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iwillgiveyoumyhappiness · 5 years

Text

이대휘, Lee Daehwi

anonymous asked:

Happy (late) thanksgiving! I've seen all (and i mean ALL) of the aegyo daehwi scenarios on tumblr but can i get a request where daehwi is the super cool fashion therapist bestfriend that caught feelings? Love all your writing!! 💖

Group: AB6IX

Member: Daehwi

(A/N) Read with this song, I beg you.

When He Needs Her In Early Spring

Daehwi and his best friend sat where they usually did when life got too crazy. Outside on the curb at the nearest McDonald’s, stuffing their faces, swapping stories and showing each other funny YouTube videos.

Something about eating cheap cheeseburgers, fries and Cola when he knew his manager would be annoyed at him about it felt lovely. Maybe it was also because he spent that time with a pretty cool person.

He side-eyed her choice of black sweats, a dark blue tee-shirt with a leather jacket, and her absolutely ancient white tennis shoes, complete with dirt and grass stains.

He sighed to himself, shaking his head a little.

She was cool, albeit a little unfashionable.

He looked back down at his phone, scrolling through his Stress-Away playlist, trying to choose the best song for the occasion. “Hey, hon,” he said, using the nickname that had naturally grown between them over the years. “You know I love you, but we’ve gotta get you some new clothes.”

She laughed through her nose; just a short puff of air, never once looking up from her phone, too encapsulated in the memes from her Twitter feed. “Dude,” she said. “These are pajamas.”

He clicked Little Star by Standing Egg, letting out a relieved huff of air when the first guitar strums reached his ears. “That may be so,” he started, “but coming from the Fashion Master, that doesn’t really give you a pass.”

Eyes still glued to the screen, she reached for her ice tea, pressing the cold plastic cup to his nape. He jerked away with a disgruntled under-the-breath shriek.

“Gimme a break, Fashion Master,” she chuckled. “It’s midnight,” she reminded him. “I was two inches away from a soft pillow and a warm blanket, so just eat the burger and listen to your healing playlist, ‘kay? I’ll still be here.”

He was still massaging the cold buzz out of his neck, but her words made him gradually slow to a stop. He mumbled to himself, “It is midnight, isn’t it”, much more of a statement or realization than a question.

He looked over at her, examining her side-profile. She was all tired eyes, messy hair and bare-face, but here she was at midnight, sitting in front of McDonald’s and eating a burger that was 75% bun and misplaced ketchup instead of sleeping at home.

And she didn’t ask him any questions about it. She never did, in fact. She seemed to just accept that that’s what friends do. They’re there for each other, no matter the time or situation.

She let out a small laughed. “Hwi, look at this one,” she said, finally looking over at him. She angled her screen toward him, showing him a funny picture she’d spotted. He didn’t quite expect it to be of him.

Daehwi gasped, snatching the phone from her. “What is that?” he gaped. “How could they take such an ugly picture of me?!”

She laughed again, her shoulders scrunching upwards and her feet stomping unconsciously. “I love your fans,” she said impishly. “They give me all the blackmail material I need, and then some!”

He pouted. “They’re lucky I love them...” he said. He pressed the button on top of her phone, putting it to sleep. He set it down next to him with a sigh. He looked up into the sky, a lonely expanse of blackness. More of the song reached his ears. “I wish there were stars in Seoul,” he mused aloud.

She hummed thoughtfully, following his gaze into the night sky. “Well, technically,” she started, “there are. We just can’t see them, ‘cause the lights are always on. Less lights, more stars. It’s called science.”

He scoffed, but it was more like a way to mask his laughter. “I never would’ve guessed,” he joked, nudging her shoulder with his own. He sighed. “I know,” he said. “I just think they’re pretty. Give a little extra life to the sky, y’know?”

She leaned a little closer, their shoulders touching. It was a comfortable feeling, as it was something she did often at times like this—just a small touch to assure that she was there for him. “I know,” she said softly. “We’ll have to try to be bright enough, won’t we?”

He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.” He shoved five fries in his mouth. “These are so good,” he said, visibly melting into the flavor.

She chuckled. “I know, right?” She took some for herself. “Really bad for you too, but screw it.”

That made him laugh. “Hey, can I ask you a question?” he wondered. She nodded, a silent ‘go for it’. “Why don’t you ever ask why I tell you to come out and meet you at these weird hours?”

She shrugged. “’Cause it doesn’t really matter,” she said simply. “All I need to know is: you always come out of these little escapades happier than when you went it. That’s enough for me, to be honest.”

Daehwi’s eyes widened and his cheeks burned. Suddenly, he felt pretty relived that it was dark and she wasn’t looking directly at him.

He cleared his throat awkwardly, inching away from her shoulder just a little. She didn’t seem to notice, though. “Thanks...” he said. “You’re a good friend.”

She smiled. “I know,” she said confidently. She didn’t speak again for a while, contenting herself with swaying back and forth while she hummed along to Little Star. It was one of her favorites, too.

Silently and covertly, he glanced over at her again. Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back a little, the breeze blowing through her messy hair. She looked bright, back-lit by the fast food restaurant behind them.

Surprisingly, he found himself thinking, “She looks pretty”.

He stayed quite for a moment, just listening to her humming along, watching her sway to and fro. “Hey,” he said quietly as the song was coming to an end.

She opened her eyes, looking at him. “Yeah?” she said, matching his tone.

He argued with himself in his head for a moment whether or not it was a wise thing to say, measuring any possible consequences. After much angel-and-devil consideration, he decided to just go for it. They were friends, after all.

“Your voice is nice.”

When He Needs Her In Mid-Fall

Daehwi leaned back in his desk chair, stretching and getting shocked at the way his back cracked with the action. He’d been hunched over his desk in the studio for too long, that was obvious.

He looked at the clock, scowling at the time. Yet, looking at how much work he’d gotten done, he couldn’t really be angry. But thinking about all the work he still had to get done?

He groaned, rubbing his heavy, tired eyes.

He could just go home—he’d gotten enough done—but the perfectionist inside of him really didn’t want to do that. He had this underlying fear that if his work wasn’t good enough, people would just think, “Oh, it’s because he’s so young”.

He clenched his fists. He couldn’t understand why people would doubt him for something as superficial as that. Hadn’t he proven himself enough?

He didn’t want to go to sleep, he didn’t want to work—and he couldn’t seem to find an in-between.

Instinctively, his hand went to his phone, hitting the first speed dial after his mom. Once he heard the other line pick up, without missing a beat, he spoke. “Bring me some food and listen to me whine and complain for a few hours,” he said.

He could envision his friend pulling away from the phone and staring at it for a second with a quirked brow. “What’s the magic word?” he finally heard her voice from the receiver.

He softened, feeling himself melt into his tired, half-dead state. “Please?” he asked softly. He could picture he gentle smile when she said, “I’ll be over in ten”, before the line clicked out, leaving a resounding dullness in his ears.

Ah, there she was.

She was the in-between he was searching for. She was the one sure thing in his fuzzy gray area of life.

He nibbled his thumbnail, a strange feeling bubbling in his chest. ‘What a good friend...’ he thought, though he felt a little shaky on the conviction behind it. He wasn’t sure why, though. By all accounts, she was a good friend.

The best of the best.

Maybe that’s why she made him so nervous.

When He Needs Her In Summer

Daehwi looked back and forth, trying to search through the crowd for any signs of his friend’s head of hair. He stood on his tip-toes every five seconds or so, trying to get a better look.

Nothing.

He huffed, tapping his foot impatiently and waiting for her to come around the corner. “You’re dead when you get here,” he muttered under his breath. He checked his watch, feeling his heart sink a little.

She wasn’t even late. He was just early and anxious, which was never a good combination. Without thinking, he started pouting, leaning against the unlit streetlamp behind him with his arms crossed.

Tap, tap he felt on his shoulder.

He whipped around at the familiar touch. “Hi!” he said, a little quicker and a little louder than he might’ve hoped for. A little more excited too, earning a few stares from passerbys.

She looked shocked for a moment before smiling, a giggle falling from her lips. “Well, aren’t you being cute today,” she said, poking at his stomach.

He flinched away from the ticklish sensation. “Stop it!” he said, trying to sound stern. “We’re literally in public—don’t embarrass me.”

She raised a brow. “Did being in public ever stop you from embarrassing me before?” His lack of response was her confirmation. “I rest my case!” she yelled, casing after him with fingers ready to dance across his torso.

He screeched, running and shouldering through the card, trying to get into the mall. Hopefully, he’d be able to lose her in there.

...Did he really want to lose her, though?

When She Needs Him In The Bad Times

Daehwi flopped on the bed, tired, sweaty and exhausted after a long day of schedules and practice. His cellphone—dead and black-screened since lunch time—was held loosely in his hands, barely any grip-strength left in him.

With his last burst of energy, he sat up and reached for his charger, plugging in his phone. He was sure he’d missed a few notifications, but he didn’t think they’d be anything important.

In a matter of seconds, the screen blinked to life, sporting a disheartening 1% full battery icon in the upper right-hand corner. His notification started popping up. A few missed texts, a missed call from his mom (he’d call her back later), a few Twitter and YouTube notifications, and...

His heart sank.

12 missed calls from 👏Hon👏

Suddenly, all of the energy returned to his body, making him fly to his feet, a concerned furrow between his brows. She never called very often unless something was very, very wrong. He was the one that called her more often, she just let him do his thing, because she never knew when he’d be busy.

But it seemed this time—when she saw it urgent enough to call 12 times—she didn’t care much whether he was busy or not. She just needed her friend.

He felt his eyes water. She needed her friend, but he wasn’t there, all because he’d fallen asleep playing games the night before.

“Hey, Daehwi,” he heard Youngmin’s voice. The door opened. “I was wondering if—” The leader’s eyes widened. “You’re crying,” he said obviously, worry lacing his tone.

With a quick sniff and a swipe across his watery eyes, he grabbed a hoodie out of his closet and shouldered past the older boy. “Sorry, Youngmin,” he said. “I’ve gotta go.”

The rapper grabbed his arm, very gentle and nonthreatening. “It’s her, isn’t it?” he said seriously.

Daehwi turned his head to look at him. “Yeah,” he said softly.

He nodded slowly. “Knew it,” he said under his breath. His fingers slipped away from his wrist. “You know you love her, right?”

Daehwi’s blood ran cold, yet his skin felt so hot. It was a stark, goosebumps-raising contrast. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. Not yet.

“Later, okay...?” he whispered.

He could tell Youngmin was a little disappointed in his lack of admission, but the kind older brother he always was, he just nodded, sighing a little. “Go find her,” he said simply, ushering him toward the door. “Don’t forget your coat!” he called after him.

+++++

He didn’t need to go searching all around Seoul to find her, because he knew exactly where she saw. She didn’t wander when she was sad. She didn’t go to some nostalgic place that made her feel and remember—she blocked herself away and hid in her house, shutting almost everyone out.

She made a proverbial pillow fort in her heart and played music with earbuds in, so that way she couldn’t hear the cars passing by or her own thoughts. She was her own worst enemy, in every way.

When she was good, she was great. But she spent up all that good energy taking care of everyone else, so she had nothing left for herself.

He was someone who used her kindness and unselfish heart quite often. He felt another pang in his chest and he waiting impatiently for the bus to drop him off. He massaged his temples, feeling more tears threaten to well up in his eyes.

“Did I tired you out...?” he breathed out, his breath fogging up the window next to his face. “Focus on yourself more, you jerk,” he mumbled, sniffling a little. He shook his head a little, staring down his reflection with a vengeance, as if saying: ‘You will not cry on this crowded bus, Lee Daehwi’.

He cried a lot as a stress-reliever, but only in private.

The thought suddenly dawned on him. He saw her as another version of private. Anything that he would do or say by himself, he could do and say in front of her. He could tell her anything, because that was the level of trust he had in her.

His breath shook to the point that he had to discreetly cover his mouth, muffling the sound in his cold hands. “That must be so much pressure,” he thought to himself. “Being someone’s confidant. Their safe place.” His stomach churned. “...My all of that.”

The bus came to a stop, idling by the poorly lit bus-stop—one he’d become quite familiar with from his trips to her place. He scooped up the hoodie he’d grabbed from the dorms, a sense of adrenaline rushing to his legs and propelling him out of his seat.

He flew past the driver and straight out the doors, skipping the two steps down all together. His feet made impact with the ground, and maybe on an average day it might’ve stung a little.

The bus driver’s eye widened. “Hey, kid!” he called after Daehwi. “Be careful, you hear?”

He didn’t hear him. He didn’t hear him at all.

The only thought in his head was her—how different, yet painfully similar they were. On an average day, they both carried themselves in different ways and had different thoughts, but on their not so good days?

They both wilted.

They wilted, and they needed something or someone to help them bloom again.

After following his feet through the turns and bumps he was so used to going over, he saw her. She was sitting where she always did when she wasn’t feeling well—on the hood of her car, her knees pulled to her chest, eyes damp and her nose and cheeks painted with red due to the late night breeze.

He stood there off to the side, catching his breath.

She noticed him, but she didn’t say anything. She usually didn’t, because she was always scared that she’d start crying again if she spoke.

Daehwi took a deep breath, the cold stinging his lungs. It didn’t matter, though. With a sigh, he crawled onto the hood with her, noting the way she scooted over a little to give him more room.

He tapped her shoulder and gestured to the orange hoodie in his hand. Without any argument, she lifted her arms, letting him slip it over her head. He was gentle and he took special care around her ears. He pulled the hood down so her could see her better, flattening her hair with tender hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. Those first two words were quiet as the flap of a butterfly’s wings, but that didn’t matter. She was always good at listening to him. “This sounds like such and excuse,” he continued, rubbing her arms, “but my phone died.” He frowned at himself. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”

She looked him in the eyes, still not saying anything. He could read her well enough, though. That was a look that said, “It’s okay, I understand.”

He sighed, pulling her into a soft hug. “It’s not okay, though...” he mumbled, rocking her gently back and forth while he brushed through her hair with his cold, blue-tipped fingers. “I’m sorry that I’m still not good enough—”

She cut him off with a short smack. “Don’t make this about you!” she choked out, her voice hoarse. Daehwi was shocked that she spoke. “This is about me!” she said. “I had a shitty day!” Her eyes teared up. “For no reason,” she finished. She took a deep breath, trying to study herself.

She buried her face in his neck, nuzzling him. “You’re more than enough,” she whispered weakly. “You’re here. That’s more than I can say for anyone else, and it’s better late than never.”

He was very grateful for the fact that she wasn’t looking at him, because if she did, she would see the tears in his eyes. His arms tightened around her, pulling her closer. “Who do I have to hurt that made you like this?” he breathed. “Tears in your eyes and frown on your lips... It doesn’t suit you at all.”

She shook her head—he was greatly aware of her eyelashes fluttering against his skin.

He knew what that shake of the head meant.

“Don’t do anything,” it spoke more than a thousand words, “just stay with me.”

When She Needs Him In The Good Times

She couldn’t say that she was expecting a call from Daehwi at 4PM to invite her to be his friend-date to a company dinner, but she also couldn’t say that it was unwelcome.

All she’d been doing most of the day was just laying on the couch, watching TV and skimming through a few home living magazines so she could get a few tips on adulting.

“Yo, hon,” Daehwi said once she picked up, which only took about two rings. “You free tonight?”

She didn’t even bother checking her calendar. “Yeah, I’m free,” she said, turning down the volume on the TV. “Why? What’s up?”

“There’s a dinner tonight at Brand New and if I want, I’m allowed to bring someone,” he said. She could feel the excitement dripping off his words. “You wanna come with?”

Her ears perked up with interest. “To the company?” she asked. He hummed a positive answer. “Like a date?” she said without thinking.

Daehwi coughed. “Don’t get it twisted,” he said. “Friend-date,” he clarified. “Friend-date.”

She smiled. “Okay, sounds cool.” She jumped off the couch and shut off the TV, shuffling to her bedroom. She cringed at her wardrobe, rather barren in the fruits that it could offer. “Hey, Hwi...?” she started, putting him on speaker and tossing the phone onto her bed while she rummaged through the closet.

“Yeah?”

She started searching for a pair of heels, realizing suddenly that all of hers were really old and worn. “How fancy is this shindig?” she asked, suddenly feeling a little timid. “Like... Dress code and stuff?”

She heard him click his tongue. “I’ll be over in 20 minutes,” he said before hanging up.

++++

“Why do you own a big fat nothing?” Daehwi asked exasperatedly, tossing clothes messily onto the floor as he scoured through her closet like it was a desolate land with nothing to offer.

She crossed her arms, a bit of a pout on her face. “Now you’re just being dramatic...” she muttered. To be honest, this actually brought back a lot of memories for her; him helping her pick out the outfit for her first ever date, her parent’s anniversary, highschool graduation after-party, etc,.

To be frank, she used to have a better fashion sense, but that all changed a few years ago. Daehwi started chasing his career and she just stayed behind, dressing comfortably, working hard and trying to find her way through life.

Sometimes she felt a little felt behind by her dear friend, but then she realized that was silly, because he never forget about her, and she knew that. Not even once. He was like a deeply rooted tree in the respect.

Every one had their own pace, and hers was just a little more relaxed than his. That didn’t mean their paces didn’t still match up every once in a while, leading to moments like this.

She chuckled, recalling how they actually used to comfortably change in front of each other, putting on little fashion shows in their chosen outfits. Of course, they were a lot younger then.

Sometimes she wondered why age changed people so much—things that were normal, comfortable and accepted when they were younger were suddenly such foreign and strange ideas.

She always just shrugged it off as the way life was. Things changed, some things positively and some not so much. Either way, it was unavoidable, and that’s okay.

Daehwi glanced over at her, catching her expression in the corner of his eye. “What’s with the smile?” he asked, a chuckle passing his lips.

She shrugged. “Dunno,” she said simply. “This just feels nostalgic.”

He looked back at her, mirroring her smile. “It does,” he agreed. With a huff, he stood up with a pair of black heels in his hands. “Do you have a Sharpie?”

She furrowed her brows. “Yeah...?” she said, grabbing one off of her desk. “Please don’t tell me you’re gonna draw on my shoes.”

“That’s exactly what I’m gonna do,” he said cheekily, taking the marker from her hand with a sassy twirl. “I don’t know how you managed to scratch these up so bad, but this is a quick fix for it until we buy you a new pair.”

She opened her mouth to object, but he pressed a finger to her lips. “Shush!” he said firmly. “Don’t argue with me.” He bent the shoes a bit, pointing out the way that they were frayed around the area the foot bent. “We’re getting you new ones. Soon,” he emphasized.

He uncapped the Sharpie. “But until then, I’m drawing on your shoes while you change into that,” he said, looking over at the dress he’d hung on the closet door. “I can’t believe you still have it,” he chuckled.

Her eyes raked over the white tea-length halter-top with the exposed back. The skirt was lightly longer in the back, lace hand-sewn around the hem to make it look more fancy. “Of course I do,” she said. “You bought it for me.”

He sucked in his lips, holding back a smile. “Where’d you wear that one?” he asked, trying to pick through his memories. “Your sister’s wedding reception?”

She clicked her tongue, giving him a disapproving look. “Close, but no cigar,” she said.

“What?” The realization dawned on him. He smacked his forehead. “Oh, duh!” he groaned. “Your brother’s!”

“Yup,” she laughed, nodding. She looked back over at the dress, fond memories filling her mind. She’d forgotten that she still had it, but she also didn’t think that she ever could’ve given it away. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

He shrugged, a small smile playing on this lips. “No problem,” he said. “You look good in white.” His smile faded a little, a question forming in his eyes. It was as if he were debating with himself. “You’re gonna make a really pretty bride one day,” he finally said.

She stared at him, but he refused to make eye-contact with her, focusing very closely on his shoe ‘repairs’. She felt a smile break out on her face, showing her teeth and pushing up her cheeks.

She walked to him. He still didn’t look up at her. She pulled him into a side-hug, patting his hair for a moment. “Thanks, cheese-ball,” she said before pushing him back into a fully upright position. He still hadn’t stopped scribbling over the heels’ scuff marks.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, but she noticed the blush on his cheeks. “Just go get changed—we’ve gotta go soon.”

When They Need Each Other On The Lazy Days

“Hey, Hwi?” she said, looking up across the table. They’d gotten a free moment on the weekend, so they decided to have lunch together at an unpopular (but spectacularly delicious) hole-in-the-wall restaurant that was never too crowded.

He looked up from his noodles, letting the ones he’d already scooped up fall back into the bowl. “Yeah?” he said, giving her his undivided attention. He smiled a bit, that cute and funny one at made his eyes crinkle. “What’s up?”

She scanned his face. His expression, his irises, the slope of his nose, his lips—everything about him. “Do you have a crush on me?” she asked without hesitation. She wasn’t afraid to ask him questions like this, because she trusted his honesty and his heart.

He’d never purposely do anything he thought could hurt her.

His eyes widened. If he’d had water in his mouth, he surely would’ve spit it across the room in shock. “I...” he stuttered, struggling to find words. He straightened up in his seat, folding his hands in his lap. He cleared his throat, trying his best to keep eye contact with her. “Why do you ask?”

She set her fork down with a small clatter. “’Cause I’m curious,” she said. She tapped his knee with her shoe under the table, trying to urge him to be a little less stiff. “You can be honest with me.”

He nibbled his bottom lip. “I know I can,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he sighed, “I have a crush on you.”

She smiled, flashing him a thumbs up. “Cool,” she said, going back to eating.

Daehwi stared at her, mouth hanging open. “Do you...” he started awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck, “...feel the same?”

She looked up at him, humming thoughtfully. “Not yet,” she said earnestly. A smile played at the corner of her lips. “But you’re definitely the type of guy I could fall for. Just gimme some time.”

When He Needs Her Always And Forever

He needed her comfortable silence, because he didn’t have to speak understand or be understood.

He needed her driving for him, not just because he didn’t have a license, but also because she looked for focused and endearing.

He needed her shoulder to lean on when he was having a bad day. Or a good one.

He needed her putting his hands in her hoodie pocket when he forgot his gloves, because it felt like she really cared.

He needed her ability to share the responsibility of ‘mature adult’ depending on who was more sulky that day. They were both more mature than they let on, and sometimes, they needed each other to bring out that aspect of themselves.

He needed her to listen to his rants, and he needed to listen to hers in return, because they were always interesting and slightly amusing.

He needed her to make funny parodies of their songs and sing them too loudly in the car, even when the windows were rolled down. Especially the famous, “I should’ve brought gloves~” to the tune of ‘Blind For Love’ when it was really cold out.

He needed her emphatic and often times dripping-with-sarcasm movie commentaries and her post-film in-depth analysis.

He needed her ability to always see him as the coolest guy ever, despite his condition. Whether he was bright and bubbly or not didn’t matter to her. He could be totally emo at times and she’d still think of him in the same way as she always did.

He needed her.

Maybe... He was in love with his best friend.

When She Needs Him Every Minute of Every Day

She needed his “Well! Later, hon” at the end of every phone call, because it was a dumb and familiar nickname, and she’d grown attached to it.

She needed his gentle singing voice, because it made her feel calm when she didn’t even know she was feeling anxious.

She needed his random back-hugs, because they always caught her off guard in the best way; a warm and lovely way.

She needed his late-night phone calls, ‘cause she’d never initiate them and they felt simple and mindless.

She needed the random videos that he sent her, because she didn’t think she needed a video of a panda cuddling its mom with a little puppy friend trying to nuzzle its way in there in her life, but apparently she did.

She needed his random, thoughtless back massages when they were hugging for a while.

She needed him to brush her hair for her when they had sleepovers.

She needed his daily compliments that always made her feel confident, said compliments being different every day—but she also needed his roasts and brutal honesty, always keeping her humble and in check.

She needed his good days and bad days.

She needed him.

Maybe... She was okay with her best friend being in love with her.

*takes a deep breath*

I LOVE LEE DAEHWI WITH MY WHOLE CHEST, EVERY HAIR ON MY HEAD, AND ALL 20 OF MY PHALANGES.

I hope you enjoyed it, Anon! Honestly, I wrote so many different versions of this, but I scrapped all of them, settling on this one. I need to learn to write shorter things, but I always feel like I’m cheating y’all. XD

I hope it turned out okay! The other ones were shorter, snappier and more to the point, but this one had a lot more... Potency, I suppose? Hopefully my sincerity was delivered. 😂 I hope you enjoyed it, beautiful person!

Also, I chose this gif ‘cause he looks so best-friend right here.

#for anon #a gift for you #kpop #kpopidol #kpop angst #kpop imagines #kpop fluff #request #reaction #requested #this is really cute #ab6ix brand new boys #AB6IX Daehwi #ab6ix imagines #ab6ix #daehwi #lee daehwi #wanna one #wanna one daehwi

16 notes · View notes

sierratheory · 5 years

Note

Hey. I read something you said that I like. It was when you said that it’s up to a person to uphold their own morals and the boys’ relationships don’t seem to do that. This is something I’ve been struggling with. They seem nice in interviews, but they hang out with shady people. They also did a cover of “no roots” which uses the word g*psy, which is regarded as a slur by most Roma. (Part 1/2)

(Continuation of the skeevy friends/g*psy use ask) G*psy being a slur isn’t something many people know outside of Europe, so if it were just that, it could be a good learning experience. Combined with Luke defending sierra against racists, and their skeevy friend circle, it makes me uncomfortable/disappointed, especially since I tried to tweet them to spread awareness about it, with no response. With Luke saying to not be racist, I guess I kinda hoped for more accountability from the band.

While I agree with what you’ve said for the most part, you come across as rather naive in a way. I do agree that it is not super widely known that it is a slur, and something that really shouldn’t be thrown around. It has basis in forced sterilizations and WWII. I think it could be a very good teaching moment, but it is not just 5sos. The song is widely played, there is no censoring of the word. So for people who are unaware of its history, unless they are specifically looking into it, there’s no way of stumbling onto its problematic use.

Take the n-word for example. It has a basis in oppression, slavery and a whole bunch of other awfulness. Now imagine if that fact was not widely known or addressed. If the word wasn’t bleeped on TV and radio play, and you have never been exposed to the truth of the word. You likely wouldn’t be doing google searches on the etymology of the n-word, or the g-word.

It is also not their song. They didn’t write it. Yes they chose to cover it, but I can tell you as a kid, or even now as an adult, I’ve liked songs and not understood the meaning behind them. I think they are unaware, and it would be good for them to learn, but they are hardly alone in their ignorance.

What I’m trying to say, is I don’t think they are purposely using a word they are aware is a slur. To me that greatly diminishes their culpability. This could be my criminal law brain at work, but to prove someone committed a crime there are two elements; mens rea and actus reus. They are Latin, mens rea meaning guilty mind, and actus reus meaning guilty act. What you have here is the guilty act, but without the knowledge and forethought of a guilty mind. And while ignorance of the law is not a defence, intention is a very important aspect. I’m not saying this excuses their use, nor am I saying using the g-word is okay, I’m merely saying they aren’t, in my eyes, racist and rude, just unaware.

Now, I’m not quite sure why Luke speaking out against racism, makes you more upset. The most likely scenario is that him and the rest of the band are unaware of its origins. I, personally, only learned about it last year, when one of my housemates was speaking to me about how another one of our housemates named their dog “G**sy”. I think it’s more akin to how people use the term “spirit animal”, it was a whole fad, and the term is still widely used. Even though it’s based in the appropriation of Indigenous culture.

Coming back to why I think you’re a bit naive, is the comment you made about tweeting them, and being upset with the lack of response. I can almost guarantee to you that they are not purposefully ignoring you. They are rarely on Twitter, they also likely have a social media manager, but that’s neither here nor there. There are quite literally millions of fans tweeting at them or about them throughout the day. The likelihood of them seeing one tweet, espeically if it is not interacted with, or they don’t follow your account is slim to none.

Overall, I understand why you’re upset, and you have a right to be. As a whole I don’t think them choosing to cover a song with a word that is not properly recognized as a slur in the chorus is as offensive as you deem it to be. While I am not of Roma heritage and therefore cannot speak to the damage the song or 5sos covering it might have had, I don’t think it’s comparable to them using the n-word. And that’s not because I think the n-word is worse, it’s just because I’m sure they know the etymology and why that word is not acceptable.

I think you could try to continue to tweet them, but there is no guarantee that they will see it. There is also the email they set up for fans to get into contact with them, which might be a better option, if you really want to open that dialogue with them. I hope this is helpful to you, and that you don’t think I’m writing off the meaning of the word, or your feelings because I really did put a lot of thought into how to address this. I know this is really long but I think it’s an important conversation to have.

P.S you sent in the second part not on anonymous, so just be careful in the future if you want to remain anonymous to the followers. If you don’t care that’s fine too, but I just like to be sure.

#red replies #this is a novel and a half im so sorry #ask #anon

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writcraft · 6 years

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2018 Fandom Reflections

I’m going to do a year in review list of fics and answer tags on some of the memes floating around, but I’m waiting until January when a few anon fics in fests are revealed as I’d really like to include those in my ramblings. This is more a personal take on some reflections I’ve had on fandom - and my place and activity within it - over the course of this year.

On a personal level, real life work and fandom as a hobby have intersected this year for me like never before, and the combination of taking on multiple commitments to academic publishing, grappling with the demands of my thesis and moderating and participating in multiple fests has been a lot. I’ve had something of a rollercoaster year, but I’m ending 2018 feeling creatively inspired, happy, and energised for another active fandom year. Thank you to everyone who has been part of it and those friends new and old that have been instrumental to shaping my year and pulling me out of the funk I was in at the beginning of the year.

Some key lessons I’ve personally learned in 2018 below the cut to save your dash from my GIANT WALL OF TEXT.

All At Sea: I think of my relationship to fan spaces sometimes as a bit like being out at sea. It’s easy to get caught up in the current and drift along, but the tide is always turning and there are unexpected storms which make staying afloat more challenging at times. Sometimes it can be exhausting when you feel as though you’re swimming against a strong current and making no progress, but on other occasions you find a spot where you can swim, choose your own direction, do handstands in the water and it’s exhilarating. This year I learned it’s okay to get out of the sea sometimes, to push your toes in the sand, feel the sun on your face, and just enjoy watching the waves. Have a cocktail with friends at the beach bar, chill the fuck out, basically. From starting the year feeling in something of a fandom funk, I’ve got to a place at the end of this year where I feel very positive about fandom and grateful to share a space with so many brilliant, talented, supportive people.

Burnout and Information Overwhelm: This year, the burnout has been real and I’ve worked out that the platforms I’m operating on contribute a lot to that feeling of mental exhaustion. Using my mobile for fandom activity, having more time than ever at my personal laptop instead of an office computer which restricted me from accessing fan platforms and ramping up my use of Tumblr, Twitter, WhatsApp and Discord for fandom activity created a kind of information overwhelm that comes with high speed interactions and heightened the sense of needing to be present, or to offer opinions as part of fast-paced interactions requiring quick thinking, and sometimes knee-jerk responses. With this came the suspicion and bitter taste caused by anonymous messages cropping up in the inboxes of me and my friends, and it felt at times as though I was constantly logged on and in a state of hypersensitivity. I’ve learned that stepping back from things and learning to balance time spent online with time spent offline is an important part of self-care and it’s okay to be absent for a while. If conversations are draining, leave them. If you see opinions you don’t like, ignore them or try to understand them. They are just opinions - and I mean opinions on characters, canon, fandom and so on as opposed to political opinions that actively seek to harm people. Everyone has different perspectives on things. There really is room for everyone. Regarding anonymous messages, if the only way someone wants to interact with you is via crappy anonymous messages, I’ve learned they are not worth your time, effort or mental energy. Interacting only brings more attention to them. Delete, block, move on. Fuck ‘em. If you want to talk to me, do it off anon. If I’ve upset you with my actions, tell me. Let’s have a proper, adult conversation.

Look for the Rainbow: Fandom spaces are communities which form around peoples passions. They are places of brilliant creativity but the things we love have a tendency to give rise to extreme emotional responses. I’ve veered from extreme highs to extreme lows and this year I have learned the importance of finding a balance that works. I think a relentlessly positive, non-critical approach can be just as stifling as a culture of intense negativity and constant division, but having said that when I’m having my storm cloudy moments I’m trying to focus on the rainbow. Wallowing in bad feeling tends to nurture and cultivate that sense of dissatisfaction until it becomes suffocating. There’s a tremendous amount of good in fandom space. Good people, good ideas, tireless effort, incredible organisation, passion, creativity and vibrancy. There’s a huge amount to feel positively about and whilst I would never advocate for a laissez faire, entirely non-critical approach, I also think everyone has their own capacity for critical thinking and the way those thoughts can permeate and shape our whole experience of fandom and - by extension - influence our creative abilities. I’ve learned to focus more on the things I get out of fandom that make me happy, to retain a critical eye on things as I always will given the nature of my research, but not to allow the critical to obscure the many positive things about fandom.

Evaluating Self-Worth: I’ve really tried in the latter part of this year not to measure myself or my worth by external metrics of success. The kudos, the hits, the number of followers, the amount of positive interaction over anonymous messages, the posts I’m tagged in, the hype, the rec lists I’m on or not on, and so on. Comparing yourself to other people can lead to resentment and frustration or to an inflated sense of self-importance. It says a little something about how I started the year that I thought I want to grow my tumblr and write a really successful fic, and thought I would know if I had accomplished that by feedback and response. I’m actually quite embarrassed to admit that because I think it makes me look like a dick, and I’m super pleased with the support my fics get in any event, but I wanted to share it because I think it’s important in terms of this lesson I’ve learned this year. I went from a place of being very focused on external measures of success to ending this year realising that my most successful stories have been the ones I’m proudest of and they are not the ones with the most hits or kudos. Those are the stories that I enjoyed creating the most, and the ones that left me feeling incredibly positive and proud at the end of this year, looking forward to the next year in fandom and planning projects that I already know won’t be the most popular, but they are the ones I’m creatively excited about and inspired by, so those are the ones I should be focusing on. Despite its resistance to corporate structures, there’s something very capitalist about the way we can sometimes be lured into evaluating self-worth in fandom, and those structures are embedded within fandom itself. They won’t go away, but focusing on them doesn’t half make me unhappy.

Support Other Creators: It’s easy to let negative feelings overwhelm the way we interact with one another in fandom. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned this year is that you get back what you put in. Through supporting other creators you build friendships formed around shared creative passions and interests. You feel pride in your friends accomplishments. You improve your own work by reading widely, cheerleading, editing, beta reading, alpha reading, brit picking. Writing can be a lonely endeavour but it doesn’t have to be that way when you’re part of a community that uplifts others.

Treat People With Kindness: Not everybody has the same levels of confidence or the same energy for rigorous debate. We all have days where we feel like we could crack into pieces, where we feel lonely, invisible, anxious, excluded, unhappy or fragile. It’s easy to be brave behind a computer screen, but ultimately people on the other end are going through stuff in the same way we all are. I’m making a concerted effort in 2019 to engage patiently and respectfully with opinions I disagree with and to be open to anyone who wants to chat or talk through things. I want to work on building new friendships (yeah, I’m going to slide into your DMs, like hiiiii :D) and maintaining old ones, ensuring I give back the same energy and support I get from friends so they know how appreciated they are. I started this year thinking Tumblr required a level of saltiness and a dgaf attitude that’s never been me, honestly. The lesson I’ve learned this year is to resist going along with the pile and to stop and think before engaging. For some people that might seem like an annoying attempt to sit on the fence and please everyone which is never going to happen, but to be honest I think it’s all about finding what works for you in that regard. I’m here for the hot takes and the salt at times, but tbh it’s pretty much just not me. Even when I’ve responded heatedly to an anonymous message that thoroughly deserved it, it’s felt performative and weird and I’m just not going to do that anymore.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading! If you ever want to chat fandom thoughts then I’m always open to that and hope everyone has a very happy 2019!

#fandom reflections #on fandom #waffling on #about me #2018 reflections

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ads-is-shady-blog · 5 years

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#5) [Otome Games/BTS] An Update on Aeon Dream Studios - hiatus, founder leaving, allegations of emotional abuse and non-payment by a former employee, + more

View the discussion on reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/amiuas/otome_gamesbts_an_update_on_aeon_dream_studios/

Post (words by original poster linked):

This is an update to my previous post here which has some background and a Tl;dr at the end for those who need it. It's time for an update as a lot has happened in the past month.

Before that, though, here's something I missed in my last post: a scandal in June 2018 where ADS tweeted on their official account to call out a fanfic author on Wattpad for copying ADS's work. The tweet included an image containing the author's username, leading the fifteen-year-old author to receive harassment from TTEOTS fans who had seen the tweet. Considering TTEOTS itself did not have legal permission to be using BTS's likenesses, the call out post seems rather hypocritical. There was also an exchange in the replies where the devs passive aggressively blamed a fan who asked for help due to the app being glitchy.

So, to recap where we left off:

The studio went silent for a couple of months at the end of 2018, letting a promised release date for TTEOTS pass without comment. In mid-December the CEO emerged to link her inability to work to a BTS member sustaining a minor injury, and then pushed back Echoes to 2019 (initially promised for March 2017), giving no date for further TTEOTS content.

January has brought renewed anger and attempts to raise awareness by ex-fans and customers who have been burned by the studio.

January 14th

In two tweets on her personal account, the CEO decried the capitalisation and dehumanisation of BTS through merchandise and idolatry and condemned fans for buying products that contributed to this. This was certainly an ironic tweet to make for someone who:

dehumanised BTS by turning them into characters for her game without their consent;

promoted the game using BTS's faces, name and existing fanbase, and strongly encouraged fans to pay for crowdfunding, TTEOTS merch and, later, the monetised Premium version;

enticed fans to buy Premium by promising Premium-exclusive content such as eventual romantic content with said characters, further dehumanising the members of BTS without their consent.

Several people responded pointing out the hypocrisy of making such tweets after capitalising on the faces of BTS, but the CEO did not respond; instead one fan chimed in to defend the studio.

January 18th

The CEO posted a new blog on ADS's official website announcing a hiatus for financial reasons. It is no longer accessible for reasons I'll explain, but there is a cached version viewable here. The hiatus will last until at least March and means writing and programming will continue but almost everything else is paused and their social media presence will be reduced. Elaborating, she explained that they had "been on hiatus in some ways since September [2018]", having slowed work due to budgetary constraints.

The post also included a vague paragraph about a personal financial settlement she was owed from a person referred to as "He-Shall-Not-Be-Named" which she had planned to invest into ADS, but allegedly he had dragged out the proceedings and this, combined with the "untimely" cease and desist from BigHit Entertainment and decreased sales, led to financial difficulties. During the hiatus, which will last until March or later, the CEO wrote that she would work on novels and commissions in order to help the company.

Ex-fans linked the hiatus post in the Steam forums and in a post on /r/otomegames. Criticism was directed at numerous parts of the statement, including:

"We promised you guys a lot of things, and we’re going to deliver, come hell or high water. It might not be in the time frame I had planned, but it will be done. I am definitely known as a person of my word." (emphasis added)

A claim critics would happily dispute, and:

"Anyway, as a result I decided the best thing for us was to be honest, now that I knew more, and let the fans know exactly what was happening as soon as possible and take an “official” hiatus." (emphasis added)

This latter statement attracted particular criticism considering the studio had already been winding down development activity since September but had failed to inform fans and eventually went radio silent for roughly 2 months, leaving TTEOTS fans confused and worried about the status of the game. Further, this hiatus post was not announced anywhere on ADS's social media, leaving those who had noticed it wondering exactly how this constituted keeping fans in the loop.

January 25th

On the 25th, the CEO made several tweets, one of which began with:

"Lately, relationships have ended in my life. I'm grateful for the lessons I learned. Courage, generosity, empathy, honesty, openness are all traits required for a healthy relationship."

Perhaps coincidentally, that same day the other remaining founding member of the studio announced her departure for mental health reasons. As she is no longer an employee I will not link directly out of respect but here is a screenshot of the main tweet. This left ADS with two remaining employees - the CEO (the only remaining founder) and a writer who had formally joined the studio in February 2018 and who is allegedly now living with the CEO. This departure means there are now four former employees listed on the official ADS website. The third founder was the longest serving former employee at 2 years.

Shortly afterwards, the official ADS Twitter tweeted out a new hiatus statement on their official website, the previous one having vanished. The new post was shorter than the first - down to 426 words from the original 1,089 - and now included the departure of their founding member as a reason for the hiatus.

The tweet attracted a mix of supportive and critical replies, with former fans and backers wading in to demand answers about the two versions of the hiatus post and to back up frustrated TTEOTS fans. Unusually, the CEO appeared in the replies to respond to some of these criticisms, tweeting that:

anything perceived to be "shady" by critics was merely due to their founding member struggling with her mental health behind the scenes;

the second hiatus blog was the "same exact blog" as the original except for the addition of the founding member leaving (in fact the original was twice as long);

the only reason they didn't share the original hiatus post on Twitter was because the member responsible for sharing it had quit.

January 27th

The CEO posted two blogs on the ADS website: a post detailing her plans for restructuring and fulfilling their obligations, including hiring more freelance staff after the hiatus, and another detailing the struggles of ADS from their founding, written in response to a critic who had apparently claimed not to believe in the recently departed founding member's mental health issues. (I am unsure what comment(s) the CEO was referring to specifically as the reference is vague.)

As you've probably guessed, ex-fans picked this latter post apart too.

"I haven’t seen all the bad things out there about us. I don’t read them, because I know that some of it is made up,and would only distract me from my job. I know the truth, and I have always been honest, even if there were things I couldn’t say. I have no motive to lie, and I know these people don’t know or understand me." (emphasis added)

Critics wondered how the CEO could know if criticisms are made up if she doesn't read them.

"I thought of the possibility of course, of hanging it up, working on providing refunds to people (what, you REALLY thought we were so dishonorable as not to do that?)..." (emphasis added)

Of course, as mentioned in my last post, numerous customers had reported difficulty obtaining refunds (despite a threat from the devs that backers who were toxic would be forcibly refunded).

On their official Twitter account, they also announced plans to move away from social media and focus on communicating through the "healthy space" of their Discord channels. Ex-fans speculated this was a way to more tightly moderate speech and shut out critics. One began lurking in the official Discords, reporting on what the studio's remaining employees were saying and alleging that critics' arguments were being misrepresented by ADS devs to their fans in the Discord enquiring about the controversy.

This user also heavily hinted at having testimony from an inside source that supposedly included emotional abuse allegations against the CEO, but was holding off on saying anything due to concerns about preserving the source's anonymity.

28th January

Despite failing to give a release date elsewhere, the developers posted a backer-exclusive Kickstarter update which as a non-backer I cannot read, but according to a poster in the Steam forum it gives the release date for Echoes as March 2019, despite the hiatus.

The CEO also tweeted refuting past criticism that she was throwing employees under the bus in her updates, and closed by stating she would not be tweeting about negativity or rumours anymore.

29th January

A Twitter user who is the MDSOA Deluxe Edition Kickstarter's highest backer (to the tune of $2000+ USD, proof posted on their Twitter account) posted a series of tweets strongly condemning the studio. She claimed one employee from the studio had blocked her (something at least one other backer has also reported) and that she had been refused a refund.

In fact, when she had emailed the studio in November 2018 asking for refunds for physical Kickstarter rewards which did not yet exist almost 2 years after the Kickstarter in question - and indeed still do not exist - ADS responded that crowdfunded pledges are "donations" and "ordinarily considered non-refundable", with the promised rewards being "just a perk". (This screenshot of the reply is embedded in one of the tweets.) However, they generously stated they would "consider it" when they start sending out merchandise.

In fact, according to Section 4 of Kickstarter's Terms of Use, this is very much not true: "project creators must complete the project and fulfil each reward." Backers are owed regular updates, and if the project fails, creators must go to lengths to show why they failed, prove they used funds appropriately, and either refund backers with any remaining funds or use this money to complete the promised project in another form. The only way to terminate these obligations to a backer is to issue a refund, ending the contract between them.

And, in any case, the developers had promised refunds in December 2017 for those who wanted them and had set up a page for refund sign-ups which they posted about in January. As such, it's clear their email response was not consistent with their past statements, especially as some people were previously able to get refunds. What changed?

Again:

"I thought of the possibility of course, of hanging it up, working on providing refunds to people (what, you REALLY thought we were so dishonorable as not to do that?)..."

31st January

Meanwhile, ADS were posting teasers of new character designs for TTEOTS, including one of the redesigns that had been made necessary by the cease and desist in August 2018. As the main male characters had originally been based on BTS they had all appeared Korean, but the redesigns had changed the races of some characters to reflect a more racially diverse future.

On the 31st they posted a passive aggressive tweet with a meme gif alluding to comments they had apparently received in the past, encouraging people to unfollow if they were likely to be upset by future character designs, all of which are "various shades of brown", with one also being agender. Again a mix of supportive and critical replies followed; even some of the studio's supporters criticised the tone as condescending and unprofessional. Several responders appeared wary of being branded as racist for criticising Five's redesign for not fitting his established character. One or two even expressed views that the devs were intentionally avoiding adding white characters out of spite or pettiness. Matters were not helped by ADS making a couple of replies of a similar hostile tone.

1st February

At last, the "inside source" that had been hinted at came forward: the former Lead Artist and Art Director at ADS, Monzana21.

Monz alleged in a Twitter statement that she had been a victim of emotional abuse at the hands of ADS's current management, ended up in the hospital with extreme exhaustion, and when she left the company received only one and a half months' payment for 7 months of work. She appealed to people to question what is happening at ADS and why they have lost so many employees, but declined to give further information publicly in order to protect herself and her friends and coworkers. In other more recent tweets she added that people in the art community are also aware of abuse and mistreatment within ADS and the scamming of fans.

Replies were overwhelmingly supportive, with a couple of other Twitter users who had interacted with ADS chiming in to say that their experiences with ADS were also negative and they did not doubt the veracity of the allegations.

Since then, any tweets on the ADS Twitter have numerous responses asking about the abuse allegations and trying to spread awareness, but the studio still has plenty of eager responses from fans as well.

On her personal account, the CEO tweeted to thank those who believe in her for their supportive messages and retweeted this on the ADS Twitter, but there has otherwise been no official statement on the matter outside of Discord. There, the CEO has outright disputed the allegations (compilation), as has ADS's other writer (compilation), and members of the Discord (some of whom address the CEO as "mom") have mostly taken them at their word, while people who were already critical or doubtful of the studio appear more inclined to believe the former Lead Artist.

The #TTEOTS, #MDSOA and #MDE Twitter tags are awash with criticism towards the studio from numerous different users, and new tweets from the CEO and the official ADS Twitter are quickly met by former fans and backers banging war drums. The fallout from the abuse allegations has yet to settle and presumably more drama is to come.

Tl;dr

Throughout January, angry ex-fans have increased efforts to raise awareness and turned ADS-related accounts and tags into a battleground on Twitter

Conspiracy theories abounded as a post about a hiatus for financial reasons was never shared, then vanished and reappeared significantly edited down a week later

A founding member of the company departed for mental health reasons

A $2k+ backer alleges she was refused a refund for items she had not received and was informed her Kickstarter pledge was a "donation" and "ordinarily non-refundable"

ADS stirred up further controversy with more passive aggressive tweets

A former employee came forward with allegations of emotional abuse and being underpaid for 7 months of work, which the remaining ADS members have refuted

#aeon dream studios #ads is shady #adsisshady #mystic destinies #tteots

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pricestarfish · 3 years

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Do you need to use your real name on the internet? I don't think so ….

There’s a lot of discussion going on at the moment around the issue of using what some people call “Fake” names on the Internet, particularly around Google+ which has outlawed them, as has Facebook, although on Facebook you can set up a Fan Page under your “Fake” Name. On Twitter you can call yourself whatever you want, and they don’t seem to have any problem with it.

We need the “fake name” on the internet.

In the recent years, the government and the general public exchange their ideas frequently through the Internet, which makes the net become an important channel for citizens to express their ideas and opinions. The main reason for this is the anonymity and amplification of the report from net, which can protect the informer and get quick response from the society. The real-name system takes the effect of anonymous statement too easily, which affect the rights of freedom and supervision of the Internet users. This cannot meet the demand of the progress of our times.

Why do some people favour for real names?

However, it should be noticed that with the development of the Internet, it’s cannot be avoided to find some rumors and language violence or other issues. This is also the main reason people would like to use the real-name system to protect the environment of Internet. But this is only the minority of the users. Most Internet users are law-abiding. It is overkill to shrinking spaces for Internet users only because the acts of minority.

What are the problems with the real-name system?

Form technical aspect, the application of real-name system is also superfluous. In fact, the statement in virtual network is not as irresponsible as most people imagine it. According to de IP address, any Internet users can be checked.

When considered from the point of economy, the first element should be considered is the cost. With the implementation of real-name system, the registration could be the first problem. The users’ registration information must be compared with the information recorded in the civil registry office in order to confirm its authenticity. Even though it is technically feasible, the cost of the transformation would be huger than the cost producing from anonymity.

Even putting aside the huge cost, the monitoring capability will also be very limited, because the information on the Internet is updating at an amazing speed. Combined with the truth that a lot of sites locate their servers outside the country in order to avoid the real-name system, the results of this system may not be as effective as imagine.

Conclusion The Internet should be an open environment. The real-name system would cover too many aspects and people with different ideas. The management of Internet is a global issue, however, due to the different environment and regulations in different countries, there is no common way including real-name system to solve such complicate problem.

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backtomiddleearthmonth · 6 years

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B2MeM 2019: How to Play and FAQs

How to Play Bingo

Bingo is a fairly simple game. B2MeM puts our own spin on it by allowing participants to create cards before we begin playing and by not having a single winner.

1. Card creation: submit prompts for one themed card, or if you have graphics skills, create multiple themed cards

2. Card claiming: claiming what cards you want to play with, giving you prompts for creating fanworks

3. Gameplay:

A mod will post a number every day. For example, B3.

You look for that number on your card(s) to see if you have any matches. For example, B3 will be in the first "B" column.

If you have a match, you can create something using that prompt. We cannot guarantee every person will have a prompt to create for every day.

If you have multiple matches, you may use as many prompts as inspire you. For example, B3 has the following prompts on some cards: Silmaril, Finwe/Indis, AU, Tragedy, fog. You can create a fanwork involving one, some, or all of those prompts, or you can create multiple fanworks using these prompts in any combination.

You do not have to use every prompt that is called on your cards.

A traditional bingo game is won when someone had five numbers in a row, column, or diagonal and the board is then cleared for the next round. B2MeM is not playing traditional bingo; people who reach a bingo will receive a banner and the boards are not cleared. It does not matter if you have a bingo on March 5, March 31, or not at all: the point of the game is to use prompts to create fanworks.

You can read an in-universe explanation of how bingo came about and how to play here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who can participate?

Anyone! It doesn’t matter if this is your first time in the Tolkien fandom or your fiftieth year; everyone is welcome. All genres, formats, and ratings of fanwork are also welcome.

How can I participate in B2MeM if I'm also creating something for a fandom event also running in March?

You can use B2MeM prompts in your fanwork(s) for the other event(s).

What sites can I follow you on?

Dreamwidth is our main platform, but we have mod-only mirrors on Tumblr and LiveJournal. New for this year, we also have a mailing list so you can receive our prompts in your email. We have an AO3 collection as well.

How can I participate if I don’t have a Dreamwidth account?

If you wish to leave comments on fanworks posted on Dreamwidth, you may use an anonymous comment. However, we do require anon comments to be signed. (For example, if your AO3 username is Frodofan1, please sign your comment Frodofan1.) Anonymous comments are automatically screened before they appear in the community, and unsigned comments will not be unscreened.

We welcome participation on other platforms if you do not wish to post fanworks here, even platforms we don't have a mirror on. We welcome links pointing to your fanworks posted elsewhere. We also have an AO3 collection and the SWG has a challenge listing for B2MeM 2019.

If you do wish to post fanworks on Dreamwidth or link to fanworks posted elsewhere, you will need a Dreamwidth account. You can sign up for a free account here. There is also OpenID available that allows log-in through Google, Facebook, Twitter, and LiveJournal.

A link list of Tumblr to Dreamwidth guides can be found here.

What sort of things do you consider to be fanworks?

It’s simple: if you consider it fanwork, so do we. We’ve had stories, artwork, cosplay, crafts, rec lists, fanmixes, and more. We welcome everything.

We only require that responses have a significant basis in Tolkien’s works. Crossovers and AUs are welcome, as are movieverse fanworks.

Is there a minimum amount of words, time spent, etc. in order to participate?

No! We want people to be as free to create as possible, whether this means writing a lone haiku or working on an epic novel, creating a single icon or a batch of a hundred, a sketch or a detailed painting, a moodboard or picspam, or whatever else you wish to work on.

What are your restrictions on content? Do you require warnings?

We welcome all Tolkien-based fanworks. There are no restrictions on content; the B2MeM community accepts all forms of fanworks from low-rated gen fluff to explicit incest. We do have a header that participants are required to use in order to allow people the ability to choose whether or not to view your fanwork. The header and tagging post will be available before March.

We require warnings for reasonable things that fellow fans might wish to avoid, such as violence, gore, explicit sex, incest, etc. OR you may use Choose Not to Warn. Choose Not to Warn indicates that the work may contain anything, including potentially triggering or explicit content. Participants who wish to avoid certain content should make their own decisions on whether to read or view CNTW entries.

Do I need to create something using all of the prompts that are called on my card(s)?

No! You may choose to use one prompt or you can use as many as you wish. If you only want to create one fanwork for the month, you may use only one prompt or you can use as many in your fanwork as work for you.

Can I combine fanworks prompts into a single work?

Yes! How you do this is up to you.

Do I have to take the prompts literally?

No! We welcome any interpretation of the prompts; we encourage outside-of-the-box thinking. How you respond to the prompts is up to you.

Can I use works begun in previous years or other Works in Progress?

Yes! WIPs of all sorts are welcome to be continued with one or more B2MeM prompts. They do not have to be previous B2MeM works.

I signed up for a previous B2MeM event and didn’t finish. Can I still participate?

Yes! We do not penalize people.

Do I have to wait until after March to post my fanwork outside of B2MeM spaces?

No. We encourage crossposting to whatever sites you normally use.

What if I have a question that isn’t covered by the above?

Please Ask or email us at [email protected].

#Back to Middle-earth Month

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shirlleycoyle · 5 years

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Surveillance Firm Banjo Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps to Scrape Social Media

Banjo, an artificial intelligence firm that works with police used a shadow company to create an array of Android and iOS apps that looked innocuous but were specifically designed to secretly scrape social media, Motherboard has learned.

The news signifies an abuse of data by a government contractor, with Banjo going far beyond what companies which scrape social networks usually do. Banjo created a secret company named Pink Unicorn Labs, according to three former Banjo employees, with two of them adding that the company developed the apps. This was done to avoid detection by social networks, two of the former employees said.

Three of the apps created by Pink Unicorn Labs were called "One Direction Fan App," "EDM Fan App," and "Formula Racing App." Motherboard found these three apps on archive sites and downloaded and analyzed them, as did an independent expert. The apps—which appear to have been originally compiled in 2015 and were on the Play Store until 2016 according to Google—outwardly had no connection to Banjo, but an analysis of its code indicates connections to the company. This aspect of Banjo's operation has some similarities with the Cambridge Analytica scandal, with multiple sources comparing the two incidents.

"Banjo was doing exactly the same thing but more nefariously, arguably," a former Banjo employee said, referring to how seemingly unrelated apps were helping to feed the activities of the company's main business. Motherboard granted four former employees and another source close to the company anonymity because they had signed non-disclosure agreements with Banjo.

Do you work at Banjo or know anything else about the company’s work? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Jason Koebler securely on Signal on +1 202 505 1702 , or Joseph Cox on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190 , Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on [email protected] , or email [email protected].

Last year Banjo signed a $20.7 million contract with Utah that granted the company access to the state's traffic, CCTV, and public safety cameras. Banjo promises to combine that input with a range of other data such as satellites and social media posts to create a system that it claims alerts law enforcement of crimes or events in real-time.

"We essentially do most of what Palantir does, we just do it live," Banjo's top lobbyist Bryan Smith previously told police chiefs and 911 dispatch officials when pitching the company's services.

The company has not publicly explained how it specifically scrapes social media apps.

Motherboard found the apps developed by Pink Unicorn Labs included code mentioning signing into Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Russian social media app VK, FourSquare, Google Plus, and Chinese social network Sina Weibo.

A screenshot of one of the Pink Unicorn Labs apps. Image: APKGK.com

There are several ways these apps could have scraped social media—perhaps by sending the saved login token to a server for Banjo to use later, or by using the app itself to scrape information—but it is not totally clear which method Banjo used because the API that the apps connected to is no longer live. Motherboard found that the apps when opened made web requests to the domain "pulapi.com," likely referring to Pink Unicorn Labs, but the site that would provide a response to the app is currently down.

One of the former employees said they saw one of the apps when it was still working and it had a high number of logins.

"It was all major social media platforms," they added. The particular versions of the apps Motherboard obtained, when opened, asked a user to sign-in with Instagram.

Business records for Pink Unicorn Labs show the company was originally incorporated by Banjo CEO Damien Patton. Banjo employees worked directly on Pink Unicorn Labs projects from Banjo's offices, several of the former employees said, though they added that Patton made it clear in recent years that Banjo needed to wind down Pink Unicorn Labs' work and not be linked to the firm.

"There was something about Pink Unicorn that was important for Damien to distance himself from," another former employee told Motherboard.

"I always knew this moment would come. While I worked there, it felt like I was spying on the world."

Before pivoting to artificial intelligence for governments, Banjo was a social media-focused company, offering an app that would show what was happening around a user based on posts from Twitter, Instagram, FourSquare, and other social networks. It then moved onto providing services to media companies, letting them know if something significant and perhaps newsworthy was breaking on social networks. Some similar companies, like Dataminr, have permission from social media sites to use large amounts of data; Twitter, which owns a stake in Dataminr, gives the firm exclusive access to its so-called "fire hose" of public posts.

Banjo did not have that sort of data access. So it created Pink Unicorn Labs, which one former employee described as a "shadow company," that developed apps to harvest social media data.

"They were shitty little apps that took advantage of some of the data that we had but the catch was that they had a ton of OAuth providers," one of the former employees said. OAuth providers are methods for signing into apps or websites via another service, such as Facebook's "Facebook Connect," Twitter's "Sign In With Twitter," or Google's "Google Sign-In." These providers mean a user doesn't have to create a new account for each site or app they want to use, and can instead log in via their already established social media identity.

But once users logged into the innocent looking apps via a social network OAuth provider, Banjo saved the login credentials, according to two former employees and an expert analysis of the apps performed by Kasra Rahjerdi, who has been an Android developer since the original Android project was launched. Banjo then scraped social media content, those two former employees added. The app also contained nonstandard code written by Pink Unicorn Labs: "The biggest red flag for me is that all the code related to grabbing Facebook friends, photos, location history, etc. is directly from their own codebase," Rahjerdi said.

A screenshot of one of the Pink Unicorn Labs apps. Image: APKGK.com

The Android versions of the apps are no longer available on the Google Play Store, but each of the three apps had install bases ranging from a minimum of 5,000 users up to 100,000 users, according to records on one Android app archive site. Motherboard also identified an iOS version of the EDM Fan App. Users of each app could follow events such as concerts or races, judging by screenshots of the apps in action on the Android app archive site.

"Formula Racing App is your all-access pass to every race across the globe! View the photos and videos posted by fans at each race. Share the photos and videos with your friends," the description for Formula Racing App read.

"Banjo was secretly farming peoples' user tokens via these shadow apps," one of the former employees said. "That was the entire point and plan," they added when asked if the apps were specifically designed to steal users' login tokens.

"At their face value [of being sports or celebrity apps], those apps functionally were so far off from what our business model was that I can't see any way they were relics of a pre-pivot business model," a second former employee said.

"Banjo was doing exactly the same thing but more nefariously, arguably."

Rahjerdi told Motherboard, "They’re a shared codebase made to be super easy to setup new apps."

The apps request a wide range of permissions, such as access to location data, the ability to create accounts and set passwords, and find accounts on the device.

Multiple sources said Banjo tried to keep Pink Unicorn Labs a secret, but Motherboard found several links between the two. An analysis of the Android apps revealed all three had code that contained web links to Banjo's website; each app contained a set of identical data that appeared to be pulled from social network sites, including repeatedly the Twitter profile of Jennifer Peck, who works for Banjo and is also married to Banjo's Patton. In registration records for the two companies, both Banjo and Pink Unicorn Labs shared the same address in Redwood, California; and Patton is listed as the creator of Pink Unicorn Labs in that firm's own public records.

"Several projects I worked on were 'make sure you only ever use this VPN to run the code, we can't have this traced back to us','" one former employee recalled being told while working at Banjo. Another said the company carried out a lot of work through Tor, which is a network for using the internet anonymously and avoiding attribution back to identifying IP addresses.

Inside Banjo's offices. Image: @senorrinhatch Twitter account

Banjo did not respond to a request for comment for this article and did not respond to multiple requests for comment for our earlier investigation into the company. Motherboard asked Banjo a set of specific questions including whether data collected by the Pink Unicorn Labs apps provided any sort of input, such as training data, for Banjo's more recent artificial intelligence products that the state of Utah purchased.

One source who didn't work at the company but spent a lot of time at its offices and signed an NDA with Banjo said the mood was "apocalyptic" in the company's office when news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke in March 2018. The Guardian, The Observer, and The New York Times reported how Cambridge Analytica had used a Facebook-based app to harvest data on tens of millions of users.

"You can imagine the luls that were had when we saw Cambridge Analytica take so much heat," a second source said.

"I always knew this moment would come. While I worked there, it felt like I was spying on the world," one of the former employees said.

"You can imagine the luls that were had when we saw Cambridge Analytica take so much heat."

The Banjo case raises questions around other apps that may have abused similar access.

While a Twitter spokesperson said the company had no "active evidence" on the Banjo example, they wrote in an email, "We've seen examples of similar misuse of OAuth tokens in the past, and have enforced when we've seen them."

A Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email, "Our policies prohibit scraping people's data. We are investigating and will take appropriate action." Facebook said Banjo no longer has access to Facebook's APIs.

A Google spokesperson said the Pink Unicorn Labs apps were removed from the Play Store in 2016, but did not elaborate when asked if Pink Unicorn Labs itself removed them or if Google did.

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Subscribe to our cybersecurity podcast, CYBER.

Surveillance Firm Banjo Used a Secret Company and Fake Apps to Scrape Social Media syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

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kamounlab · 5 years

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Ten things we learned in 2010-2019 (aside from everything else)

He who has studied himself is his own master. –Sri Lankan proverb.

By the time this gets posted, you’ll probably be sick and tired of all those retrospective articles looking back at the 2010-2019 decade. I feel your pain. But hey, we’re still early in the new decade and I have a good reason for writing this. This last decade has been such an exhilarating period of exploration and discovery for me, my team and my collaborators that I just can’t resist the urge to write this post. The decade took us through unexpected research paths that I would have never imagined ten years ago. As I’m drafting these words during my holidays break in Sri Lanka—in between tasting the local milk rice curries and soaking the soft Indian ocean December sunshine—I’m reflecting on the local proverb above and I’m using it as my lame excuse to offer you yet another list of decadal achievements.

Please note that this is my personal highly biased perspective on ten things we have learned in 2010-2019. This list is by no means meant to be comprehensive review of advances in our research field but rather a reflection of my own personal take on the scientific topics we investigate.

2010. Two-speed genomes, everywhere? What started as a loose metaphor inspired from economics went sort of viral at some point in this decade, sometimes to comical effects (one speed genome anyone?). To those who struggle with metaphors, the idea is that there is an uneven distribution in the rates of gene evolution across the genome, not that there are precisely two-rates of gene evolution. The term actually dates back to 2009 press releases associated with the Haas et al. paper on the genome of Phytophthora infestans. We noted at the time that it was a catchy term that does illustrate the point we were making, and I really liked the French translation into the poetic “génome à deux vitesses”. By 2010, we were confident enough that we formally used the term in the Raffaele et al. paper on genome evolution after host jumps. What was even more exciting about the “two-speed genome” concept is that it turned out to apply not just to Phytophthora genomes but also to many other plant pathogens. Ten years later, we start the new decade with a paper on the two-speed genome architecture of the blast fungus Magnaporthe oryzae.

2011. WY fold—commonalities amid diversity. Our collaboration with Mark Banfield started yielding its fruits with the 2011 Boutemy et al. paper. This and related papers by the Staskawicz and Shirasu Labs in the US and Japan, respectively, marked the discovery of the WY-fold of oomycete effectors. This has now expanded into the LWY-foldand an effector of the tobacco blue mold pathogen Peronospora tabacina has 18 WY units. The finding that pathogen effectors share structural features despite limited primary sequence similarity has also extended to other filamentous pathogens, for example the MAX-fold of M. oryzae effectors. This is very useful because it improves prediction of effector genes from pathogen genomes and sets the stage for effectoromics.

2011. The haustorial interface—where it all happens? I’m a big fan of this Bozkurt et al. paper because it was very challenging for me to get outside my comfort zone into the murky world of plant cell biology (where many people seem reluctant to quantify their observations…). Kudos to Tolga Bozkurt and Sebastian Schornack for leading the way and taking me through this journey. As often, the effectors gave us the first clue and the discovery that some P. infestans effectors accumulate at the haustorial interface (perihaustorial) turned out to be a starting point for many cool projects. Thanks in part to a nudge from an anonymous reviewer who was dissing the novelty of studying effectors that suppress PAMP-triggered immunity (the “it has all been done with Pseudomonas syringae” type of reviewer), we decided to focus on perihaustorial effectors. This resulted, in many important findings, notably the discovery of the ATG8-binding effector PexRD54 and that the host autophagy machinery is diverted to the haustorial interface during infection by P. infestans. This also led us to study plant ATG8 proteins and how they have specialized throughout evolution.

2013. Genome editing made easy. Ten years ago, geneticists were dreaming about gene editing. What if there was a tool that would allow facile gene editing. TALENs popped up first in 2009 but, in our hands, applying them turned out to be anything but simple. Vlad Nekrasov noted that the AvrBs3 backbone of standard TALEN constructs wouldn’t generate transgenic tomatoes because they elicit Bs4-mediated cell death. That frustration was one motivation in early 2013 to ditch the TALEN work and focus on the newly reported CRISP/Cas9 system. That was a wise decision and Vlad got CRISPR/Cas9 to work in what seemed like weeks. The rest is history with Vlad’s CRISPR/Cas9 plasmids have been distributed >500 times via Addgene. Vlad, in collaboration with Detlef Weigel’s lab, went on to engineer the transgene-free powdery mildew resistant mutant Tomelo in less than a year. This work ended up being highlighted by the BBC as one of “four good things that happened in 2016″.

2013. Field pathogenomics—just sequence it! It was the ash dieback outbreak that gave us our first opportunity to combine sequencing of field collected tissue with open science and crowdsourcing to mount a rapid response to plant health emergencies. Back then it did feel like plant pathology was lagging behind in immediately applying genome sequencing to emerging plant pathogens. Diane Saunders, Kentaro Yoshida and Dan MacLean managed to put OpenAshDieback together and release a draft of the pathogen’s genome just weeks after the outbreak was detected in Norfolk. Diane then applied the approach to yellow rusts and we later used field pathogenomics to identify the origin of the pathogen that caused the 2016 wheat blast outbreak in Bangladesh. That project kicked off a very inspiring collaboration with Tofazzal Islam and Nick Talbot and further strengthened my dedication to advocate for open science. It also changed the research direction of my lab, especially after the BLASTOFF project was funded by the ERC.

2013. Going back to the past to better prepare for the future. It’s not every day that you get lampooned by the Colbert Report. Stephen Colbert was correct, it wasn’t the 1b haplotype of P. infestans that triggered the Irish famine disaster, it was HERB-1. Our collaboration with Hernan Burbano, Detlef Weigel and several others on sequencing P. infestans genomes from 19th century herbarium samples, received incredible media coverage. With Hernan having recently started a new position at UCL, you can expect more pathogen aDNA projects in the future. Stay tuned.

2014. Effector adaptation after jumping hosts. There are literally dozens and dozens of examples of rapid evolutionary adaptations in plant-pathogen interactions in which the precise mutation is known. It's no big deal to find a new one these days. But almost all of these are AVR effectors that overcome host resistance. What Suomeng Dong and others documented is an effector that has adapted to a new target after switching hosts. Suomeng showed that the protease inhibitor effector EPIC1 has undergone biochemical specialization on the protease of its new host. This paper builds up on work dating back to the 2000-2009 decade by PhD students Miaoying Tian who discovered the protease inhibitor effectors of Phytophthora and Jing Song who further studied the EPICs. It was also the point when we decided to center the lab around the theme of evolutionary molecular-plant microbe interactions or #EvoMPMI as it’s known on Twitter.

2015. The beauty of a protein complex structure. Stella Cesari and her colleagues deserve much credit for articulating the NLR integrated decoy concept, although some of us prefer to use the more agnostic term integrated domain (NLR-ID). I’m thrilled to have been the matchmaker who helped link up the amazing work of Ryohei Terauchi on rice blast effectors and R genes with the structural biology magic of Mark Banfield. This resulted in bringing an unprecedented level of detail to Harold Flor's gene-for-gene model with Abbas Maqbool solving the structure of M. oryzae AVR-PikD in complex with the integrated HMA domain of the rice immune receptor Pik-D. Mark and his team went on to publish a series of trail blazing follow-up papers on how to exploit this knowledge to engineer new disease resistance specificities (De la Concepcion et al. 2018, 2019; Varden et al. 2018).

2017. Do NLRs work in pairs—it’s more complicated! In what was initially a follow-up study to the AVRblb2 project of Bozkurt et al., Chih-hang Wu, Ahmed Abd-El-Haliem and Jack Vossen “accidental” discovery that NRC4 is necessary for Rpi-blb2 ended up having some very unexpected ramifications. Chih-hang’s PhD took quite a turn when he followed up on a suggestion by Khaoula Belhaj to silence multiple NRC paralogs and uveil a complicated NLR network. He went on to his most insightful discovery that the NRC network is phylogenetically structured and has expanded over 100 million years ago (Mya) from an NLR pair to a network that makes up to half of the NLRs of asterid plants. All this cool stuff ended up taking over my research program by storm, with Team NRC making up half of my lab. It also led to the fascinating research question of how NLRs have evolved from singletons to pairs to networks. Meanwhile, Chih-hang is starting his new lab at Academia Sinica in January 2020.

2019. The coming of age of the plant resistosome. Courtesy of Jijie Chai, Jian-Min Zhou and their collaborators, 2019 brought us a full-length NLR structure some 25 years after their discovery in the early 1990s. But these landmark papers by Wang et al. (2019a, 2019b) had much more than that. They showed that they could activate the ZAR1 resistosome in vitro by flooding it with ATP. This results in the “death switch”, a conformational change that generates a funnel-shaped structure that is proposed to insert into the plasma membrane and cause cell death. Beyond this extraordinary breakthrough, we had good reasons to celebrate—as we did in this video. The ZAR1 death switch model immediately explained some two-year old results that Hiroaki Adachi and Adeline Harant had produced with our own NRC4. This led Aki to discover the functionally conserved N-terminal MADA motif of NLR proteins that defines the N-terminus of NRC4, ZAR1 and at least one fifth of CC-type NLRs. We predict that a ZAR1 type conformational “death switch” is a common activation mechanism for CC-NLRs. What a way to end the decade. IT'S A MADA, MADA, MADA, MADA WORLD!

Conclusion. Over the last decade, the research topics in my lab have drifted from a focus on Phytophthoragenome and effector biology to new interests such as M. oryzae and NLR biology. I heard that several colleagues find this puzzling. Some of the drift can be explained by a tendency to follow Peter Medawar’s maxim of “science is the art of the soluble”. Another reason is an obsession with Keplerian thinking—unexpected findings are opportunities to explore new research avenues and shouldn’t be dismissed because they don’t fit the current theory. Also, some of the projects moved on to greener pastures when postdocs took on independent positions at other institutions and it didn’t make any sense for me to continue working on those topics. This said, there is probably more to this willingness to jettison projects and switch to new ones. I should think deeper about this. After all, “he who has studied himself…”

Acknowledgements. I’m deeply grateful to past and present lab members and collaborators for their many contributions, several of which are not described here. I want to particularly thank Joe Win for his across the board involvement in pretty much most of the projects described above. Thanks also to the funders, particularly the Gatsby Charitable, BBSRC and ERC.

To cite: Kamoun, S. Ten things we learned in 2010-2019 (aside from everything else). Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3613856

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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Instagram verification will make you Public Enemy No. 1

This piece is part of an ongoing series exploring what it means to be a woman on the internet.

In a folder on my phone called “PUBLIC FIGURE,” I save screenshots of some of the most outrageous messages strangers have sent me since I got verified on Instagram, primarily because I still can’t believe I get so many. There are dozens of DMs that demand to know “why tf” and “how tf” I got a little blue badge.

People will scrawl “who are you lmao” under a bunch of my photos all at once, which is a singularly mortifying experience that has no equivalent on Twitter or Facebook, where my profiles also have blue ticks. On a few occasions, I’ve commented on a celebrity or brand’s post, then watched as the replies to my original comment devolve into a fight over whether a person can buy verification and, if so, whether that’s what I did. To be clear, I didn’t. I’m a journalist and was verified for my job. My profile is categorized under “Journalist” and a Story highlight full of screenshots of my work appears right at the top of my profile.

The messages are sorted into my “requests” folder but are often accompanied by a push notification telling me a user “wants to send [me] a message.” I always know what it will say before I even unlock my phone to check. By far the worst one came from a user who asked how to get a tick a few times and when I didn’t answer, viewed my Story, noticed I was watching Gossip Girl for the first time, and sent me a spiteful DM telling me who Gossip Girl was, spoiling the show.

In receiving this unexpected aggression, anger, and attention, I’m not alone. Several women verified on Instagram told me similar stories — with their experiences ranging from annoying to creepy to scary. And yet, men in media who I spoke to about this phenomenon generally have positive feelings about Instagram since being verified. No, this isn’t representative of all men, but it’s been shown that women are twice as likely to face online harassment and the men I spoke to didn’t report, say, getting unsolicited dick pics at a higher rate.

The DMs I get may seem trivial compared to revenge porn or other online harassment people face daily, but my “PUBLIC FIGURE” folder has evolved from an uncomfortable joke to a museum dedicated to the hostility that manifests itself in various ways for women across the internet and in real life. The messages may not necessarily be dangerous, but other manifestations certainly are, which is why they’re all worth investigating.

According to Instagram, the checkmarks are designed simply to “help people more easily find the public figures, celebrities, and brands they want to follow,” but among users, they function more or less as a mysterious status symbol. The general assumption is that Instagram either confers a marking arbitrarily on accounts with thousands of followers or the people behind smaller accounts buy them.

How I got the tick

When my former boss asked me if I wanted my Instagram account submitted for verification, it never occurred to me the small marking would be controversial. All I felt was a little excitement, but I tried to be cool with my response.

I probably said something like, “Yeah, that would be super funny,” which, two years later, it still totally is, even though the tiny tick has brought me an outsized amount of harassment.

I don’t really self-identify as a public figure, celebrity, or brand; I’m a young woman who works in media, which bizarrely qualifies me for the badge as much as it qualifies Oprah. If and when I use my account to reach out to sources or act on behalf of a media company, it needs to be clear I’m not bluffing.

At present, I have about 2,600 followers. Similarly, 2,900 accounts follow my Twitter, which is also verified and is where I actually post my work, but I’ve never gotten any harassing messages about my verification on that platform. Twitter’s indefinite pause on verifying users may contribute to that — or perhaps, a Twitter verification doesn’t have the same weight as one from Instagram on the social media totem pole. At any rate, I’m expected to have a badge on the app where I share links to my articles, not on the one where I share pictures of my face. Getting Instagram verification almost felt subversive, if self-serving.

It also felt surprisingly validating to meet the standards for obtaining something so ostensibly prestigious. The feelings of success and belonging would prove short-lived, but there was a part of me, at first, that saw the badge as a sign I’d somehow made it, at least in terms of an admittedly subjective importance.

Like I said, though, I wanted to seem aloof with my boss, not like I actually cared. Online, it often seems like sincerity is the enemy of prosperity, but the dirty little secret is that we all do care. That’s why I ended up saying I wanted to be on the verification list with the rest of my coworkers even though I knew my friends were going to make fun of me for taking myself so seriously. (And they do!)

I was expecting the attention and ribbing from my friends, but I wasn’t expecting the explosion of outrage from total strangers. As it turns out, there are people who care a lot about their online image and have no problem making it known they, too, want a checkmark, even if it’s obvious they don’t know what its purpose is.

The "public figure" folder

The proof is in the “PUBLIC FIGURE” folder.

I’ve fielded emails and text messages about the checkmark, which always feel invasive, because I have contact information available on the page since, well, the whole point of the verified profile is to enhance my ability to do my job. I don’t usually respond to the messages or comments, but when I do, I just write that I work in media and didn’t buy anything. “I’m sure you didn’t get yours the right way because you don’t have much fans,” someone wrote back once, which is a pretty common theme among the messages, although the moralistic resentment over “the right way” added a unique touch.

Notably, four guys I’ve gone out with have brought it up in person, each with a different combination of annoyance and awe. One of them was an aspiring entertainer with no concrete acting credits. He admitted to googling me before our date (which was both our first and last one), then indignantly told me that if either of us should be verified, it was him, the actor. Another also worked in media and was frustrated no one at his organization knew anyone at Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, who could make it happen for him. I sipped my drink. What am I supposed to say to that?

I reached out to the Gossip Girl spoiler, who is purportedly a British teen, for this piece and they agreed to chat, but quickly retracted the agreement when I asked about the whole show-spoiling thing. The user did tell me I could quote this: “When I sent them things it was a joke and I never thought you’d open them because of your tick.”

SEE ALSO: Instagram's 'Hashtag Mindfulness' boom: The good, the bad, and the ugly

It’s not a joke, though, and if it were, it would be much less funny to the verified women I spoke to than the verified men. (Instagram declined to comment for this article, as did a few verified users claiming to be selling badges in the comments of celebrity posts.)

What about the others?

Andrew Kirell, the senior editor at The Daily Beast who has 755 Instagram followers, says he gets more spam messages, but not necessarily harassment. Jon Levine, The Wrap’s media editor who has 2,105, says his harassment has neither gone up nor down post-checkmarking. KHarlles, a recording artist with 3,178 followers, noted that there has been an increase in DMs inquiring how he got his badge, but largely, getting verified on Instagram “was very positive” and has been useful to his career.

Polly A., a verified musician with over 12,500 followers on the platform, however, doesn’t agree that the tick is useful in any way. She’s noticed “no effect” beyond “annoyed” messages from unverified users: “I guess the only thing I notice is that some people almost make you feel unworthy for having one if you’re not ‘famous.’”

When asked about any effect she’s seen since getting her checkmark, a female journalist with a little over 1,000 followers asked to remain anonymous (as did every woman in media contacted for this story, for fear of further harassment). Granted anonymity, she confided she’s seen a definite increase in not only the sort of spam reported by Kirell and KHarlles, but “weird guys” and “creepy messages” from men. The dick pics and “inappropriate comments” she described aren’t uncommon for any woman online, but the amount she receives tripled after she was verified on Instagram from one or two a month to five or six.

A second woman in media whose follower count sits around 3,000 said she, too, got an “insane amount” of spam DMs from people who wanted to purchase her account, but those halted and gave way to a wave of men offering out-of-line opinions on her appearance.

Another woman in media I spoke to declined verification altogether simply because getting it would have meant she would need to make her account public, which she was unwilling to do.

All of this raises a question, of course: Is it worth it? For women, especially, is solidifying a brand or public position through the use of the app’s verification badges really worth it?

For the most part, in spite of creepy messages and straight-up aggression, no one I spoke to, whether in entertainment or media, said they fully regretted getting the tick. Almost everyone mentioned a bump in engagement and, honestly, a little self-aware gloating among friends (along with the same roasting by those friends that I correctly anticipated, too).

Moreover, media women who have seen an increase in the receipt of creepy messages or unwelcome nudes noted that yes, their messages to potential sources get answered faster and more reliably than messages sent by unverified colleagues. Even with my relatively low following, I, too, noticed that when seeking out sources for this story and others, I got a solid response rate I just didn’t see before I got that badge. When it needs to, the checkmark does its job. It also happens to bring a lot of anger and dick pics with it.

Whether being verified is “worth it,” then, depends entirely on what “worth it” means to each individual. We already know women experience more harassment just for being Online While Female. The extra visibility of appearing at the top of comment sections or searches can only add to that.

One artist, Thea & The WIld, who has 2,545 followers, shared a particularly rosy outlook about her checkmark and whether getting it was worth it. “[W]hen I search for known people I want to follow, I obviously look for the verification sign to avoid ‘fake’ profiles and weird content,” she said.

She’s received a few nice messages from fans, she added, and while she’s concerned overall about the general addictiveness and vapidness of social media, she still gleans a little joy from her badge, which is probably the attitude we should all try to have: “For me, I think it just felt positive and probably affected some dopamine in my brain when that tiny mark appeared.”

If I could go back in time to the moment my former boss asked if I wanted to get verified, I’d probably still do it, too, even though I audibly groan whenever I get a push notification alerting me that someone I don’t know “wants to send me a message” on the app. After all, it does its job of identifying me as a legitimate, trustworthy professional, even though one user did rather unkindly (but fairly!) surmise I must not be “one of the better known” journalists after I commented on an influencer’s post. Like other women harassed online, I’ve embraced blocking and deleting and I can’t recommend it enough.

Maybe one day I’ll grow into my badge and have the kind of account that seems like it ought to have one to the average user, but I know if and when that happens, I’ll face harassment for something new, simply for being a woman on the internet. In the meantime, at the risk of committing the most grievous online sin and seeming like I care, I invite you to follow me on Instagram. I’m verified, you know!

Lindsey Ellefson is a journalist who lives in New York. Find her on Twitter, @ellefs0n.

WATCH: Queen Elizabeth II posted on Instagram for the first time

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oltnews · 4 years

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If you missed Craig Zobel's deliberately provocative thriller The hunt, which opened in theaters when multiplexes and independent art and art chains began to close, you're in luck: Blumhouse released VOD as a measure temporary, to reach an audience at home and in quarantine. It's funny and a little ironic, given that Universal removed the film from its original September 2019 release date out of respect for the one-two mass shooting tragedy of Dayton and El Paso, and out of fear of reaction. violence after Donald Trump attacked the film on Twitter. For a while it looked like The hunt had no future. But now, like so many other controversial films when they were first released, it is widely and easily available for streaming, without any protest or resistance associated with it. Part of this is the inevitable process of time - yesterday's content crisis has long been forgotten because there are new outrages to navigate. But part of that is just the silent self-selection of streaming movies. No one can tell if you are at home by yourself, that you are watching movies that have been picketed in theaters, whistled at festivals, or removed from the general public because of the backlash. The hunt is one such case - briefly the center of a firestorm, now almost forgotten, and easily accessible. And it's neither the most fascinating controversial film worth showing, nor the most controversial. If you want outcry and offense in the cinema - or at least to see what was considered provocative and too hot for theaters at different times - the films below are easily accessible. Photo: Universal Pictures The last temptation of Christ Once upon a time in the late 1980s, Martin “Gangster Movies” Scorsese produced one of his many enduring masterpieces, The last temptation of Christ, and was rewarded for his efforts with death threats, accusations of profanity and, in 1988, a terrorist attack on a theater in Paris, which was burnt down by Catholic fundamentalists while people were sitting inside and watched the movie on the screen. Scorsese survived the storm because only a guy who has spent his life struggling with his Catholic identity through cinema could do it, which is why MCU supporters who chase him for his comments on "cinema" are not just a little hit on his radar. The last temptation of Christ is just one of many films about Jesus with ruffled Christian feathers - see also Monty Python's comedy Brian's life, also decried as blasphemous, and Mel Gibson The passion of Christ, which in addition to being more gororous than the average splash film, also happens to be assertive anti-Semite. Last temptation remains the best of the films of Jesus which stirs the heckling, that is why we speak about it today with reverence rather than with repulsion.The last temptation of Christ is streaming on Netflix. The passion of Christ is on Amazon Prime. Brian's life is, at the same time Netflix and Amazon. Photo: Bloody disgusting Wife If you know the work of the provocative horror Lucky McKee, you know his film Wife, on a suburban family capturing, torturing and raping a wild woman. And if you know Wife, you probably remember the turmoil it caused when it premiered at Sundance in 2011. "It's not art," replies a spectator, withdrawn from the theater by security after causing an uproar during the screening of the film. McKee may or may not intend his barbaric film to get most of its publicity out of indignation, but either way, he probably didn't expect people to forget Wife as quickly and completely as they did. Pollyanna McIntosh, who played The Woman herself, released a sequel in 2019, Darlin », which came and went without getting a glance. Allowed, Darlin » was not a Sundance enfant terrible. But also grant that Wife was not worth it.Wife is streaming on PopcornFlix. Photo: Warner Bros. A mechanical orange Stanley Kubrick's ultra-violent dystopian exploration of behaviorism and morality received a "C" rating from the National Catholic Office for Motion Pictures; depending on who you ask, it can be more of an approval than a warning. In Britain, the film received a worse reception, being blamed in the courts and the press for having inspired crimes of the real life. But A mechanical orange Still enjoys its place in the top 100 of the American Film Institute, despite its reputation, or perhaps because of it. This representative persists to this day - even in 2020, the film is still a subject of examination, for better or for worse.A mechanical orange is commendable on Amazon. Photo: United Artists Cruise When William Friedkin announced his intention to adapt Cruise, a 1970 dough novel by New york times journalist Gerald Walker, New York gay community activists rebelled. Friedkin previously shot fire for his depiction of gay men in his 1980 film adaptation of Mart Crowley's play The boys in the group, and CruiseThe salacious content - about a serial killer targeting homosexuals in the leather subculture in New York - did not inspire confidence. As Friedkin and his team attempted to film the film, the New York gay community protested in force. For request of Village Voice journalist Arthur Bell, people tried to sabotage the production by pointing mirrors on the plateau of the East Village roofs; they blew whistles and air horns on the ground at a glaring distance from the shooting; they determined which Friedkin apartments were planning to use and blocked the stereos in the surrounding rooms. Their efforts were unsuccessful Cruise to be finished but it made hit a brick wall critically and commercially, so there you go. (Appropriately, the Village Voice was ultimately also responsible for the re-evaluation of the film.)Cruise is streaming on Vudu. Photo: A24 Swiss army man The prolific creative team's first feature Daniels was another Sundance film that brought audiences out of the cinema. Maybe it was the high altitude, or maybe the Sundance audience was just not willing to appreciate Swiss army manThe windy genius of a film wrapped around a pet joke and as a metaphor for vulnerability. "If my best friend hides his farts from me, then what else is he hiding from me, and why does it make me feel so lonely?" asks Manny, the turgid and flatulent corpse played by The Boy Who Lived, Daniel Radcliffe. Somehow, Manny's universal existential anguish has crossed the minds of sophisticated Sundance crowds. They missed out: the ode to the friendship of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert is today as close to cult status as possible, given that it only came out five years earlier. Swiss army man diffuse on both Netflix and Amazon. Photo: Paramount Pictures mother! Darren Aronofsky mother! goes so far from the deep end of his final act, where the unnamed poet Javier Bardem and the equally anonymous wife of Jennifer Lawrence are besieged in their home by leagues from his worshiping but surprisingly bloodthirsty fans, that protest c is like a bluff. To protest a movie, you have to understand it and understand mother!The complicated and conflicting symbolism is a major challenge. But the baby's cannibalism and the obvious biblical overtones were both enough to send the film's audience into froth, and a handful of his critics into the connotations. The game prompted Paramount to issue a statement explaining why they even bothered to release mother! at all, which seems to be a lot worse for Aronofsky's work than a CinemaScore "F" rating.mother! is streaming on Vudu. Photo: IFC Films The house Jack built It's slightly easier to imagine a fainting audience on the Riviera than to faint in front of the Egyptian Hollywood theater, so perhaps the reaction of Lars von Trier The house Jack built was to meet at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Von Trier does not make safe films. He makes deeply unpleasant films, designed to shock and frighten the audience, even at their most significant. The house Jack built, as a portrait of a serial killer, is not sure by its very nature. Combine that with the graphics and intimate aesthetics of von Trier, and the film had to be overwhelming at best. But the finger taps, tut-tutts and outrage in response to graphic sexual violence The house Jack built comes and goes, just like the film itself, which opened in December 2018 without causing as many tremors in the end-of-year speech. Maybe the people who missed it at Cannes decided to jump on it after hearing the details. Or maybe soulless brutality masquerading as art is not that interesting. In fact, it's a lesson that many filmmakers woo controversy - and finding it, at least in the short term - could be learned.The house Jack built is streaming on Amazon via Showtime. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. For more information, see our ethical policy. https://oltnews.com/7-of-the-most-controversial-movies-you-can-watch-right-now-polygon?_unique_id=5e9f8736720ef

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seagull-astrology · 5 years

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The Tumblr saga

At its apex, Tumblr had more users than both Instagram, now estimated to be worth close to $200 billion to parent Facebook , and Pinterest , which has a market cap of nearly $18 billion. In 2013, Tumblr sold to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. On Monday, the parent company of WordPress.com bought it for a pittance.

The precise amount is hard to pin down but insiders have observed that there are modest homes in Silicon Valley that might be comparable in price. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s former chief executive, once described Tumblr as an “incredibly special” property with “105 million different blogs, 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 sign-ups every day.”

“We promise not to screw it up,” she famously added. And now look where we are.

Tumblr was ostensibly a blogging site but it quickly became one of the dominant, if hard-to-navigate, social networks of the early aughts. It attracted users who made and shared memes, art, their random thoughts and, eventually, a sense of community. Its mechanisms were opaque to outsiders: For many years, it didn’t have a function for direct messages or even traditional commenting, forcing users to communicate with each other by, among other things, reblogging each other’s posts.

Since it was difficult or impossible for outsiders to insert themselves into conversations, and because it was and still is a place that allows pseudonymous accounts, the site felt safe for members of marginalized communities, says Alexander Cho, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Irvine, who coedited a forthcoming book on the history of Tumblr.

“Tumblr can be as anonymous as you want it to be, and that allows people to share in a way they might not on Facebook,” says Catherine Holderness, Tumblr’s senior community trends analyst.

But inherent in Tumblr’s structure, culture and even code base were, from the beginning, problems for any potential owner. On the business side, it operated under the assumption that it could make money off its users the same way people had since the invention of the banner ad: Build a big enough audience, and “monetization” will take care of itself.

Alas, Tumblr was inherently ill-suited to advertising, says Katrin Tiidenberg, a social-media researcher at Tallinn University in Estonia who has studied Tumblr for years. Its impenetrability was a challenge to advertisers. On top of that, many of its users interspersed their posts on various fandoms, obsessions and memes with sexual content. “A lot of advertising clients, particularly in the U.S., get disproportionately nervous about being seen next to someone’s boobs,” says Dr. Tiidenberg.

Advertisers instead turned increasingly to the ostensibly safer realms of Google and Facebook. Together, the two giants now suck up 57% of all digital ad spend, according to eMarketer. In addition to owning the biggest ad networks, their crown jewels are incredibly sophisticated advertising engines that drive measurable results for advertisers.

As these titans matured, they could attract the best engineering talent, the most advertisers, the most eyeballs and the most partners, riding a flywheel made of cash that spins faster and faster.

Yahoo, which hemorrhaged talent throughout the 2010s at both the engineering and executive level, couldn’t attract and retain the sort of people that could help its revenue-generating engine, that is its ailing ad network, to compete.

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More or less the same thing occurred once Yahoo joined AOL, sorry, Oath—oh wait, I mean Verizon Media—whose parent company essentially wrote down its entire value to zero in late 2018. Eyeballs, which this combined network had plenty of, weren’t enough in a climate in which advertisers had moved beyond the kind of cut-rate programmatic display advertising its sites were running.

The same thing happened in media, of course—such as the “newspaper” you’re reading now—and the response was a massive shift away from display advertising and toward subscription revenue.

But actually charging people to access its services was never really an option for Tumblr, built as it was primarily on the hopes, dreams and countless blog posts of teens all over the world. Kids often don’t have credit cards, and even if they do, they’ve been raised on a steady diet of free games, free video and free services.

It also doesn’t help that Tumblr, never a very polished or particularly reliable service to begin with, had a hard time going mobile. That’s where Google and Facebook ended up moving—quickly, through acquisitions and manic development—to maintain their revenue growth.

“The site was just fundamentally broken; it broke all the time” says Klaudia Amenábar, a senior media producer and comics vlogger who is also a self-described Tumblr power user. Now 24, she found the service at 16 and has been on it ever since, building a career in fandoms and social media from what she learned there. “The mobile app is a lot better now, but before, jokes about the mobile app were rampant on Tumblr,” she adds.

In the past year, Tumblr’s traffic has dropped by more than 40%, from approximately 640 million visits in July 2018 to around 380 million now. Much of that drop happened after the service implemented a ban on adult content.

Before the ban, Tumblr grew large precisely because, like the internet, it was open to the point of occasionally being seedy. The fact that it was riddled with adult material might have been a draw for some audiences and a turnoff to others. Its parent company Verizon launched a mostly automated effort to purge the service of all adult material, a dragnet that also eliminated much of the user-curated and user-generated content on the site. At that point the site collapsed, as its massive communities of fan-fiction writers, outsider artists and moody teens led their own exodus to other platforms.

“It was a long time coming,” says Ms. Amenábar. “A lot of people just stopped using it because they got older, Twitter became more popular, Instagram became bigger.”

Tumblr, still a powerful engine of internet memes and other ephemera, is potentially retro-cool but certainly not as cool as it was during its heyday. It’s like an old car that might become a classic if its owner can hang onto it long enough. That’s why its perch in the same family as WordPress.com is entirely appropriate.

WordPress.com is committed to supporting an activity—blogging—that can seem quaint in an era where if something isn’t shared on social media, it didn’t happen.

It’s entirely possible, as we saw with vinyl, wooden toys and email, that blogging—and, by extension, Tumblr—could make a comeback, or at least hang on as a valuable place for more thoughtful creation and engagement.

The real scandal of Tumblr isn’t that it’s now worth a fraction of its former selling price. The scandal is that Tumblr was ever valued so highly at all. Having a very popular product and only the vaguest idea how to make money on it does not, it turns out, a world-changing business model make.

Write to Christopher Mims at [email protected]

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linabrigette · 6 years

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Crypto and Twitter: A Toxic Combination, A Troubling Future

Michael J. Casey is chairman of BTC News Today’s advisory board and a senior advisor of blockchain research at MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.

The following article originally appeared in BTC News Today Weekly, a custom-curated newsletter delivered every Sunday exclusively to our subscribers.

OK, Ardor fans. You have your wish. Your favorite token is getting a mention on BTC News Today.

Not, perhaps, for the reasons you want. But they do say all publicity is good publicity. So, there you have it. The response to my column last week on layer-two solutions was mostly positive with the usual dose of critics, but it was the Ardor tribe who caught my attention when one reader’s tweet, complaining that I hadn’t mentioned the blockchain platform, prompted others to pile on with accusations of my bias and ignorance.

It got me thinking about how financial self-interest, which has always skewed people’s perceptions of the media they consume, is being taken to a new level when crypto tokens are involved.

I do believe blockchain technology and related ideas around prediction markets and reputation will one day help us sort through the free-for-all of competing truths that the social media age has produced. For now, though, I worry that all we’re doing is creating a global brawl of angry people, all believing that they and only they own the truth.

This is really not about Ardor. (From what I can tell, Ardor’s framework for enabling “child chains” makes an interesting contribution to the evolution of crypto technology.)

What this is about is how people invested in the multiple tokens attached to competing projects that similarly claim to be making some quantum leap in blockchain capability come to passionately believe that theirs is superior to everyone else’s and deserves more prominence than it’s getting.

In Ardor’s case, it’s the holders of the main platform’s ARDR token as well as those invested in the child chain Ignis token. But I could just as well be talking about holders of ETH, XRP, IOTA, BCH and yes, BTC.

Fanatical, blinkered investors are nothing new, of course. It once was the case with GE’s shareholders – definitely, not any more. It’s always been so for investors in Warren Buffet’s holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, and in this past decade we’ve seen it with Tesla. But there are two factors that make the phenomenon more extreme in the age of cryptocurrency.

The first is the sheer volume of coins and the large retail investor base they attract.

The second is that social media is now the primary means by which market-relevant information is distributed. And social media, for better or worse, is essentially anarchy.

Combine these two and you end up with something worse than the troll armies that already cause such public angst around social media. You get monetized trolls.

The scammiest way this plays out is with bots. Bailey Reutzel’s great little survey of some classic spam bot moments in “Crypto Twitter” shows how distorting the combination of crypto and social media can be.

But there’s also lots of human-led ugliness: anonymous trolls disrupting healthy dialogues with ad hominem attacks and coin-pumping tweets filling our news feeds.

Now I believe that, eventually, anarchic social media might evolve to point where it’s far superior to the traditional media model that preceded it. And, as I mentioned, blockchain-based “proofs” and skin-in-the-game staking systems might one day help us sort through this mess.

Under the old, centrally-managed system, where news organizations filtered the important public information before it reached its intended audience, there was an inherent constraint on the amount of information available. And there was an access problem.

So, just as ICOs have shown how access to capital might be democratized, one could argue that social media has also created a potentially more democratized model of access to publishing systems. (I say “potentially” because in many respects what has happened is we’ve shifted power from the old news establishment to a new form of media behemoth: the follower-rich celebrity – think Donald Trump, or Justin Bieber.)

However, with no viable, decentralized mechanism as yet for rewarding honesty and good behavior, or for processing information so that some kind of consensus can be formed around it, we’re left with noise. Worse, there’s a broken feedback loop in which metrics such as the market cap of a token or the followership of a social media account reinforce and confirm people’s biases.

We saw it with the XRP mob that jumped on the New York Times’ Nathaniel Popper after he cited bankers saying they weren’t using the token associated with Ripple. The mob was unleashed, ironically, by a former co-editor of TechCrunch and now vocal investor – Michael Arrington – who vehemently claimed that Popper must have made up his quotes.

The swarm of XRP fanboys was unmoved by the logic that for a reporter at the Times to do such a thing would be professional suicide – read about Jayson Blair for background on this.

Or there’s the IOTA gang that collectively pumped out an alternative narrative that my colleagues at the MIT Digital Currency Initiative who’d discovered flaws in IOTA’s hashing algorithm were conflicted by business interests. Or the gang of ethereum supporters who took as gospel truth Vitalik Buterin’s claim that BTC News Today is complicit in enabling crypto scams.

Attacks on the press have happened for as long as it has existed. That’s not a bad thing per se. Any functioning society maintains a vigorous critique of media organizations. Some form of bias is unavoidable in media coverage. It deserves to be questioned.

But news organizations are no longer the all-important filters they once were. They represent one, increasingly small sector of a vast array of sources claiming to offer relevant information.

And unlike those other individual and corporate sources, news organizations – the good ones at least, those that can get beyond their owners’ and their advertisers’ interests and practice sound journalism – shouldn’t be captured by the same heavily financial biases.

So it’s disturbing that we’ve gone from discovering Facebook’s #fakenews problem to the appropriation of that term by those who peddle the view that mainstream media is the main source of disinformation, to the even more extreme scenario in which a market for information is composed of participants with tokens whose value they want to protect.

If we’re going to tokenize everything, which may or may not be a good idea, this cacophony of competing truths peddled by different self-interested mobs will likely get even worse. What happens when celebrities and companies and dictators have their own coins, with armies of rabid supporters doing their bidding in this battle for truth? Decentralized solutions to this are still a long way off.

I’m not totally sure how we stop this train for now, except to make a plea formed by my own, unavoidable pro-journalism bias. I humbly ask that people in the crypto community have a little more respect for journalists who, while far from perfect, are at least trying to produce news and content that’s not skewed by their or anyone else’s investments.

Without them, what have you got?

Burning statement image via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, BTC News Today is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. BTC News Today is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.

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