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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years ago

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Facebook algorithm boosts pro-Facebook news

Facebook is a rotten company, rotten from the top down, its founder, board and top execs are sociopaths and monsters, committers of non-hyperbolic, no-fooling crimes against humanity. They lie, they cheat, they steal. They are some of history’s greatest villains. Because Facebook is a terrible company run by terrible people, it periodically erupts in ghastly scandal. Sometimes whistleblowers or reporters reveal historic crimes, including (but not limited to) deliberately helping to foment genocide.

Sometimes, the scandals are contemporary: either Facebook blithely announces it’s going to do something terrible, or we learn of some terrible thing underway from leaks or investigations.

Thanks to a history of anticompetitive mergers — Whatsapp, Instagram, Onavo and more — based on fraudulent promises to antitrust regulators, Facebook has grown to nearly three billion users — except FB doesn’t have users, really — it has hostages.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/07/dont-believe-proven-liars-absolute-minimum-standard-prudence-merger-scrutiny

As Facebook’s own internal memos show, the company doesn’t just buy up competitors so users have nowhere to flee to, it also engineers in high “switching costs” to make it more painful to leave the system.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/facebooks-secret-war-switching-costs

For example, Facebook’s internal memos show that the manager for its photo products set out to seduce users into entrusting FB with their family photos, because that way quitting Facebook would mean abandoning your memories of your kids, departed grandparents, etc.

Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.

FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers — their true customers.

The polite term for what FB has is a “two-sided market” (selling advertisers to users and users to advertisers). The technical term is “a monopoly and a monoposony” (a monopsony is a market with a single buyer).

The colloquial term?

“A racket.”

A scam. A bezzle. A blight.

Facebook gouges advertisers on rate cards, then lies about the reach of its ads (like when it lied about the popularity of video, evincing a media-wide “pivot to video” that bankrupted dozens of news- and entertainment-sites).

Facebook didn’t set out to destroy journalism by price-fixing ads, lying to advertisers and media outlets.

FB set out to acquire a monopoly and extract monopoly rents from advertisers and publishers, with a pathological indifference to how these frauds would harm others.

Having shown a willingness to destroy journalists and media outlets to extract a few more billions for its shareholders, Facebook has attracted a lot of enemies in the media.

If you’re a whistleblower with a story to tell, there’s a journalist whose editor will allocate the resources to report your story out in depth. The combination of a rotten company and a lot of pissed off journalists produces a lot of bad ink for the company.

But the fact remains that FB has a vast pool of hostages, billions of them, and it gets to decide what they see, when and how. I used to joke with my human rights activist friends that the best use for Facebook was showing people why and how to leave Facebook.

FB’s response was predictable. As Ryan Mac and Sheera Frenkel write in the New York Times, FB’s Project Amplify is a Zuckerberg-led initiative to systematically promote positive coverage of FB and its founder — including articles that originate with FB itself.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/21/technology/zuckerberg-facebook-project-amplify.html

That is, FB staffers are charged with writing puff pieces about how great the company is, and FB’s algorithm will push these ahead of reporting by actual journalists who present detailed, factual, multi-sourced accounts of the company’s fraudulent and depraved conduct.

Project Amplify marks a pivot from FB’s longstanding policy of issuing insincere apologies for its scandals. Company sources told the reporters that everyone figured out these don’t convince anyone, so the company turned to pushing happy-talk quackspeak instead.

One of the leaders of this project is Alex Schultz, “a 14-year company veteran who was named chief marketing officer last year,” but the major impetus comes from Zuck himself, one of the most hated men on the planet.

Amplify is just one of FB’s strategies for distorting the discourse about itself. In July, it neutered Crowdtangle, an widely used analytics tool that showed that FB’s top posts were unhinged far-right disinformation and conspiracies.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/#inconvenient-truth

And Facebook has declared all-out legal warfare (accompanied by a disinformation campaign) to kill Adobserver, an NYU project that tracks paid political disinformation on the platform.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/05/comprehensive-sex-ed/#quis-custodiet-ipsos-zuck

By shutting down Crowdtangle and Adobserver, FB hopes to control the academic findings about the company’s role in disinformation, hate, and harassment. The company runs its own research portal where academics are expected to access data about the platform.

But as with the journalists who report on it, FB has heaped abuse on the academics who research it.

Its portal data was bad, leaving PhD and masters’ theses are at risk of retraction. Mid-dissertation researchers have been set back to square one.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/2020-election-misinformation-distortions#facebook-sent-flawed-data-to-misinformation-researchers

In retrospect, Facebook’s decision to game its own algorithm to push pro-company quackspeak seems inevitable. It’s not just that no one believes the company’s apologies anymore (if they ever did) — it’s that the company seems incapable of hiring competent spin doctors.

Take the WSJ’s blockbuster “Facebook Files,” a series of reports detailing the company’s willingness to harm children, commit fraud, and allow millions of favored, powerful people to violate its rules with impunity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-09-16/facebook-s-promised-to-gain-the-public-s-trust

FB’s response was genuinely pathetic. In a perfunctory blog post, its top flack — the widely despised British politician Nick Clegg, paid millions to front FB on the global stage — vilified the WSJ’s reporting without producing any factual rebuttals.

https://about.fb.com/news/2021/09/what-the-wall-street-journal-got-wrong/

It’s the kind of ham-fisted policy advocacy that Facebook is (in)famous for. Who can forget the absolute shitshow in India over its Internet Basics program, when it bribed telcos to exempt FB and the services it hand-picked from their data-caps?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg

This Net-Neutracidal maneuver, falsely billed as a way to bring the internet to poor people (something is absolutely does not do), was the subject of a consultation by India’s telco regulators.

FB pushed deceptive alerts to millions of its Indian users, tricking them into sending a flood of form-letters to the regulator urging it to leave Internet Basics intact.

But whoever drafted the form letter didn’t bother to check whether it addressed any of the questions the regulator was consulting on. That made these millions of letters non-responsive to the consultation, so the regulator ignored them.

FB lost! It’s almost as though people who are good at fighting policy battles don’t want to work for Facebook, and the only talent they can attract are the kinds of opportunistic blunderers that no one takes seriously and everyone hates.

Weird, that.

#pluralistic

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soundrooms · 4 years ago

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Soundrs: William Fields

My name is William Fields. I live in Arden, Delaware, just south of Philadelphia on the East Coast of the USA. I make non-functional, future-oriented electronic music.

My newest album is ➜ Bokuseki My 24-hour algorithmic music project is ➜ FieldsOS My website is ➜ https://williamfields.com/ On social media:

➜ Twitter

➜ Instagram Why do you make music? I played the drums for a bit as a kid, but otherwise I am self-taught. I grew up listening to a lot of different music, but hiphop was a big part of it. I discovered electronic music in high school and was hooked for life. For some reason it resonates with my brain. On a fundamental level, I suppose I make music because I enjoy the process and because the results are rewarding. Music provides me with an endless source of learning and exploration and problems to solve. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and pride. And maybe in some small way, it’s given me an opportunity to inspire others and leave the world a little better than I found it. On a practical level, music has given me the opportunity to connect with really great people around the world and to travel occasionally for shows, which adds some adventure and excitement to my life. What are your inspiration sources? Rhythm: Photek, Squarepusher, Untold, Rian Treanor, Mark Fell, Kindohm Sonics: Autechre, Drum and bass (Noisia & friends) Groove: J Dilla, Flying Lotus, Aoki Takamasa Improvisation: Jazz, Indian Classical Ideas: Brian Eno, John Cage, Thich Nhat Hanh, Yuval Noah Harari, Austin Kleon, George Saunders, Haruki Murakami, various podcasts, my good friend Qebo. Tell us something about your workflow. I am always working on my music system (my “instrument”): adding features, removing features, adjusting algorithms, refining, tweaking, etc. You could think of my system as a huge, complex modular patch with hundreds of modules, that has a nice UI, full generative capabilities, and easy state management, but at a tiny fraction of the cost and it fits in my backpack. I ♥ Computers In the process of working on my system, I will occasionally feel inspired by something, so I will hit record and improvise. Most of these improvisations are crap and get thrown away. But, occasionally something magical happens, and those recordings end up getting released. If I know I have a release coming up, I will sometimes have dedicated recording sessions. Some of my favorite releases (like Shackamaxon) have been recorded in the course of a single day. How would creative rituals benefit your workflow? Good question. I don’t practice any creative rituals. But, I’m pretty sure going for a vigorous walk beforehand is a good idea. Gets the blood flowing to the brain.

How do you get in the zone? It usually takes me around fifteen minutes before things really start flowing. So the first few tracks of a session tend to be stiff and self-conscious. In a stressful live performance situation, I’ve found that a little bit of tequila helps! How do you start a track? These days, my tracks tend to start with a snapshot that is algorithmically generated by my music system. It is much better at finding interesting musical spaces than I am. So, I will sit there and hit the randomize button until something inspiring comes out. Then I will hit record and improvise with it. I also keep a collection of interesting snapshots that I can load at random. So sometimes I will flip through those until I find something good and improvise based on that. Do you have a special template? Yes! I never start from a blank slate. The template is everything. It is my instrument. It has been burned into my muscle memory. I can control the music without thinking about it. I have been working on it since 2012. The fundamental structure is: LEMUR (controller) ➜ Javascript (for state generation/capture/recall) ➜ REAPER (sequencing, synthesis, fx) REAPER is the core of my music system. It is where the sequences are generated, the synthesis is done, and the FX are applied.

The visuals are generated in real time, triggered by the music via MIDI. So there is very tight correlation between audio and visual events. I am not using audio analysis. The visuals are done in Javascript, running in Chromium. I use Visual Studio Code for development.

For the visuals I am mainly using three.js. Thank you Mr. Doob! On the music side, I am hugely indebted to Justin Frankel (REAPER) and the Surge Synth Team. What I do would not be possible without their amazing work. What do you put on the master channel? I try to put as little as possible on the master channel. I have some metering stuff like a spectrum analyzer, an oscilloscope, a goniometer, and a loudness meter. Other than that, the only thing is a waveshaper. It adds saturation, glues everything together nicely, and tames the peaks without reducing the impact of the transients. I’m not sure of the technical term, but it’s a special kind of waveshaper that folds over the waveform when it hits 0 dbFS instead of flat-topping it. How do you arrange and finish a track? I perform and record the music in real time to a single stereo pair. I don’t do any arrangement, layering, or multi-track editing after the fact. How do you store and organize your projects? When I record something, it goes onto the desktop and on to my phone. When I listen back to it later, if it has potential for release, I put it in a “Release Candidates” folder. Otherwise I throw it in the archive, probably never to be heard again. When it’s time to compile a release, I go through the “Release Candidates” folder and pick out my favorite stuff.

How do you take care of studio ergonomics? I work in software, so my physical studio setup is very minimal. I have a motorized standing desk, so I can easily switch between sitting and standing. Tell us something about your daily routine, how is your day structured, how do you make room for creativity? I work at a day job four days a week to make a living. I have Fridays off and focus on music. I’ve found that mornings are best for detail-oriented tasks like programming and critical listening related to the mix/mastering of my system. Afternoons seem to be best for improvising and recording. Sometimes I wonder if all this music stuff is just an elaborate excuse for me to play with computers. Having said that, I am always thinking about music, listening back to recordings, taking notes on my phone, and making small adjustments throughout the week. I don’t need a big chunk of time. I am able to work in small bits here and there. Also, sometimes while working my day job I set my system to auto-generate new music every thirty seconds. Occasionally something really good will happen and I’ll run over to my computer and hit “Save” so I can perform with it later. Share a quick producing tip. (1) Don’t start from scratch every time! Build your instrument. Practice with it. Develop your muscle memory so it becomes fast and intuitive. This approach helps you to develop your own voice, and it’s much more fun than laboring over a DAW for endless hours until you hate your own music! (2) Always level match when doing A/B comparisons. If a plugin is increasing gain by as little as 0.1 db, it will sound better to your ear, even if it is actually damaging the sound. (3) Process as close to the source as possible. Instead of putting it on the master, put it on a bus. Instead of putting it on a bus, put it directly on the track. Instead of processing the track, fix it directly in the synthesis. Share a link to an interesting website (doesn’t have to be music related). I just discovered the Solarpunk movement and I think it’s really inspiring. Here’s the ➜ Solarpunk manifesto. List ten sounds you are hearing right this moment : ) Cicadas Airplanes Cars in the distance Computer keyboard clacking as I type My own breathing That’s all I got. The cicadas are too loud!

Thank you William! Any other mad sound scientists out there?

#soundrs #william fields #interview #workflow #inspiration #creativity #music #musician #electronic music #generative music

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batmansymbol · 5 years ago

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turning off notifications

hello friends! i have been reading an excellent and horrifying book called The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff. in part, it discusses social media giants’ desire—driven by profit—to create compulsive and reliant behaviors in its users. zuboff goes on to detail the effects on our mental health. spoiler, they’re Very Very Bad.

it’s funny, because in the moment i’ve historically felt like it’s so difficult to identify why i feel depressed. but right now, i am looking back over the course of the last 12 years of my life, and. i started having issues with depression at the exact time my facebook usage ramped up. i had my worst episodes during the period that i was on facebook and twitter and instagram all the time. since i left facebook and twitter, i haven’t had a serious episode.

i’m not saying it’s a hundred percent causal. but i’ve never ever EVER regretted leaving facebook or twitter, and i’m starting to think about how good i could potentially feel if i continued flushing the rest out of my system. so, in light of this, i am going to leave instagram and goodreads.

i’m also thinking pretty seriously about ‘bricking’ my smartphone and turning it into basically like, a glorified ipod for music and audiobooks, and getting a flip phone/”feature phone” for actual life usage. does anyone here have a flip/feature phone or have experience with this?

i considered leaving tumblr, too, but poking around through the settings, i’m actually pleased with the provisions tumblr has for privacy, agency, and user control. there are a lot of jokes floating around about how, somehow, this hellsite has become the most livable place on the internet, but it’s true!!!! the lack of an algorithm deciding what we should see and when, what’s most likely to shove us into endless cycles of anger, envy, or other highly “engaged” emotions—this is stuff i really appreciate about being here.

@staff y’all should push even further in this direction and position yourselves as the privacy-oriented, anti-surveillance social media... it’s the good and politically radical thing to do

ANYWAY, the point of this post is to say that i'm disabling all notifications. i’m no longer going to get the little flag in the top right for comments, tags, etc., so if you tag me in something and i don’t reply, send me an ask or a DM!

also, i highly recommend reading the surveillance capitalism book! we are being numbed to the seizure of the contents of our lives, and tech companies operate totally outside the realms of democratic oversight, and i sure hate it so much. zuboff's discussions of targeted advertising are particularly scary. until now i’ve thought of it in humorous terms - “oh, lmao, i bought a vacuum cleaner and now google thinks i want to fill my home with vacuum cleaners!”

but these targeted ads, where and when they present themselves, are getting more and more granular with these companies’ growing awareness of our lives and emotions. more and more, we are being subjected to ads and all sorts of digital nudges at the moments we are the most susceptible.

as data mining picks up more and more information about our facial expressions, our feelings, and our behaviors, we’ll inevitably be advertised to when we’re the most stressed, numb, alone, depressed, insecure, or otherwise vulnerable, in order to yield the greatest profit for surveillance companies’ partners. we deserve a better and more humane future.

#personal

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your-brilliant-lady-m · 4 years ago

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South Korean music industry at a glance: an outsider perspective

I watched one particular AMV last week. The song used for the video was “I’m afraid” by Korean rock band DAY6. I was pleasantly surprised as someone who values lyrics in song first and foremost. The music itself was great. I’ll listen to their songs again. It’s a nice fit for my music taste. Naturally, YouTube’s algorithm decided that I’m a fan of everything Korean after 1 video and started spamming my recommendations with k-pop songs, documentaries and everything in-between.

I watched a couple of videos, listened to some songs and discovered fascinating patterns. So, I went down to the comment section. And it was rather interesting experience, should I say? The concept of entertainment industry in South Korea simply begged to be explored more after this. I dug deeper and visited Tumblr k-pop tags and briefly glanced upon Instagram and Twitter. And, oh...

I am a big picture person and I enjoy both studying and creating systems. This one was particularly fun to explore. I discovered a lot of new things for myself. Perhaps, you can discover something new for yourself too or take a step back and look at this from a new angle.

Disclaimer: it’s impossible not to offend someone on Tumblr, so keep that in mind. That being said, I do NOT intend to insult of offend anyone. It’s just a little research done for fun, because I love research with a purpose. This post is NOT A HATE post. No hate intended for fans, artists or other people involved. It’s meant to be a discussion, nothing more and nothing less. If it sounds like hate, it’s just my sarcastic sense of humour.

Content Warning: I mention suicide, death, depression, rape in a couple of sentences. There’s nothing major or graphic, but it’s there.

In this long post I decided to share with you my opinion, a so-called outsider perspective, on the world of music entertainment industry in South Korea and people involved in it on different levels. I use the word “outsider” mainly because, that’s exactly what I am in this case, as someone who is in no way involved in k-pop community. I can’t name you a single band or their members. I don’t know any solo artist and can’t neither sing nor name you any song.

And to be completely honest, I don’t think I will set my foot into k-pop fan-circles ever again after everything I saw.

Think of this as “In this essay I will...” meme, except there’s an actual essay.

As far as I know, in South Korea “k-pop” refers to all music produced in SK, including solo artists, various bands, singers-songwriters. It doesn’t even have to be pop music. Koreans include in this definition all genres of music. However, around the world “k-pop” means primarily music made by idol groups and bands marketed for children, teenagers and younger people. In this post I use the latter definition, because that’s how most people understand “k-pop” in other countries. Therefore, my statements, opinions and conclusions here would concern only idol music.

The music industry in South Korea is heavily influenced by culture and traditions of the country, just like all things are. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, different backgrounds are what makes people so interesting and unique. However, when combined with consumer mindset, desire to generate profit at any cost and fast-paced nature of modern life these neutral cultural elements could produce something concerning, and it can lead to disastrous consequences.

1. Idol

These people are called artists, musicians, singers, bands, groups, performers. In South Korea and in Japan, however, people call them Idols or Stars. I’ve also seen Muses, Princes and Queens. Interesting, isn’t it? The terminology used to describe these musicians in South Korea is one of the key elements in this whole entertainment system. You’ll see why.

But who or what is an idol exactly? Let’s take a basic definition from Wikipedia.

“In the practice of religion, a cult image or devotional image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, person, spirit or daemon ... that it embodies or represents. In several traditions, including the ancient religions of Egypt, Greece and Rome, and modern Hinduism, cult images in a temple may undergo a daily routine of being washed, dressed, and having food left for them. Processions outside the temple on special feast days are often a feature. Religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection. In many contexts "cult image" specifically means the most important image in a temple, kept in an inner space, as opposed to what may be many other images decorating the temple.

The term idol is often synonymous with worship cult image. In cultures where idolatry is not viewed negatively, the word idol is not generally seen as pejorative, such as in Indian English.”

Cambridge Dictionary defines idol as follows:

And here’s the definition from Oxford Dictionary:

This is a centrepiece of this tapestry. Surely, you have noticed by now what these definitions have in common.

Idol = a cult image of a god, a deity

By calling these musicians “idols” industry makes society and audience treat them in certain way, namely as gods. What characteristics do gods possess? They are beautiful, talented, funny, confident and graceful, blessed by eternal youth of immortality. Gods have no flaws, they do not bleed, they are above human concerns. They are an embodiment of perfection. They are stars, you could not reach.

But real people are not like that. They can be sad and angry, insecure. People don’t have perfectly symmetrical faces. They can’t dance in sync without preparation. They can’t sing like angels at any given moment throughout the day.

What happens when idols accidentally reveal their humanity? What happens when people see, that they make mistakes and do stupid things, that they need to train hard to appear graceful on stage?

I will tell you. And it’s not pretty. But, first, let’s look at other elements of this system.

2. Y/N and Self-insert fantasy

Aside from the music, K-pop sells the self-insert fantasy to the audience. It’s carefully arranged to appear real, where the cracks are masked and every word is scripted. The reality is so vivid that one doesn’t even have to use imagination all that much, because all scenarios and decorations already exist. Countless interviews for TV and magazines, fan meetings, talk shows, reality shows made sure people are privy to all juicy details of personal lives and opinions of musicians. And also one word - merchandise. Some of that merch made me question my life choices. Some of it is, ah, creepy or has weird vibes. All of this provides plenty of material for people to work with. Fans can effortlessly imagine themselves beside their idols or even in their place.

In a highly competitive society, where people throw themselves into studying and work since young age, forming deep and lasting connections with others is very hard, sometimes impossible. As a result, people long to have a group of close friends with similar interests, a loving partner who would cherish them endlessly. People want to be rewarded for their backbreaking efforts to succeed by the carefree life of fame and music, everlasting friendships and love. And in a way you can’t really blame them for his.

Does this dream life sound familiar? We are looking at K-pop bands here. It doesn’t really matter if their members don’t always get along or that they can live in debt, that fame is fickle and adoring fans can tear your self-confidence to shreds. Audience wants the glamour of fantasy and the industry is more than happy to cater to these desires.

Perhaps, knowing that even for idols this fantasy is sometimes unattainable makes the whole set up feel just a little cruel.

3. Fans, stans and fandom culture

We’ve already established earlier that idols are gods in the eyes of people and listed traits they must possess. So, what else do gods need to exist? Worshippers. Because a cult is worth nothing without its followers. Gods need a group of people to worship them and spread their beliefs. The role of worshippers is performed by a fans in this case.

Apparently, there is a running joke that girl groups need to win a general public popularity and boy bands need a big passionate fandom. It seems to be true according to my observations.

In k-pop fandom people use the word “stan” to state that they like or support particular group. Now, I am sure everyone here knows that in other fandoms, dedicated to movies, shows, books and games there’s an important distinction between being a “fan” and a “stan”. What is it?

A fan is someone who likes a ship or character, creates and/or consumes fandom content, supports certain ideas, discusses things they enjoyed and disliked, criticises canon. Stans, however, are a different breed. They engage in all typical fandom activities, but their support and enjoyment becomes obsession. Stans believe their favourite characters and ships are immune to criticism, that they are superior no matter what others say. Stans start shipping wars, send anon hate, death threats over fictional characters and hurt real people. Stans are considered toxic fans. And majority of normal civilised people don’t like them and try their best to let stans hang out in their echo chamber by themselves.

In other fandoms and communities, to be a fan means to love, support and enjoy something, while to stan means to obsess over and hyperfixate on these same things. Words “I stan” rarely mean “I support” for most people, and if they do mean that, it’s only used in a joking manner (”We stan procrastination legend!”, “I stan our miscommunication kings”).

Everywhere else “stan” has only negative connotations, except in k-pop. But what has changed? What’s the difference? Why do international fans scoff at “shipper stans” and then turn around calling themselves “stans of X k-pop group” at the same time? Does it make you wonder?

And this is another core theme of k-pop, in my opinion. In fandom where stan = obsession = support, you can see interesting patterns.

Fandom loves their flawless gods. But watching them from afar is not enough for some people, because unlike deities in different religions, these gods live among us. People are very much aware of that. Industry has created a cult and laid the groundwork for worshippers to express their adoration in every way including personal contact. And who wouldn’t want to meet their god? Who wouldn’t want to know more about them or tell them how much you love them? In talk shows and fan meetings there is only so much one can do after all.

People desire to know more, to have more so much that their obsession transforms into concerning stalker tendencies. These crazy individuals follow idols, stalk them on social media, in hotels, research flight numbers, bribe security. Musicians were attacked and poisoned. I strongly suspect there were cases of rape that no one knows about. There is even a special term for these fans - “sasaeng”.

Is there a definition for stalkers of actors or musicians in western world? No, I’m pretty sure there isn’t. They are just called “invasive/obsessive fans” or “stalkers”.

Also, there are sasaeng memes. Yeah, you heard that right. I enjoy some classy dark humour as much as the next person, but there is a fine line between normal and questionable.

Back to the topic of stalkers. Do you realise how disturbing that is? Such behaviour is so common that there is a term for it. You create a fandom-cult, encourage people to worship k-pop idols as gods and then act surprised when members of said cult become fanatics and their adoration becomes obsession.

And it’s so easy to step on this slippery road. The system makes it ridiculously easy. Lines begin to blur. How much is too much? Where do you draw the line?

While sasaeng fans engage in extreme real-life obsession, people online aren’t that far off, to be honest. I’ve seen it all: imagines, headcanons, fanfiction, real-person shipping, reactions. Real person shipping is a controversial topic. Some people support it, others don’t. I suppose I’m among those who don’t get it. I’m not exactly against it, but I find it strange. Mainly because it’s based on assumptions made by fans about personalities and behaviour of real people.

Assumptions. Dear me! K-pop fandom has this thing with video compilations. I’ve never seen this phenomenon being so widespread in any other community or fandom. Basically people edit together a collection of short clips from talk-shows, interviews, Instagram stories, some YouTube videos, etc and then proceed to analyse every gesture, word, facial expression of idols and provide both audio and on-screen commentary. These videos and many other forms of similar analysis allow people to imagine what kind of personalities idols have, what kind of life do they live. It’s the source material for fanfiction, imagines and headcanons.

But it’s not real. It’ll never be real. It’s an illusion, an image, a stage persona. They fall in love with a face and made up personality. And I think that when people create this content they can forget this. Fans can develop certain emotional dependence and unhealthy attitudes in the long run. In some YouTube comments even supportive and encouraging words sound whiny and obsessive. And semantics of being a “stan” of certain group or individual doesn’t help.

4. Industry, companies and liars

At last we arrive at the most important aspect of music entertainment industry - its creators.

Have you seen “The Road to El Dorado”? It’s one of my all time favourites. It has iconic characters, adult jokes that I didn’t get as a child and iconic soundtrack. I’ll quote “It’s Tough To Be A God” a lot here.

In South Korea music industry is a factory, the production line to be exact. This kind of set up affects everything in the grand scheme of things. Companies and agencies play the role of training centres and record labels. And there are so many of them that a whole new scamming system developed based around fake idol agencies. It implies that there are people who fall for offers of these agencies and continue to do so. I suspect that victims must pay a fortune upfront before they realise their mistake. Are there any kind of legal protection against such scams? How can people verify the authenticity? Because a well masked scam can exist for a long time before someone discovers it and calls them out on their nonsense.

As far as I understand legal companies work like this. After high school, which is often focused on performing arts (and private schools can get away with using talents of students for personal gain, which is totally not surprising), young people can audition for an agency and become an idol in training or idol-trainee. And passing audition is hard. But good recommendations can help, connections too.

During training you don’t get paid. Only a few companies pay aspiring musicians. People can spend years in training and don’t debut. But rent, necessities, clothing and food (not that you need much of it, but more on that later) cost a lot. Where do you get the money to live then? Support from parents, one or two part time jobs at most and bank loans. Surprise! We found an unexpected (just kidding, it’s very obvious) party, who reaps benefits from the system.

You need skill to be an idol. Natural talent helps too. The more skills you have, the cheaper and faster your training is. To level up your game you attend classes every month offered by your agency, which are not cheap (dance classes range from 400$ to 1000$ per month, sometimes more). There are four main categories in evaluation process: vocals, rapping, dancing and visuals. Idols are multitaskers, to have a chance on stage one must be perfect at everything. And people are ready to invest thousands of dollars into their kids training so that they could have a chance in entertainment industry. South Korea thrives on revenue k-pop industry generates every day.

Let’s pause here for a second and think about what kind of people come to these agencies. The answer is easy. People who have a dream, a desire, a real goal. You don’t wake up one day and decide to become a k-pop idol. Sometimes people get invited by agencies (after prior acting, modelling career or any other form of exposure). These people are usually very young. Some start straight after high school, some after university, but 25 years old is considered a late start. Compare that to western musicians who start singing at any age and still become famous.

But why this age limit? Because idols are eternally young. So that in public eye musicians are remembered as 20 year old gods. People would listen to their music and imagine a young attractive face. Career in k-pop is short, it lasts 5-7 years, rarely longer than that. It’s even less than modelling or acting can offer. And professional sportsmen retire in their late 30′s. Some play longer, but usually, that’s it.

If you live in Los Angeles and say that you want to be an actor or performer, no one would bat an eye. It’s like saying that you want to be an engineer or accountant. Similarly, in South Korea becoming an k-pop musician is a real career. Because part of the self insert fantasy that the industry sells is the idea that anyone can be an idol. It’s easy after all. Anyone can pass auditions and become a trainee. A trainee with no guarantee of debut. But one should never underestimate the power of idol-dream. After all, idea is the most resilient parasite.

“My friends started training in kindergarten. They have wanted to become idols since young”

“A lot of young kids get interested in Korean music”

A 6-year old child sees the performance of k-pop group for the first time on TV. Let’s say it’s a girl. She is enraptured and decides that she will be like that too someday. She grows up, while being part of the fandom, just like all idols are in one way or another and whose fan-obsession transforms into desire to succeed. Her parents spend time and money to find her tutors, to fund dancing and singing classes. Perhaps in high school this girl decides to fix the shape of her eyes and make nose straighter. She trains hard and passes the auditions in her dream agency. And during training this girl faces the reality of behind the scenes life in music industry.

“Why are you crying? I’m not even pushing you”

“How many times have I told you? The rest are doing it perfectly”

“She is dancing like an elementary school student“

“I watched your performance as a spectator who bought a ticket to your concert. I want a refund“

“You make my ears hurt. I don’t want to listen at all”

“Listening to you was tiring”

“I’ll kick you out instead. You won’t debut”

“I thought I was going to die. That’s how determined I was”

While I do understand that keeping a high quality standards in media industry is important, there are more productive and healthy ways to motivate someone to improve and be more passionate, you know? Constantly insulting people with sadistic glee and putting them down at every opportunity or calling them ugly to their face doesn’t do much.

Do you think that children know about this? Do they know about soulless teachers and belittling managers? Do they know about friends who are really your competition, so you shouldn’t get attached? Do they know about living in debt? Do they know any of this? No, I don’t think they do.

Children dream about the stage, about the sea of lights and crowds who chant your names. They want adoring fans and photoshoots. They want to appear on TV and magazine covers. Teenagers want the thrill of performance, they want to share their music and dancing with others.

“I don’t know how many times I cried alone”

The truth is cruel. But they won’t give up easily even if it means sleeping 4-5 hours and consuming no more than 500 calories per day. Because giving up means that your whole life was a lie. One can’t afford not to be good enough. Giving up means admitting that all efforts and money your family invested into your dream were in vain. It means losing face before your family and friends - a fate worse than death. Imagine living this idol dream and building your whole future around it and then being told that you’ll never debut because of the circumstances outside of your control or something minor, like face shape or 1 kg of weight that your body refuses to lose. It can break you. Especially if you are like 18 or something.

5. “And who am I to bridle if I'm forced to be an idol If they say that I'm a God, that's what I am”

“I don’t think there’s anything a tough as being a trainee in Korea”

Once you are a trainee at the agency your personal life does not belong to you anymore. You can’t go out without permission of the agency. You phone is taken away. Your diet and weight are monitored. Bad habits are not allowed (no smoking, drinking or drugs). Oh! I think I found the good thing in the system! Unfortunately, it won’t last. Trainees can’t date or meet with family without permission of agency. Dating is very taboo. Even established idols can’t openly date.

Why is that? Because gods can’t belong to anyone. Their lives are property of the fandom. Because openly dating idols destroy the self-insert fantasy. There was a former idol girl who dated another musician. She was called a whore by her fans, her loving and adoring stans. You might know who I am talking about. Would you call an American actor or singer a prostitute for dating someone?

Trainees sign the contract. And how can a young person straight out of school or university know much about what makes a good contract in entertainment industry or what makes a good contract in general? Even if you do understand the terms fully you would still sign it because if you have come so far, you can’t let your dream slip this easily. There isn’t a choice. Not really. If you want to debut, you will agree to anything.

What about life after debut? You have to pay off your loans. And company takes 60-70% of your group’s earnings. Artists themselves get 30-40% and split it between themselves. K-pop groups have from 5 to 10 members or more than that. Each person gets less than 6%. Idols are not filthy rich. They are not. These earnings are practically nothing compared to the work you have put into this.

Idols are musicians, who often don’t even write their own songs, music or create choreography. But if public doesn’t like the song and musical number the company created, they blame idols for the failure. Such an amazing logic we see right here. But people say that sharing music is the best part of idol life. But whose music?

Models on catwalk are not there to demonstrate their physical beauty, they are blank canvas for works of clothing designers. Same with k-pop musicians. They act like puppets in a way, whose faces and voices are used to show audience someone’s music and songs. Some groups do write their own music and lyrics and it’s nice to know that. But those, who don’t are rather unfortunate. It’s a nice tool of psychological control and pressure for an agency. They can hold it over group and use the following rhetoric: “We gave you everything! Why can’t you follow the simple instructions” or “Where would you be without us? It’s not even your music!”

I called k-pop industry a factory. That’s true. Dozens of people become trainees every year. These talented young people are fully prepared to do anything to achieve their goal. They are ready to practice until they collapse, starve themselves and pour themselves into every song. Companies know that. Tell me why would they value their idols as individuals, as people, as human beings if they always have a replacement? Why bother with mental health of their artists if next year they could have a fresh set of people, who are younger and prettier? Why try to improve relationships inside groups if you could fire any member and replace them within a month or two?

In western countries famous bands have different stories. Some were friends since high school, who played in bars and during festivals and then they were noticed by some representative of label company, who offered them a contract. Some groups were formed by like-minded people who bonded and decided to share their music with the world. There are many stories, but ultimately the have one thing in common. Bands in the West often form themselves. These people had time to bond, connect, discover each other, solve some disagreements and learn to work around their differences.

K-pop groups are formed by their agencies. They are their property in a way. Company selects the best and puts together these total strangers, appoints the leader with marketable face and personality and then expects them to work together like a well-oiled machine. No one has time to bond during training, because other people are you competition, not friends. And then you must learn to work as a team and be best friends on camera for the audience to support the self-insert fantasy. It’s no wonder that k-pop groups don’t get along sometimes. And every member knows that they are replaceable. It doesn’t help in forming connections. Groups can’t just terminate contract and go to work with another agency. I heard it happens sometimes, but it’s not a done thing. Unlike in other countries where bands just sign the deal with a different label and release their music under their name if they don’t like the old conditions.

“It's tough to be a God But if you get the people's nod Count your blessings, keep them sweet, that's our advice Be a symbol of perfection Be a legend, be a cult Take their praise, take a collection As the multitudes exalt Don a supernatural habit We'd be crazy not to grab it So sign up two new Gods for paradise”

But is it really a paradise?

Idols are expected to act cute, to match personalities created for them by fans or media. They have to act according to the concept of their group. They have to be a symbol of perfection: skinny, single and with a face perfected by surgery. They are allowed to mess up, but only in a cute way. They can break down and cry, but only if it’s “aesthetic”.

Weight issues are a separate topic. Sometimes I wonder whether managers in companies understand how weight loss or human body in general works. To be honest, I think that scales in agencies are rigged. And only managers know that. I know it can be done from personal experience. Some beach resorts tweak their scales and make them show 4-6 kg less than actual weight, so people wouldn’t get upset if they gain some. There is no way a girl as tall as I am (173 cm) could weigh like 47-50 kg and be able to perform complex choreography on stage and sing without being out of breath, visit the gym on a regular basis and generally function as a normal human without fainting every other day.

“I developed a lot of eating disorders”

“I think I consumed about 300 calories today“

“Someone, please, trim the fat off her arms”

If you grow up thinking of idols as gods and then, when you become one of them you think that you must act as one too. But being an easily replaceable god is a heavy burden. The industry, companies and audience want you to be perfect, to always be on your best behaviour. And the thought of not being good enough or divine enough terrifies you, because stans have no mercy (black ocean concept is the most stupid thing ever by the way). This kind of pressure can destroy even the most resilient. And it does.

Almost everyone knows that situation with mental health in South Korea is not the best to put it lightly. In many ways it’s a cultural thing. But in k-pop mental health issues are treated with even less care. Gods are not supposed to be depressed or suicidal. They are not supposed to have fears or insecurities, can’t be upset or angry. They try hard to be this deity, this image. So, even when they realise they need professional help or even a friend to talk to, they either won’t seek said help or reach out only to be met with silence. Some agencies disapprove or forbid therapy altogether.

Sometimes fandom becomes self-aware.

“Don’t forget that idols are people too!”

“Your favourite idols are running out of breath just to keep you entertained“

“They are humans, who have feelings!”

Oh, but here’s the thing, my friend. The industry doesn’t want you to think of them as people. Companies and media repeatedly reinforce the idea that they are not people, they are your idols. And strangely enough, the audience supports this idea. People continue to call them idols, developing worshiping tendencies in the process, imitate them, scrutinise their flaws and triumphs. Because, you know, only “real and ordinary humans” can have flaws, not “idols”.

So people who say “they are human too” and people who say “wow, this concert was amazing, but vocals in the beginning were so off-key, I simply can’t” are one and the same.

This thought process would have been funny if it wasn’t so disappointing. But that’s just my observation.

And here’s another thing about sexualisation. I said before how appearances are everything, marketable face and body could drastically improve your chances to succeed. Companies know about this too and concepts and aesthetics of groups are designed accordingly. Girls are dressed in skimpy outfits, their dances are unnecessary suggestive, they wear heavy make up and try to have “mature” vibes. Boys don’t avoid such objectification either: suits, tight pants and dress shirts along with make up and hairstyle to give audience a promise of the things to come. Grown adults are not supposed to lust after 15-17 year olds. You can’t just create a sexy stage persona for teenagers. Do you remember my earlier words about creepy merch? Yeah. All of it neatly plays into the self-insert fantasy and encourages obsessive behaviour.

This happens in western countries too. In some way that’s understandable. Beautiful and sexy image with a hint of innocence attracts more people and sells, because it caters to one of the base human instincts. But some things make your skin crawl.

Sponsorships are another topic. Some k-pop bands seek out sponsors to provide financial aid and cover expenses, when earnings are not enough. Sometimes these sponsorships are fine, perfectly civil. But sometimes it’s a prostitution. Girl groups receive money and provide sexual favours to their patrons. It’s a way for the group to gain financial support and even find new opportunities in the industry. Companies can encourage such deals. Let that sink in for a moment.

6. “Any advice to those who want to become a k-pop idol?”

A lot of former idols and trainees have similar responses to this question.

“I don’t want to discourage anyone, but think twice”

“You only see the glamorous side, but don’t see all the hard work that goes into it”

“It’s not what you think”

“They think ‘Since I am good looking and can sing and dance really well, maybe I should become an idol?’, but there is much more to it“

“They think it’s something that is easy and will keep their family set for life financially”

And this implies that most people don’t know what kind of lifestyle k-pop stars truly have, despite the amount of information available online about “behind the scenes” proceedings.

7. Moving on

I am a practical person and every decision I make is subjected to scrutiny. And after seeing everything I can't help but wonder whether idols believe it's truly worth it. What keeps the industry alive is the idol-dream, the wilful ignorance of its reality and youthful idealism, the beautiful naïve belief that it'll get better, even if it never does in the end.

Sure no one would ever admit it out loud, because it's one of those things you never say on camera, no matter how sincere you have to be. It's the matter of professionalism after all, and idols have it spades. And also, because admitting this would equal admitting that you spent your best years doing something you both loved and hated, admitting that this was a mistake.

When you grow up in a society where appearances matter the most, where saving face and being polite is more important than staying true to yourself, where individuality is tolerated only to a certain point, it takes a lot of courage to admit that you need a break. I greatly respect those who decided that idol lifestyle is not for them and moved on.

8. Conclusion

To sum up, I hope you enjoyed my small research and this perspective, since you have read it all the way to the end.

You have noticed that entertainment industry is an intricate system and its every component makes sure nothing changes. Companies have power over idols and audience, fandom has power over idols and their careers, and musicians themselves have fame and their music, but not always the promised fortune or happiness.

It’s important to understand the big picture to draw your own conclusions and encourage positive and heathy attitudes in fandoms. Being open minded and allowing people to make mistakes and live their lives the way they want to is a part of being a decent person. People don’t owe anything to others. Art is about sharing your thoughts and feelings, promoting ideas and spreading beauty. It’s not always about money. And I think that this is what k-pop lacks as an industry. It turned dreams and human need for self-expression into business. Here everything is turned into a product. Everything idols touch can be sold, sometimes literally. Industry created problems, which can’t be solved anymore, because doing so would topple the system. And I find it tragic. Trapped in an endless chase after perfection creators of k-pop forgot that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

If you take a look at comment sections and posts on different platforms, what will you see? What kind of things resonate with audience? What makes people laugh and cry? When people start to appreciate the substance?

“Everyone needs to hear this song in their darkest moments”

“Thank you for your music!”

“They always deliver! These guys can’t make a bad song!”

“It inspired me to write again!”

“Their songs brought me and my sister together once again”

“This is what happens when you let groups write their own music - they make incredible things”

“They really are legends of k-pop! I love that they are not afraid to show their inner strength”

“Stay strong! You rock!”

I believe that the answer is quite simple: when it’s real, sincere. It’s all about the message you choose to send to your audience, because only superficial things cause obsession. When you say that the sparkly façade is all that matters, then that’s the only thing people will ever care about. Your audience will never give a damn about the meaning behind dancing, music or lyrics, if you tell them that performance is more important. No one would praise WHAT k-pop idols sing, instead they would prefer wasting breath to criticize HOW they sing or look or move.

I dare the k-pop industry to prove people that it’s not just about looks or perfection, or laser shows, or being a branding machine. Prove to your fans that k-pop artists are also passionate people with big dreams and talent, who love every moment of their job, who live and inspire, who are human just like us and whose humanity is real!

Do it, you cowards!

And now, I’m finished. I can hear the raging crowd of k-pop fandom in the distance, which means it’s time to hide. See you some other time!

#k-pop #korean music #k-rock #k-pop idol #k-pop meta #k-pop discussion #k-pop fandom criticism

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indig0tea · 4 years ago

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Final 2020 Update: 2021 Goals!!

Cross posting from my devART

Also links to all my alts and shit will be at the end of the post if you need them!

So some of these may be unrealistic due to my struggles with ADHD/Depression Combo but. I wanted to get these down somewhere so you guys can see them and be aware..

Please note, my executive functioning abilities are absolutely Butchered on the regular by my ADHD alone, and the various stressors of 2020 have absolutely taken anything else I might have had in that department and tossed it out the window.

Something something something, financial stressors outside of my control sends me into shut down mode and I can't do anything productive or even fun until it's handled, but because I'm not doing anything productive, I'm not making any money, and the stressors gets worse and worse and it just ends up in a horrible cycle where I constantly want to die because I'm not able to create anything to relieve the stress! Which is why you've all seen... pretty much a standstill on my productivity save one or two pieces a month if I'm lucky

That said, I'm going to start trying (hopefully with some outside help/accountability to keep me on track while I'm unmedicated) to put a system in place that doesn't make me constantly want to die while like. maybe actually getting stuff done! So I'm making some optimistic goals for 2021 regarding both my art and ability to make money, so here goes!

I'm breaking this down into 3 parts:

Changes to expect regarding my social media, commissions in general, posting, etc;

Overall Goals for 2021;

and Goals for January specifically.

Changes to expect going forward from here:

I'm going to be making some changes regarding my social media accounts, including this one, mostly concerning when, where, and how I'm posting.

I am also going to be making some changes to my commission policies, prices, and payments in the coming year, namely:

Lastly, I will be making some changes to my art discord server!

Moving forward, I am going to be MOST active on my twitter and tumblr accounts. They're just easier for me to maintain in general, and although I hate twitter's formatting, it's just easier and faster, and frankly after deviantART and Instagram fucked with their websites/algorithms, it just makes the most sense for me as an artist.

I'm also going to be making an effort to make scheduled cross-posts on all my accounts. In the past, I've been really irregular about when and where I post things (most things got posted to my old tumblr account but never here, i rarely remember to post to instagram, etc).

This is going to include commission slots, finished piece dumps, etc.

I will also be making an effort to semi-regularly post sketch dumps, both digitial and traditional. I am also considering at this time offering a monthly digital download of my sketch collections, though I am undecided as I'm not really sure how many people would be interested.

Increasing commissions prices to reflect time spent working on specific commission types, as well as my personal cost of living.

Planning and announcing commission slots in advance.

Taking and finishing regular commissions to cover living expenses on a monthly basis

Payments will be exclusively through paypal invoice, and will be broken up in halves: first half will be taken up front after I have started and given proof of start (base sketch), the second half will be paid after completion, with WIPS given between first and second payment. Fully completed art will be given after receipt of second half. This is both for my personal protection as an artist, as well as for the comfort of the commissioner as my completion time can sometimes be long due to my ADHD/executive dysfunction.

Moving forward into 2020, my discord will be SFW, but 18+ only. This is a personal comfort thing. I'm 25 years old now, and just really don't want to spend time hanging out with teenagers.

I'm also going to start trying to schedule art streams again! Since this is the only place I can live stream due to my art computer's limitations, it just makes sense to like. Schedule them so more people are able to attend. I haven't decided exactly how that's going to look, but once I have I'm going to make an announcement and formatting guide somewhere for people to see so they can make an informed decision about joining the server.

I will also be regularly posting in the server again. This may or may not be cross posts from twitter and such, we'll see, but I DO plan on being more active there since it's been kind of dead.

I may also reformat the whole server again. We'll see!

Goals for 2021

Regular Adopt Sets -- 2-3 per month. Size, price, and number in set will be decided on case by case basis.

I'll be doing a monthly prompt for myself as well. This is just to get me back in the habit of creating things I like for myself to just feel... less bad about my art in general, and about making art. Also it'll be good for my artistic development i think?

Keeping a monthly sketchbook for warm-ups and in-between pieces. May be offered as a paid download at the end of the month, we'll see.

Might start a patreon? This is EXTREMELY dependent on what my userbase looks like. Tiers and rewards to be decided at a later date

Regular traditional sketches + scan and upload of said sketches. May also be offered in the monthly sketchbook.

Draw more self portraits & self-expression pieces! I don't know if any of yall realize how repressed I've been in the last year without therapy, and I did't either until I forced myself to pursue a vent piece earlier this month, and then felt immensely better afterward so. Going to start doing that! Maybe I'll feel better weee

Regular posting to social media! (see changes above)

Drawing less fantrolls bc I'm just bleh about them lately, drawing more original content!

Drawing fancontent that ISN'T homestuck? We'll see but I'd like to. I don't usually draw fan art bc like. Idk in my mind I don't feel like my interpretation of things is important or cool and I think thats a confidence thing and I'd like to change that so! I'm gonna start making more fan content.

Draw more full illustrations & backgrounds in general because I actually enjoy doing them it turns out?

Practice painting more !! Both traditionally and digitally....

Goals for January 2021

Finish at LEAST 1/4 of my art queue. I'm shooting for half, really, because fully completing it might actually kill me but! We'll see! Maybe I'll surprise myself. But I'm setting the goal low to keep my mental health problems in mind.

Finish and release the base set i've been working on, on and off. It's an homage to the old pixel doll days of 2009-2012, and the full sheet will be free to use (with stipulations, as I have some people blocked that I don't want using it). BUT! There will also be a mix and match .psd that will be pay to use (it'll be pay to use a, bc it'll be huge, and b, bc the edits to make it mix and match results in like 6 seperate bases in general so.... yeah. pay to use)

Finish the pay-to-use base pack i started in june (i may scrap and restart though, we'll see)

Possibly release all old p2u bases of mine in one pack on gumroad? price tbd but it will include old iterations as well as unreleased remakes.

Making some dainty-specific bases! One will be f2u, one will be p2u.

I have a whole dainty YCH set for january! I just have to finish the example... (:

Perhaps I'll be announcing a collaborative project later in the month! It depends on where each of us are at, at the time! We'll see! (: You should be excited though! It'll be a ton of fun!

EXTERNAL LINKS

Instagram

Twitter

Tumblr

deviantART

Discord server

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evechan90 · 4 years ago

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Democracy under siege, and the brainwashing of the algorithm on our society: how American social events influence the world

We’ve all seen the disturbing images from the Capitol building in Washington D.C. from January 6th this year. It’s a terrifying idea that an enormous group of people were willing to go this far to overturn a democratic decision. Though it is frightening, we should really ought to learn from this event. Because, what frightens me even more, is the possible effect it will gradually or even directly have on our worldwide democratic societies, ideas and policies.

It is no news to you, when I say that the influence events in the United States of America has had the past centuries are without doubt big. Some were good, some were less. In any case, we’ve seen the effect it’s had on the world.

Somehow, America is the big brother we all look up to. Which seems weird if you look closer to some of its policies or political systems. They are flawed. And probably not easily repaired or mend.

The last 4 years seemed to even magnify the influence that the USA has towards other countries. And I don’t mean a political influence, which they also have, but a deep cultural and social influence. President Trump has been a big pawn in this. But we cannot only blame him, we must also blame the political system in America, the media, the lack of interference from social media, and above all the lack of knowledge about what I can only refer to as ‘the brainwashing of the algorithm on our society”. I will talk more about that later.

It’s not hard to see where some of the events in the last 4 years have influenced behavior in other countries. Myself, a Dutch, have seen disturbing images of people behaving like pro-trump protesters. It disturbs me deeply to hear Dutch people yelling to their government “lock her up” and to hear people distrusting our media calling it “the regular media”. And above that, some even turn violent against ministers of our government or even against the news crew, covering a story. And these are just a few examples. The distrust against governments, media and science is spreading more and more. And then there is the whole conspiracy theories problem which has rooted itself in our society in The Netherlands. These things are not just by any chance popping up here and there, they are clearly coming from a country where these things are more and more becoming normalized. Of course we cannot only look at the bad stuff. I was moved to see how the black lives matter movement influenced so many people around the world to protest, in the middle of a pandemic.

But after seeing the images of the Capitol in Washington D.C. I am scared to the bone about what this event, and perhaps the following events the next few weeks, will have for consequences for our own country and our democracy. It would not surprise me if in March this year, when our elections will be held, there will be a mirror image of what happened in the USA. I beg to be wrong about this, but I’m afraid that I’m not. Only time will tell.

But I do think we need to learn from the mistakes that were made in the USA. We need to look harder for the signs, the omens. And we clearly need to find a way to overcome these illusions of conspiracy, of hate and distrust. There is no longer time to look away, as we have seen in the USA, people who were looking away, gave room for the events occurring on the 6th. The republican senators and other politicians who have been blindly following whatever Trump was doing (or rather, not doing), are really to blame also for what happened in D.C. Should they have not been so naïve, so tolerable to what happened the past 4 years, they could have probably put it to a halt. But they didn’t.

When the pandemic broke out, I was hopeful. Hopeful that our world as a whole would come together, and would share the load. That we might together find a way to overturn this event, and stand up to it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It polarized even further what was already polarizing. It magnified distrust, in people who were already distrusting. It kindled a hatred for each other, and we all turned to ourselves first. We closed borders, thinking only of ourselves. No, this pandemic would not be the one thing to unite us all.

We need to talk about ‘the brainwashing of the algorithm on our society”. It sounds a bit extreme, doesn’t it? Maybe it is. But I think it sums up the problems we face these days, using social media.

If you want a deeper dive in the problem, I suggest you watch “the social dilemma” and “The great hack” on Netflix. They perfectly explain what’s wrong with these social media and the algorithms it uses. For those of you who are not familiar with it: it creates what we call “bubbles”. Whenever you are on the internet, on let’s say Facebook for example, you are, probably unaware, in a bubble.

Remember when Facebook was just becoming ‘a thing’ in the world? You would have friends who’d post things about what they did that day. You didn’t have a lot of friends yet, so all you saw, was mostly all there was. But after years went by, they added advertisement, you added more friends, and suddenly what you see on your timeline is in no way everything there is. The amount of posts becomes so large, that Facebook starts using a system to guess which posts are the most relevant for you. This means an algorithm is now deciding what you see, and most importantly, what you not see.

This is what we call “the bubble”. It is in no way a representation of what is really posted on facebook. This leads to people only seeing one perspective, or to use Muse’s lyrics from ‘blockades’ which I think is fitting here, “trapped in a maze of unseen walls”. For example, one of your friends posts a video about anti-vaxxing. You like the video, even though you may not in fact be an anti-vaxxer yourself. The next time you open Facebook, it will think you like video’s about anti-vaxxing. So it pushes more posts from friends who post or like things about this subject. Slowly your timeline will fill itself with the subject. Then what’s even more a problem, is that the algorithm will try to find other content for you that it thinks you will like because you clicked on the anti-vaxx video. Then suddenly your timeline will show posts about conspiracies, for example. And since you were using Facebook years ago, when all you saw, was mostly all there was, you will think the same way as then, and suddenly you are in the middle of a bubble about a subject you wouldn’t even think about at first. It’s ‘brainwashing’ you to think that what you see is all there is and it shows you confirmation because it will probably only show you friends in your timeline that think the same.

This leads to more problems than we could imagine, but I think what we saw on the 6th at the Capitol, is a clear example of it. It is easy to blame the ignorance of those people. But you have to know, that these people truly believe what they think is the truth. Of course, Trump easily puts fuel on the fire, and this is a problem in itself. I believe we have to stop blaming each other, and start looking at the problems this world is creating for itself by a fast growing artificial intelligence being used for the personal, and above all, financial interest of millions of companies.

Which leads me of course, to the problem with the advertisements on social media. Advertisements on social media are a great way to precisely target audiences, or buyers. Since facebook has all this information about you, it thinks it knows what you like, dislike, what kind of person you are or are not. This information is used to target specific advertisements to you. As someone said in “The social dilemma”. ‘Whenever something is free to use, you are the product they sell’.

I believe companies such as Facebook created all these things out of good intention. And in a way, they work, since you’ll only see things that you relate to. But they must confess that the thing has become a monster. It controls everything people see on their social media, it filters out other important things. The last couple of years there have been plenty of trials, and other initiatives to try and force some of these big corporations, like Facebook, to change the way these algorithms are in play, to make them own their mistakes and do right by it. But it seems to have little to no influence. The damage is done. As we can clearly see in Washington D.C. So what can we do?

We need to educate ourselves and others. We need to make people understand how the algorithms in social media create these harmful bubbles. Because, as soon as you see it, you can prick through the bubble and look beyond. We need to talk to each other about all the problems that have polarized us. Instead of yelling and screaming, instead of safely but rudely commenting on an online post, tearing each other down to the ground, we need to talk in open and safe spaces, whether this means online or offline.

I own Facebook, Instagram, Youtube and other social media accounts, and I have not yet closed them down. Because they also give hope and support. They can make people come together and they can educate us. They can make us as a human being stronger, better and more open minded. But only if we take off these blindfolds that the algorithms have put over our eyes.

America, as you well know, we look up to you. Use it to show how change can be made for the better. Show you can overcome the greatest of threats. Be the example we all need to see.

And to everyone else: be thoughtful, check your sources, burst your bubble!

#burstthebubble

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hopeidontabandonethis · 6 years ago

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Logince Youtuber AU Part 2

Part 1

Roman

- The pranking video that went wrong started to accumulate a ridiculous amount of views, being spread on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram and so much more!

In no time it turned into Roman’s most viewed video.

Most of his new subscribers are now cursed to have that failed prank as their first impression of Roman.

Virgil is the only one happy about it. Roman refuses to go anywhere near that video again (is a matter of pride)

- After noting the “Logince” tag on his Tumblr Roman got both nervous and very giggly.

- Virgil didn’t seem surprised by the ship popularity, only chuckling and answering “Watch the Video again mister charming” whenever Roman questioned what's up with his demonic smile.

- Hesitantly, he decided to check the Rap Battle Disaster.

He spends the whole video too distracted by how adorable Logan acted while rapping, following the way the man body bounced with the lyrics instead of the actual video.

He ignored his bro obnoxiously loud snort and replayed the video, this time paying attention to the whole content.

What he saw was appalling.

Sweet Merciful Disney! His gay crisis was painful to watch. Even people in the background of the video seemed to have noticed he found his one true love.

- As expected, most of the comments consisted of people quoting the cute barista lyrics, asking what the fuck a particular word meant or pointing out some background clients getting into their lyrical duel. His most liked comment, however, was SleepBitchRepeat exclaiming “Gurl, your gay is showing!” which was obligatorily followed by a wave of people answering “When is it not?” and the occasional “Can’t blame him, that barista is fine”

- Amidst all the chaos, a strange comment caught his attention.

- “Collab with the Beats Teach” it said. It had very few likes compared to the rest but all the replies were pretty enthusiastic about having “The teacher and the prince in the same video”

“Beat Teach? Why does this sound familiar?”

Virgil's rolled his eyes, amused ”I wonder.”

- A quick search later and Roman found himself marathoning the Beat Teach raps, some of the songs had oddly familiar beats but damn son! That barista really can rap!

- He noticed Logan’s tattoo on a particularly bouncy rap about the digestive system and easily made the connection between the brain with glasses and the sketch he saw Virgil draw a while back.

- Oh my goodness gracious! That’s the teacher Virgil occasionally compliments! Roman was under the fake impression Logan was just another Emo Youtuber his Emo Nightmare followed!

- So not only is the barista a sexy rapper, he is also the cute nerd his bro admires?? What a pleasant surprise!

- He subscribed to the teacher and, after not finding any social media of the rapper, impulsively made a video asking him to come over for a collab.

- Logan agreed to do the collab.

-He squealed at the positive response.

...Only to freak out a few seconds later

- (He is such an idiot, what the fuck does he do now??)

He could hear Virgil flipping out in the background yelling “You useless gay! Why the fuck would you do this?!!” and “No,no, no, no, no, he can’t see me!! I am such a mess!! I am going to make a complete fool out of myself and he’ll hate m-” but Roman was too busy having another gay panic.

Logan

- He suddenly started getting more views.Not much but still, way more than normal. He was pleased (It seems Youtube algorithms decided to be a bit kinder this week!)

- A handful of clients at his Starbucks were openly stared at him the next time he went to work.

- An excited client asked for an autograph from “The prince slayer!”

- It took him a while to understand that they wanted him to give the autograph.

- Clients started to ask for an autograph at least once a day. It was weird.

- It got even weirder.

- His small influx of view just exploded four days later. Millions of views dropped on his videos, followed by waves of subscribers. His comments started to stop being people thanking his content and started just being mentions about a prince...? As much as pained him to admit, Logan did not understand what was happening.

- Patton was quick to clear his confusion. Giving him a surprise hug attack the same day this influx happened and gushing over Prince Roman. A supposedly huge Youtube Star.

“I am afraid I don’t know this Prince”

- Patton was appalled by Logan ignorance, so he forced Logan to sit down and watch some of Roman’s videos.

- It wasn’t Logan kind of content, but he did see the appeal. Every video was high quality, most ideas were creative and unlike in the Coffee shop, Roman come off as a genuinely charismatic man.

- “come off as” being the keywords here.

The man had been a prick on Starbucks, and had been petty enough to attempt to prank him in the middle of his work. Clearly, this “charismatic” persona is a farce.

- Needless to say, when Logan found the video suggesting a collab he scoffed, assuming that Roman had noticed their rap battle climbing up the trending list and wanting to use Logan in hopes to make another successful video.

- He was ready to refuse the collab offer but Patton stopped him.

“Please don't Lo! I know Roman! He has an ego but trusts me when I say he is a sweetheart!”

Logan wasn’t convinced but Patton was stubborn. Annoyingly so!

He didn’t stop annoying him until he agreed to do Roman’s collab. So he did agree. Reluctantly.

- The prince seemed genuinely excited and nervous about the collab Logan was reluctantly impressed by his acting skills.

- He still wasn’t excited about doing a collab with that gorgeous prick though.

- Patton had to use his puppy dog eyes to guilt trip Logan into at least try to be nice and give Roman a chance.

- That’s how he found himself in front of the most extra mansion he had ever seem. A phone still lit up with the place address on one hand and his semi-professional microphone bag on the other.

Part 3

Tag List: @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2 . @chaosgameingkoi

#logince #logan sanders #roman prince #sanders sides #rapper logan AU #logince youtuber AU #what is this?what is my life

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rxmvns-blog1 · 6 years ago

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𝐇𝐈, 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐒 ! i’m 𝒅𝒓𝒊 (twenty, she/her, pst) ! i was late posting my intro for the first iteration for pinky, so nothing has really changed, huh ? some fun facts about me are that i have the incredibly dangerous combo of high ambition and poor time management and i’d risk it all for a.c.e, ateez, and loona ! i’m back with ya fav skater eboy(?) roman, so if you’re interested in plotting connections, feel free to im me or ask for my discord (where i would be way easier to reach) !

* 𝒄𝒉𝒐𝒊 𝒔𝒂𝒏. 𝒉𝒆/𝒉𝒊𝒎. 𝒄𝒊𝒔 𝒎𝒂𝒍𝒆. ╱ i am pretty sure i saw 𝒓𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏 𝒋𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒈 at manon’s party that night. the 𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚 year old is in their 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒓𝒅 year at west bridge studying 𝒇𝒊𝒍𝒎. i hear they were at manon’s party because 𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒔𝒖𝒑𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒐 𝒃𝒆 𝒑𝒊𝒄𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂 𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅 𝒖𝒑 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒍𝒅𝒏’𝒕 𝒇𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎. i wonder if they got the same restricted call as us. will they comply? + 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒄𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒉𝒍𝒚 𝒃𝒓𝒆𝒘𝒆𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒇𝒇𝒆𝒆, 𝒑𝒐𝒍𝒂𝒓𝒐𝒊𝒅𝒔 𝒔𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒆𝒅 𝒐𝒏 𝒂 𝒃𝒆𝒅𝒓𝒐𝒐𝒎 𝒘𝒂𝒍𝒍, 𝒑𝒖𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒑𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒏 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒑𝒑𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒄𝒂𝒓𝒕𝒔 𝒂𝒕 𝟐𝒂𝒎.

c://roman_jeong//quick_stats.txt

full name: roman jeong / jeong jinwoo (정진우)

age: twenty

pronouns: he/him, cis male

orientation: bisexual

zodiac: scorpio

place of birth: san jose, california

c://roman_jeong//history.txt

born in san jose, california, roman lived with his parents and little sister clarissa until the age of eight, when his mom left them in pursuit of an old flame from high school that she apparently never got over. their dad tried to raise them for maybe… a few months… before realizing he had close to no parenting ability. he and clarissa were sent to live with their rich aunt in wisconsin, and they’ve been there ever since.

listen… their aunt turned out to be a Helicopter Mom to them and it was… super suffocating, especially to roman. she expected so much out of them and tried to force her own dreams onto them but he was just Not Feeling It. he’d always hit her with the “ur not even my real mom” line. despite being a rather intelligent dude with a relatively quick wit, he put the bare minimum into school (especially around the halfway point in high school) … but still lowkey wanted to do well. he was the guy who always found a way to get test answers inconspicuously and found ways to work around the turnitin system, ya feel? tl;dr: smart and capable, but incredibly unmotivated

when he was fifteen, he found out (while eavesdropping on one of his aunt’s phone calls) that his dad had gotten remarried and had twins with his new wife, a girl and a boy. furious over the fact that this was kept a secret from him for two years, he went to rant about it to his sister, who told him that they should just keep pretending like they don’t know. roman suddenly couldn’t hear, and during dinner that night, he brought it up and it was an angsty time.

after this revelation, he began Acting Out more because he hated the idea that their dad just sent them away almost like it was nothing but ended up raising an entirely new family of his own afterward. it started to feel like it was him and his sister against the world, and even to this day he would do anything for her. he got into fights a lot in high school because he gets defensive and doesn’t know when to Stop. his temper is… so short…

he took a photography class his junior year high school and just… really enjoyed it?? it was practically the only class he actually wanted to Try in. his teacher noticed this, and they ended up being pretty close. when roman wasn’t out messing around, he spent a lot of time hanging in the classroom and talking about life and photography. probably the One adult he respected, but his teacher ended up moving to new york shortly after he graduated high school. it felt like he was being abandoned once again (yikes!!!) even tho he knew it had nothing to do with him.

but yeah, for the past few years, roman has just been studying film (his aunt thinks he’s there for engineering but he did a switchy switch… haha keep it a secret!), doing freelance photography on the side, and fuckin’ shit up ! his sister is currently going to school in california, and her decision to attend berkeley lowkey rubbed him the wrong way since it’s relatively close to where their dad lives and he doesn’t want thim to reach out to clarissa or anything because he’s supposed to be dead to them.

c://roman_jeong//personality.txt

people think roman comes off as intimidating, but they’re not entirely wrong. he takes a while to warm up to people, and even then, he doesn’t have a lot of actual friends.

he doesn’t express it often, but he would literally do anything for his sister and close friends. can be incredibly protective. no kidding, his sister has complained that people didn’t want to date her because they were afraid of him KJDHGDSG

you know that friend who is able to find a persons facebook page and essentially everything about them with very, very minimal information given? yeah, that’s roman. he :// lowkey keeps up with his dad through facebook bc all of his wife’s posts are public :// he looks at posts of their family and just Suffers… it’s so bad!!!

he is the type of person that won’t share his own food but eats other people’s.

listen… you didn’t hear it from me… but he’s really just a softie… he’s just scared

doesn’t know what it’s like not to hold a grudge

acts on impulse and emotion often

c://roman_jeong//fun_facts.txt

can and will argue about the superiority of ice cream over frozen yogurt

has an emotional connection to cats and will stop to pet one; also has a cat and he loves her with his entire being

is sustained by coffee and sarcasm; drinks his coffee black

romcoms are his guilty pleasure tho they lowkey make him feel a sort of longing

his bedroom wall is covered in polaroids, which are of his friends, scenery, and neighborhood stray cats! but mostly his friends. he loves taking pictures of his friends :/ he also loves the idea of polaroids capturing a singular moment unlike how digital cameras can be used to get the Perfect Shot after like… 30 tries

has that one second every day app

mildly allergic to bananas but didn’t realize it until he asked a friend if they liked the tingly feeling they get when they eat bananas

pushing people around in shopping carts at 2am/being pushed is one of his favorite pastimes

“u can’t wear thrasher unless u can deepthroat an entire skateboard” is his instagram bio and he thinks thrasher elitists can choke. bought all of his friends black thrasher hoodies for christmas in an act of spite.

going off of that, he started saying “sk8 or die” ironically but now he can’t stop

will look you in the eyes when he holds a conversation; this is sometimes terrifying bc it rly looks like he’s staring into your SOUL but tbh he just be like that

can solve rubix cubes very fast!! when he was 13 he once spent an entire night studying rubix cube algorithms online bc he didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t solve one

walks fast DGJHGS like slow down speed racer where r u goin

c://roman_jeong//that_night.txt

roman didn’t even want to Be at the party, let alone get entangled in the Big Mess

he showed up around 15 minutes before they found manon’s body, only in the area to pick up a friend after receiving a phone call

he went inside to seek them out, but little did he know what would take place 5 minutes later.

he finds it kinda unfair (and shitty karma) that he was brought into everything… but then again, a girl Died, so he doesn’t really have the right to complain.

#pinky.intro #i rly just copied and pasted my intro n it took me almost a whole week to do tht ...#talk abt a big mess !!!!#i hav wanted connects but ill make tht page later #also if u already messaged me on discord before i even made my intro .... ill get to u after filming today fdjgksg

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