered with an adult literacy program.  Students in the program told their own stories of heartbreak, tragedy, and resilience, which gave me some much needed perspective.  At the least, despite feeling like a fuck-up in other aspects of my my life, I still felt able to help others out in a small way.

Through therapy, I’ve been able to realize a few things.  One of them is that I may never know who the anonymous poster is, or even the specific event in question, and that I need to accept that.  I still, to this day, do not know who it is.  Looking backwards, I also realized that I was capable of such actions, and that there may well have been more than just that one situation that was terrible for the other person.  The culture, adults, and media - heck, even the punk scene - that I grew up around encouraged "getting drunk and laid at parties”.  My incorrect assumption was that it was okay to proceed if both people said “yes”, regardless of how drunk we were, and that it was okay to ask again if it seemed like the person’s feelings had changed .  

As strange as it sounds, consent was not something I learned the intricacies of until about 2008 (I am 33).  The first time I remember consent being discussed was at a punk show in Portland - despite agreeing unquestioningly with the concept of “no means no”, I failed to see that my actions did not reflect a true understanding of consent.  Hypocritically, I went forward as before, not believing myself capable of harm.

A few other things happened during the years following me receiving the email.  One of them was that my band was in the midst of booking a tour.  We felt that it might be important to reach out to some of the people and places we would be playing to explain my situation and allow them the option of backing out.  The first place we reached out to was in Pittsburgh.  We never got to discuss the situation with them, though.  When the bands playing heard about it, they dropped off the bill unequivocally.   I'm sad that I never got to talk to them about it.  I decided it was best to cancel the tour entirely, and not tour or make music again until I had a handle on my life and my actions going forward.

I eventually limped my way through an extremely dark few years.  Having now confronted some of the worst parts of myself, I feel hopeful, with a greater capacity for empathy, and more capable of open and honest communication.  I still have a lot of work to do.  

I'm still seeing a therapist every week.  I have been sober since September 28th of 2015, which is the day I received the email.  I'm still working the same job that gives value and meaning to my life.  I even started sharing music with others, the thing that helped me make it through these thoughts and feelings, after having kept it to myself for many years.  I hope that someday I can make amends to the people I have hurt, but I’ve learned to accept that it may not be something they want.

My partner, in her ceaseless capacity for understanding pain and suffering, eventually took me back.  She told me we would need to work through a lot of stuff and be as honest and open in our communications before we could be intimate again.  We went back and dissected every vulnerable situation where either of us felt the least bit uncomfortable, and came up with ways to respectfully approach them in the future.  It took us a long time to get there.  We are now at the best place we have ever been, mostly due to this "reset" and due to building our relationship again from the foundation up, using honest and respectful communication as the framework.

So - there it is.  The first Giraffes in Progress story.

For me, it’s a reminder that we are all capable of inflicting pain, but nobody is a lost cause.  

Cherish the people that are unconditionally your friends through your mistakes, tragedies, and triumphs.  Know that I'm here if you ever need to talk.

Take care, good luck, and see you next time,

Rob

P.S.  If you’d like to get in touch to talk about this (or anything else) please send me an email at: giraffesinprogress@gmail.com  - social media has proven to be a hostile place for measured discussions, so I’m going to try to avoid spending too much time there/here.  But discussion is important, and I’ll try to answer any emails in a thoughtful, honest, and open-minded manner.  

[enclaveresearch]

New Post has been published on https://enclaveresearch.com/the-definitive-shopify-drop-shipping-guide/

The Definitive Shopify Drop-shipping Guide

Below is a complete shopify guide in 2 parts

Part 1: Basic Guide

Part 2: Advanced Guide

Part 1: Basic Guide

Easy money with little effort

Overview

Earn money with a little investment. In simple terms, in drop-shipping we will be buying items from bulk suppliers, then selling it on Shopify and sending it to our customers. We never receive the product at all.

Requirements

$100 USD, anything more than that will be used to grow with advertising

Spare time to start, once it’s rolling you need maybe an hour each weekend.

Steps

Get original and setup the basic store

Don’t sell generic products, think of something that you want or that you’ve bought online and sell that. Try to find an audience that spends lots of money online. (Eg: selling makeup to female teens)

Search AliExpress for your product/niche

Find a name, register it on an email provider (gmail is best)

Maybe make a logo if you have time, this can be done later

Setup your site

“But i don’t have any coding knowledge at all!!!!” You don’t need any. There’s two sites you’ll be using to make this

Namecheap (But you can use any domain seller you prefer)

Shopify, click here to setup your store.

Oberlo for Shopify (This does half the work)

Add products / Edit your site

Edit your theme look up a Shopify guide for all that stuff. Tip: Look for ePacket products with high ratings between 97% to 99%

Add products from AliExpress to your Oberlo import list

Edit the products / price in Oberlo (Optional: The photos too)

Add collections /product pages in your Shopify Store

Go Live

Create a Social Media pages for your business

Buy Advertisements and promote. Ads are very cheap these days.

Learn the niche of each platform. Example: Twitter seems to have the best return for tech and gaming items.

Conclusion (Already?!)

Yes. Honestly it’s super easy, Shopify babysits you through this process. I have earned a lot myself and can honestly say it was the best $100 and 6 hours I ever spent. I now spend half an hour each weekend on orders and rake in a decent amount of cash each week.

Part 2: Advanced Guide

OVERVIEW:

This mainly details what your thought process should be when setting up a campaign and offers some suggestions based on the experience and knowledge I have gained over the last few years. Like with anything, there are always going to be other people that do things slightly differently or have different opinions.

This guide is going to talk a lot about internet marketing. You obviously can’t dropship products if you do not have anyone to dropship them to – so you need to find a way to convince people to buy your product. For the purposes of this guide, we are going to be using Facebook. Facebook is definitely not the apex of traffic sources – but it’s pretty damn good and is probably the best option for beginners.

Internet marketing is remarkably simple but it requires a sixth sense that can only be developed through trial and error. The barrier to entry is also quite high since most people either don’t have the time to learn or simply can’t afford to lose money while trying to launch their first few campaigns. With that said, let’s get started.

The most common platforms dropshippers are currently using to drive traffic and sales is Shopify and Facebook. You create a landing page in Shopify and then drive traffic from Facebook. Obviously, you can use any cart software you want or drive traffic from a myriad of other sources – but this is the easiest way to get started and to actually start making sales.

REQUIREMENTS:

You need enough money for a Shopify account. The most basic plan is around $15/mo. You should also have some spare change to play around with Facebook Ads but don’t worry about this for now.

Computer literacy. You will have a much easier time if you have a basic understanding of PHP/HTML/Cookies/General web development.

Facebook & Instagram

BACKGROUND:

Virtually no one in this industry comes up with their own ideas. You simply copy or steal it from others. You copy the advertisements that you see. You copy the landing pages that you see. You copy as much as you are legally allowed to. You do this because you know what they are doing is working. Companies typically do not spend money running an advertisement that isn’t generating them profit. If you see an advertisement in the wild, it would be wise to take a look at their website and product.

Do not drive yourself crazy trying to reinvent the wheel by finding the next big thing on Alibaba or AliExpress on your own – because you probably wont. Look at existing campaigns you see on the web and use them as your foundation for inspiration or ideas.

[mybizarrenwmadventure]

June 2021

I've been derailed for a few months. Two months, since I started teaching English to a group of Senior 3 girls. I've been struggling to get my English teacher brain back in order again, and I feel like a newbie all over again.

Anyway, I purchased a course from Ray Higdon about 3 weeks ago, wanting to get back in gear and wanting to do the TikToks that I said I would do. He had just put out a new course called 1-minute influencer and it was priced at a point that was painful but attainable, so I got it. It also had a 30-day money-back guarantee, which I thought I was totally going to get because the course interface was less impressive than the Network Marketing Pro one by Eric & Marina Worre. Also, I saw that he was repurposing some old stuff from other courses/workshops, but I didn't want to judge till I went through it. So I've gone through at least 80% of it, and some of it is meh, and some are really good. I think it may be worth keeping the course in order for me to ILT (invest learn teach).

The company is running a really great promo right now, which has kicked my butt back in action. Mostly getting the current people to get on board (it's a bit of a no-brainer), and surprisingly, I got interest from Uncle W. which came out of left-field. He's been following the stuff on our big whatsapp group. So I called him today and explained it to him. I sent him info and he asked me to email him the pdf attachment cos his phone couldn't open it, which shows high interest. So we'll see. I've learnt to detach myself from the outcomes.

The detachment comes much easier because I now have my online teaching gig. So I think psychologically, it's good for me to be doing these 2 things together although it really sucks the energy out of me. I was toying with the idea of doing more teaching gigs but I'm scared too.

Anyway, this promo thing has been a good kick in the butt for me. I've been contacting new people, and I even tried cold-prospecting on FB. While trying to order a vege box service, lol. Just saw people on there asking for info and I decided to pick one and message the person, an international schoolteacher in Ipoh. It's good practice. The more I do this prospecting thing, the less awkward it feels. I just ask the question, and detach. If they say send, I send. If they say no, I'm like, ok. It used to crush me when they would avoid me or whatever. Just felt bad, even though I knew it was part and parcel of this thing called word-of-mouth marketing.

You have to go for the no's. Some guy early on in my personal dev quest was like, "no's are for losers" and I really believed it. Stupid thing to believe. Statistics don't lie. Even the best barely change the odds. I can't remember the exact figure but I remember BK saying something like 8 no's before you get 2 yes's or something. So the mindset shift is... love the no's because it's getting you closer to the yes.

So I'm still on this bizarre adventure, requiring me to do things that goes against my grain. Like talking to a lot of people. And then asking them to buy something. But I also realise that it's making me grow in ways that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Some days, I feel like ugh, I hate this.

Some days, I feel good about it all.

I like a lot about where I'm at, and the team I'm in. I wish I were a bigger contributor, but I'm doing as much as I humanly can at the moment. This company feels right for me. I want to make something of this, even if it's just a small slice of the pie. I don't know if I'll ever get to legacy level, maybe if I keep at it I'll get there when I'm 80. I dunno! I'd be happy if I could get a stable income. But as D says, "you need more bodies!" (more associates in the tree). She's left me alone for now. I'm really grateful that she just lets me be. I should drop her a note actually. Will do it now before I head to bed.

I also realised one very important thing. The hurdle I have to cross is not the people saying no, or fear of rejection (well, that was true and real in the beginning) but I'm starting to get used to it. I haven't even really gotten real rejection because I don't follow up well, and because of that, I don't even get to collect a rejection. I've decided to work on that for now.

To do: Always collect a decision. Then move on.

Another good one to remember: this business loves momentum. If the fire is constantly being switched on and off, the water will never boil. A slow boil will get me there, and not bursts of high fire.

My initial crazy 10 a day prospecting was killing me. I couldn't keep up and it was frazzling to my nerves. I think if I kept it to a minimum of 1 new person a day, every day, that I connect with, that would serve me better than 10 for 2 weeks and then hiding for 2 months afterwards because of how afraid I am to feel crazed.

Also, I'm going to avoid pitching close friends because their non-response and lack of even moral support makes me negative about them, which I don't like. I'm like, "why can't you just tell me no nicely?" Maybe they just don't know how to do it, so they just keep quiet. I do still feel it's rude to not just say something, anything, so I think to avoid feeling this way, I'll just forget about them. Not everyone's warm market is warm! I think I will do better with those I'm not so close with. And probably cold prospecting on social media, when I eventually get round to doing it consistently.

The problem with me and putting out videos is that I don't have a message. I don't know what I want to be known for. To be putting out value consistently requires passion about a topic. I don't currently have that.

At first I was fired up about ... I help people gain financial literacy! But that's something I have to actually put effort into learning and I can't at the moment because I'm putting all this effort into learning teaching English all over again.

I still like the financial literacy idea because it gels well with pitching a business opp, which is what I want to do. I'll get to it. I just have to make space for it. I think I'm getting more comfortable with the teaching stuff. I don't feel as stressed out as before. So soon I'll be able to do the financial literacy thing and start creating content around it.

Takeaways for today from Ray's training.

CONSISTENCY

MOMENTUM

BE A HUMAN

[kansascityhappenings]

US teens use screens more than 7 hours a day on average — not including school work

US teens spend an average of more than seven hours per day on screen media for entertainment, and tweens spend nearly five hours, a new report finds — and that doesn’t include time spent using screens for school and homework.

Among teens, the amount of time dedicated to several individual screen activities inched up by 42 minutes per day since 2015, the report said.

Nearly 62% spend more than four hours a day on screen media and 29% use screens more than eight hours a day, according to a report by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that helps kids, parents and schools navigate media.

Vicky Rideout, co-author of the report and founder of VJR Consulting, a firm that specializes in research on youth, media and families, said there are “huge opportunities and important risks” within kids’ media use.

Teenagers use their mobile phones while sitting on a bench in a park on April 24, 2018. (Photo by MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/Getty Images)

“It gives young people the chance to look for resources on information that they’re grappling with and to use apps that help them meditate or sleep, to connect to peers who might be going through similar challenges that they’re going through, to offer support to other people,” Rideout said.

Risks include the potential for youth to be exposed to harmful messages online, and for them to become more socially isolated from their peers due to more individualized content viewing.

Researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative survey of more than 1,600 tweens age 8 to 12 and teens age 13 to 18 about their relationship with media. They tracked changes in youth media behaviors, comparing current results to those found in the first wave of the study in 2015.

The screen media time figures don’t mean youth were exclusively using screen media for that period.

Young people could be multitasking, such as getting dressed while watching a video, for example, and two hours of scrolling on a smartphone at the same time the television was on for two hours would amount to four hours of screen media time by the study’s methods.

The survey covered young people’s use and enjoyment of various types of media activities and how frequently they engaged with them. It addressed all types of media, including reading books in print, using social media, watching online videos and playing mobile games.

Online viewing is through the roof

There has been a large drop in the amount of time tweens and teens spend watching television on a TV. Each group spends nearly 30 minutes less watching on a TV than four years ago, and each group enjoys it less, too. Watching online videos makes up for the drop, though.

More than twice as many young people watch videos every day than in 2015, and the average time spent watching has nearly doubled. YouTube dominates the online video space for both groups, more than video subscription services such as Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime Video.

Although YouTube says its content is only for those 13 and older, 76% of tweens say they use the site and only 23% use YouTube Kids, a YouTube meant to be a safer viewing environment for younger people. Among tweens, 53% said YouTube is the site they watch the most, compared to just 7% for YouTube Kids.

“It’s a whole new ballgame when kids are watching online video content as opposed to television content because we don’t know where it’s coming from, and we don’t know what the source is or where the algorithms are sending them,” Rideout said. “It’s something that we really need to look at much more closer now that we realize the shift it can place in recent years toward online video content.”

Tweens said they enjoy watching online videos more than any other screen media activity now. In 2015, it was fifth in enjoyment. For teens, it comes second behind listening to music, beating out video games, TV and social media.

Deborah Nichols, an associate professor of human development and family studies at Purdue University, said the vast interest in YouTube reflects the “shift away from globalized interest to much more specialized or individualized interest,” and that youth are likely to explore their interests in this way.

Screen use differs among demographics

Fifty-three percent of kids have their own smartphone by age 11, and nearly 70% have one by age 12. Smartphone ownership among tweens increased from 24% in 2015 to 41% in 2019, and from 67% to 84% among teens. Among 8-year-olds, nearly 1 in 5 now have their own smartphone.

Nichols finds this “concerning,” but said it necessitates having conversations with kids about media literacy earlier.

Socioeconomic status makes a difference in screen time, too. Tweens from higher-income homes were found to use nearly two hours less screen media per day than those from lower-income households, and the difference among teens is similar.

“When you don’t have a lot of resources in the home or a lot of resources to do things outside the home, you’re going to spend more time with the resources that you do have,” Nichols said.

“It’s an affordable, accessible source of informal learning and a form of entertainment, and I think that’s a main reason you see these differences in screen use between lower-income and higher-income kids,” said Rideout.

The time spent on social media has remained steady, while the age at which young people first start using social media varies. Among older teens who use social media, the median age of first use is 14.

The study found African American teens enjoyed using social media more than their white and Hispanic and Latino counterparts — 51% enjoy it “a lot,” compared to 37% of white teens and 43% of Hispanic and Latino teens. Rideout said there’s an “interesting intersection of race and income happening.”

“African American kids just have a higher degree of enthusiasm for forms of media, whether it’s music or games or movies or TV. They also tend to be early adopters and innovators, so I think that reflects a similar pattern.”

Media tastes vary vastly between boys and girls, and the difference is starkest when it comes to gaming. Seventy percent of boys said they enjoy playing video games “a lot,” compared to 23% of girls. Girls’ favorite media activity by far was listening to music.

Half of teen girls say they enjoy using social media a lot compared to 32% of boys, and girls spend more time on it — an hour and a half a day on average compared to 51 minutes for boys.

“Girls partially are socialized to, sadly, care about appearance and relationships and social media fosters that kind of relationship building,” Nichols said.

How young people use screens to learn and create

Twenty-seven percent of tweens and nearly 60% of teens use computers for homework daily, a substantial increase from four years ago when only 11% of tweens and 29% of teens said they used a computer for homework every day.

Douglas Gentile, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University, said the reported screen time levels are “really kind of scary” because they amount to nearly 60 hours spent on screen media weekly, which leaves “little time to do anything else of value.”

Some experts debate whether the term “screen time” means much anymore because of “media multitasking,” contending that youth may be Skyping their grandparents, reading poetry or writing code. However, the report found that these activities are quite rare. Despite the creative opportunities technology offers, young people devote very little time to creating their own content.

No more than 1 in 10 in either age group say they enjoy “a lot” activities like making digital art or graphics, creating digital music, coding or designing or modifying their own video games.

“One thing our study doesn’t exactly count is sharing their stuff they’ve created,” Rideout said. “So they may not have created the digital art on their device but they may be taking pictures and sharing that.”

Most tweens and teens read for pleasure at least once a week, the report said, but 22% of tweens and 32% of teens said they do it less than once a month, if at all.

What parents can do

For parents concerned about their kids’ media use, experts say it comes down to one thing: Talk to your kids.

“It’s becoming increasingly challenging, I think, for parents to be able to stay on top of what that content and what that messaging is, but that it’s probably more important than ever to do so,” Rideout said.

Gentile said it’s time for parents to be more thoughtful about how children are using their media.

“A smartphone is a key to everything in the world — to all of human knowledge, to all of human horrors, and that makes the internet a really valuable asset,” Gentile said. “But before I hand my kid the key to it — shouldn’t I know that they understand the risks?”

While we know which types of screen activities youth are devoting their time to, we don’t know the quality of the content they’re engaging with, according to the report.

“Six hours of makeup tutorial videos on YouTube is different from six hours of ‘Planet Earth,’” the report says.

In guidelines on screen use by youth, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends parents prioritize children’s activity and proper sleep, engaging with content with them and establishing screen-free times and zones.

After myriad media and technology developments in the last 20 years, there’s been a more recent period of stability, the report says — and that may give researchers, parents and educators a chance to catch up.

from FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV | News, Weather, Sports https://fox4kc.com/2019/10/29/us-teens-use-screens-more-than-7-hours-a-day-on-average-not-including-school-work/

from Kansas City Happenings https://kansascityhappenings.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/us-teens-use-screens-more-than-7-hours-a-day-on-average-not-including-school-work/

[nchyinotes]

Misinformed: A Roundtable on Social Media and the Shaping of Public Discourse

February 5 2018

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ucl-ias-lies-misinformed-a-roundtable-on-social-media-and-the-shaping-of-public-discourse-tickets-41517585215#

The UCL Institute of Advanced Studies will be hosting a roundtable discussion on media and politics in the age of the viral post, troll farm and automated botnet. How has the new digital media environment changed the ways we form opinions, elect representatives, challenge governments, create divides and bridge them? Bringing together researchers in political science, digital culture, journalism, and social media analysis, the roundtable will address the specific challenges posed by the ascendancy of platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to democratic societies, and about the possibilities these technologies might open up.

Panel:

David Benigson, CEO, Signal Media

Anastasia Denisova, Communication and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster

Lisa-Maria Neudert, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford (tbc)

Gregory Whitfield, Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL

 Thoughts: This panel generally talked about filter bubbles and fake news. What I found the most interesting was definitely what Anastasia Denisova said about memes and bots. I also enjoyed the discussion about the intention behind Facebook’s new newsfeed. This was quite a fluid discussion, so I wasn’t able to catch exactly who said what in all situations! Also, they are not recorded here in chronological order, rather, I looked through my notes and grouped them into categories.

 Notes

3 big technological trends that have changed since 5 years ago:

1) computational power - startups can access to the same ^ as global firms

2) accessibility and availability of data to mine and understand what people think / political leaning

willingness as consumers to give away info about ourselves online - vs old polls

3) esp helpful for signal media: merging sophistication of ML and AI

categories of influence

partisan influence - political parties

foreign influence, external (bonnets?)

more consumer driven, pop type of 1. content being generated, 2. channels they’re being published on, 3. form being used to convey the message = media brands to keep up with

quest for higher quality info

as much about media literacy as it is about trust in info

news is more and more consumed on social directly

—> source doesn’t matter so much on social anymore?

comment threads deserve attention: interdisciplinary way to look at how comments work, what info they work about, etc

political role of memes (Anastasia Denisova)

memes become a bit more important in like russia where it’s censored, because you don’t need to use your own voice (it’s anonymous / there is a lack of ownership) + you can just put out a message in an allegorical / metaphorical way (v interesting), not as much in western countries

memes keep the convo going even in absence of any more offline things happening

—> strong, influential informational environment.

use their minds, use creativity, lets you interpret, interact with other people etc

subliminal messages that technology constructs for us - not just content - who uses these things, how they are coded in the actual language

agency, authorship, gender that are embedded in these practices

memes - anonymity, lack of ownership (good for against censorship), very sexist.

 issue: filter bubbles

can literally segment populations, and target individuals who might be more susceptible

aren’t the filter bubbles going to get larger? where is the space for different views?

social constructs where we are just being fed stuff we want to click on

siloing happenstance - interacting more and more with people we agree with —> causal in link of increased partisanship

 role of bots (Anastasia Denisova)

Are usually extremely simple - generally not conversational, and plainly engage with content by liking and retweeting

But this generates visibility and endorsement

by racking up the numbers/notes, gives the content more credibility

the number of clicks is itself capital, a driver? it creates spaces of permission for new types of behaviour (which is unprecedented), because it gives an illusion of consensus (apparent consensus), giving people permission to think that their view is shared by many / ok / legit.

—> Algorithms amplify this by having it show up more prominently on their feed, increasing chance of exposure

—> People gravitate toward it, and then when its someone i know sharing it i immediately drop my guard.

 People are most likely to click on an article that 1. has an extreme/attention grabbing headline, and/or 2. reinforces their POV. —> Platform/media/algorithms exploit this with clickbait. No longer a sustainable strategy?

companies increasingly coming to a conclusion that this isn’t going to get people on their network for good + to stay

facebook is rolling out a new newsfeed - claims that they want more meaningful content on platform (more about friends and family)

expect time spent + engagement to go down

ACTUALLY more a PR thing for FB, they knew about this for 6-7 years and did nothing, only responding in fear of regulation

rather than being affirmative of what quality engagement looks like, this is a cop out

their R&D is about what will make you click on more posts — and you are more likely to click on content by friends/family

 issue: the social media companies (ie. Facebook) that put together your media diet have a lot of power.

What their platforms enable:

ability to get a sense of someone, and use these platforms to influence the conversation

personalised messaging: advertisers can tweak their message depending on who the audience is (compared to TV ads)?

—> filter bubbles

—> psychological manipulation (esp. for more susceptible people)

Social media is not a conceptual space, these are big companies - we need to understand their business models

 issue: a lot of the propaganda going on is very subtle - hard to distinguish from normal content. it’s also hard to distinguish between “fake news” and biased reporting. hard to realise their intention.

media losing trust of its users / erosion of trust in news

trump: more about sowing confusion and chaos than swaying the vote?

is the daily mail just very right leaning, or is it fake news?

lots of fake news in china related to healthcare (bizarre) - take this and you will get xxx etc

solution to fake news?

need to arm people with clarity about who’s produced it, whose made money off it, has it been fact checked by human, is there any quality nutritional score we can give it? way to assess the value in some way through bread crumb-y indicators that this is a fake news thing?

process of scoring the quality of content of a piece

fact checking tech organisations rising

quest for human editorial/curation is getting stronger, responding to rise of algorithm bots

 actually, there may not be anything extraordinarily new to worry about in the new social media world we live in.

partisanship has always existed, this is just a new way of expressing it

do the number of clicks and views actually translate into taken as absolute truth + affect voting etc?

difficult to tell what certain kinds of voters actually believe, esp low info voters (conspiracy theories?)

political science experiments: people are not as terrifyingly wrong about political things as we might think they are

when asked in ^, people often don’t answer the question accurately, experience it as whose side are you on, as if it’s an opportunity to voice alliance to side you’re on - rather than experiencing question as about facts

viewing the way people use social media as effective attachment with their group > honest engagement with world around them

aligning with the group of people you agree with politically + consuming those things solidify your belonging with that group. it will narrow down personal window of yours, but doesn’t show whether it will push you more left or right. will increase amount of info that you think you know support your bias?

but increases in group solidarity and involvement shouldn’t be as worrying a phenomenon of rightward drift of right wing people —> need to look at different causes of this

radical voices might get more exposure than they would have in past, but we shouldn’t worry too much

 additional resources mentioned:

reuters institution of journalism in oxford http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/

weapons of math destruction

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Sean Penn Wrote The Worst Novel In Human History, I Read It

Sean Penn recently released Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff. It is, ostensibly, a novel. Sarah Silverman compared Penn to Mark Twain and E.E. Cummings. A Kirkus reviewer equated him to Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace. Salman Rushdie declared it a book that Thomas Pynchon and Hunter S. Thompson would love, possibly because he longs for the good old days when people wanted him dead. It’s telling that all these figures of comparison are incapable of disagreeing because they’re either famously reclusive or dead. Having recently read Bob Honey, I am confident in declaring it the literary equivalent of renal failure.

Amazon

To help you prepare yourselves, here are just a few of Penn’s many atrocities against the English language (he really likes alliteration):

Evading the viscount vogue of Viagratic assaults on virtual vaginas.

Criminal crumbs and corresponding celebrity crusts, bound together by dough.

This goat-backed lioness began to hoot like a bruxism bedevilled banshee.

1

The (Barely Existent) Plot Is Complete Nonsense

Perhaps the only thing you need to know about Penn’s book is that the brief first chapter, about three elderly people getting murdered in their retirement home, is called “Seeking Homeostasis in Inherent Hypocrisy.” Penn writes like he’s looked up every single word in his thesaurus except “dictionary.” He uses unnecessary terms, then provides 70 footnotes to explain the definition of the unnecessary terms, because he assumes that his readers aren’t at his level of intelligence. In a way, he isn’t wrong.

Here’s a typical sentence, in this case describing a woman: Effervescence lived in her every cellular expression, and she had spizzerinctum to spare. Penn thinks that if less is more, then more must be incredible. He writes novels like they’re a high school essay he’s desperate to pad.

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So, about those murdered old people. We’re introduced to Bob Honey, a successful but disaffected middle-aged white man who is brave enough to be suspicious of some aspects of modern American life. Bob worked in waste management, and while selling his services in Iraq during the American occupation, he became convinced to kill elderly Americans for the government because … well, there’s no actual explanation, because Penn has taken the creative approach of not giving his hero any personality or traits. Penn then boldly satirizes the Iraq War by pointing out that it was sometimes violent, and holy shit you guys, some people may have profited from that violence. It’s an interesting observation if these are the first words you’ve read since 2003.

Now, you might be thinking, “OK, that doesn’t sound very profound, but it’s still reasonable to critique the Iraq War, right?” To which I’d respond that Penn refers to the Pentagon as “the five-sided puzzle palace,” then provides a footnote that clarifies he means “the Pentagon.”

From there, we learn that the American government feels threatened by old people who don’t buy enough branded products. The only real plot point is that the NSA, a covert section of the EPA, and a bunch of conservative foundations are working together on these old people murders because the removal of the flatulence they contribute to the environment allows businesses to pollute more. Way to tackle America’s problems head on, Sean Penn.

After agreeing to help the government kill old people for no good reason, Bob’s wanderings of America and the world eventually cause him to reach the incredible realization that killing people is bad and that, holy shit, America might be bad too. So Bob tries and fails to kill a Trump stand-in while rescuing his 20-something girlfriend who has all the character development of a calculator with “BOOBS” written on it. And that’s it. Penn wrote a series of incoherent angry tweets about America, then stretched them out to novel length with shit like this:

Behind decorative gabion walls, an elderly neighbor sits centurion on his porch watching Bob with surreptitious soupcon. Bob sees this. Feels fucked by his own face.

2

Sean Penn Never Learned What Satire Is

The idea that the government is killing old people doesn’t have a point; it’s just there, because it’s something bad people would do and grr, the government is bad. The whole book is full of that kind of vapid pseudo-criticism. Sean Penn is a man who looked at the world and its many issues in all of their incredible complexity and reached conclusions like maybe the media … might be influencing what we think about! Have you considered that marketing might be … trying to manipulate you? What if politicians … sometimes lie? And technology … could it have … downsides? It’s baby’s first hot take, written at the tender age of 57. Here, for example, is what Penn has to say about millennials:

Adderall and advertisers’ chickens had come home to roost. Bob felt from feline millennials the transmissions of Instagrams blitzingly blazing from all directions … No one spoke to anyone, and when they did, it was more about those anthropomorphic arrows than it was the natural air of organically human traverse … An age group so lost to letters and steeped in transactional sex, it seemed of them that they distinguished little between an active orgasm and an acted one.

Wow, sick burn. Penn careens from “selfies are dumb” to two paragraphs on gun control to a brief aside on why hunting is bad to long stretches during which nothing happens and no point is made. It’s as if Penn thought that slam poetry was the result of getting one’s penis slammed in a car door.

He compares people who buy stuff (nothing in particular, just stuff) to sheep, and then, in case you somehow weren’t getting it, declares: “BAHHH-BAHHH-BILDERBERG.” What do you have to say about marketing, Sean? “Branding is being! Branding is being! The algorithm of modern binary existentialism.” He even talks about ice cream trucks like he can’t get through a single conversation without bragging about his IQ: “The music of an ice cream truck sells sweetness, but its wares are cold and fattening.” But it’s Trump and his voters where Penn is at his least elegant:

Between the id and the superego, the sheep had traded a love of their own children for the chance to cry, “Look at me! I’m a pisser on a tree!” Ouch goes the human heart. Out comes the orator’s brain-fart, this Jesus of Jonestown, this blind man to Newtown, spits bile aplenty, to bitch us all down.

So many words haven’t been used to say so little since Ayn Rand was working. The greatest insight Penn can muster up is calling Trump “Mein Drumpf” and “Mr. Landlord,” before declaring “Sir, I challenge you to duel. Tweet me, bitch. I dare you.” My cat has stepped on my keyboard and accidentally sent tweets that are more politically insightful. And it gets worse, because …

3

Sean Penn Thinks It’s Deep To Use Racial Slurs

Bob Honey isn’t some brilliant subversion of conservative Americans. It’s a rambling polemic for how Penn sees America, mixed with the satirical equivalent of eating a child because you think that Swift guy was onto something. So it’s not super great that the only Mexican characters are drug dealers who love tacos and tequila. Or that Penn uses the term “Jew-speak.” Or that the main gang of Iraq War profiteers and senior murderers are cannibalistic Papua New Guineans who wear grass skirts and use blow guns.

Nothing says profound criticism of modern America like “What if a bunch of stereotypical immigrants are the cause of our problems? And then that’s it, there’s no insightful twist?” The Guinean leader says things like “Caught me a case of kuru! I crackin’ a grizz, my bruva,” because Sean Penn is systematically working to convince us that literacy was a mistake.

There’s a thin line between satirizing racial issues and just being racist, and Penn took a giant dump on that line when he wrote the following in the middle of his closing anti-Trump manifesto. I apologize in advance to like eight different groups of people for exposing you to this:

“You want to kill me because I don’t really believe we’re the ‘best’ country in the world? … You want to kill me, you boogeymen and women, you worshippers of tits, ass, and beefcake, you snivelling, vomitus, kike-, nigger-, towelhead-, and wetback-hating, faggot-fearing colostomy bags of humanity?”

Hey Sean, it’s actually possible to critique Trump and racial issues without dropping slurs like you got a bulk deal on them at Costco. And somehow, that’s not even the worst part.

4

Shockingly, Sean Penn Might Have Some Issues With Women

Penn has a long history of alleged domestic abuse, and while I’m not saying that he has issues with women, he seems to be saying that himself. Bob’s ex-wife is described as a “chubby fuckin’ redhead whose ghost still whorishly haunts his bed.” In reference to a black woman Bob had a crush on, Penn writes: “He thought of her beauty and the lure of her shaved and shapely cinnamon sticks standing at the trailer’s screen door.” Oh, and here’s what he has to say about women with the audacity to destroy America by using makeup: “Had she traded the mythology of her modesty for cosmetic self-awareness? Getting older in America is tough on a woman; seeing what she’ll do to avoid it is tough on a man.”

Then there’s Bob’s girlfriend, Annie, whose traits include being great at taking dick from Bob and really liking Bob. She has no personality, no desires, no opinions. What we do know is that “She may have even been too young. But Bob never bothered himself with those distinctions.” And when Annie writes Bob a note, she signs it: “My love and vagina (on your team).”

Other female characters include a bad young mother, a volunteer who gets drunk on the job, a waitress who is described as an “undernourished nymphomaniac,” and a “lesbo-leaning lunatic” who almost shits herself. There’s also an “awful chimera” who does shit herself while falling overboard and getting eaten by “fifty frenzied sharks (adios, amiga),” in one of several instances of Penn using violence against women for comedy. I think I’ve discovered Penn’s fetish, and it’s women getting hurt and shitting themselves. If you aren’t already turned off, allow me to forever ruin sex for you with Penn at his most sensual:

What a magical vagina, Bob thought, after exploring it for hours.

“Good vagina. Maybe more Vietnam.” (Note: “Vietnam” is what Penn calls pubic hair.)

Tedious trickling of cold cunt soup.

Now here’s a fun excerpt from the, ugh, five-and-a-half-page poem that ends the novel:

Where did all the laughs go?

Are you out there, Louis C.K.?

Once crucial conversations

Kept us on our toes;

Was it really in our interest

To trample Charlie Rose?

And what’s with this ‘Me Too’?

This infantizing term of the day …

Is this a toddler’s crusade?

Reducing rape, slut-shaming, and suffrage to reckless child’s play?

A platform for accusation impunity?

Due process has lost its sheen?

Again, there’s no satire here. Other parts of the poem are serious complaints about issues like mass shootings. Penn just got to the end of a novel that he clearly took less time to write than most people spend crafting SpongeBob memes, and spent a half-second thinking, “Hey, what if it was actually bad that a 76-year-old millionaire was fired for repeatedly harassing women?” And then he zooms on, like a philosophical hit and run. He wants to offer half-assed commentary on everything he’s ever glimpsed in the news. And that, I think, is because …

5

Sean Penn Desperately Wants To Sound Smart

The New York Times called Penn’s book “a riddle wrapped in an enigma and cloaked in crazy.” I have a simpler explanation: It sucks. “Riddle” implies that there’s something clever to be gleaned from it. There isn’t. It’s public masturbation. Penn quotes and references Herodotus, Norman Mailer, Inmar Berman, Jack Kerouac, Phil Ochs, Albert Camus, and more, because like your most annoying Facebook friends, he thinks that knowing the names of smart people makes him smart by proxy.

This garbage has been declared to have “almost immeasurable charm” seemingly solely because it calls Donald Trump fat. The very fact that it was published at all is the ultimate example of grading on a curve. Sean Penn is a celebrity, so of course we have to put out his inanity. Penn took the bold political stance that ha ha, Trump has a small penis, so of course it’s provocative. Even some of the many people who slammed it still called it things like “brave” or a misfired statement. It’s not, and it isn’t. That Penn sees this book as some kind of bold statement against branding is the height of hypocrisy and arrogance. This book is on shelves only because Sean Penn is a “brand.”

I realize the irony here, that I’m contributing to the attention that Penn is getting. But this isn’t just a critique; it’s a warning. Don’t buy this book because Sarah Silverman called it a “masterpiece.” Don’t buy this book out of morbid curiosity. Taunting notes sent by serial killers have contributed more to American culture than this book ever will, and the only productive thing we can do is ignore it like it’s an attention-seeking child. If I still haven’t convinced you, here’s what Sean Penn has to say after a scene in which a helicopter crushes a woman:

“As for Helen Mayo, they did Sikh and find remains. Get it? Sikh! Get it???”

I know you’ll do the right thing.

Mark is on Twitter, and has a book with a better rating than Penn’s.

Guess we’d be remiss not to link you to where you could purchase the book, so here it is if you really want it.

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For more bizarre celebrity literature, check out I Read Steven Seagal’s Insane Novel So You Don’t Have To and 6 Ugly Things You Learn About Donald Trump Reading His Books.

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