obatherpeskulitpadaanak-blog

[twistedappletree]

lmao so i think the other girl working for my client is about to get fired for trauma dumping and making out of pocket passive aggressive comments constantly akdnakjds why can’t anyone just be fucking N O R M A L

**also pls excuse the typos in my tags omfg i’m so annoyed that i can’t type ahahahHAHAHA

[myshredda]

OKAY WAIT YOU REMINDING ME OF THE SPECIAL ONE- theory time again lets gooo: yellow is aro/ace to me and never wont be and its super weird to me that people glorify his partnership with his coworker because that just feels like a failure state unambiguously to me where you have a empty small talk lover- like remember the fucking retirement card where she repeats the same unfunny joke like. imagine a loveless marriage like that. i think i remember yellow saying something critical of the word "love" to that worm too so its not just in the cult episode where he "rejects love" BUT he wants community and family and basic human dignity. i have no idea how dhmis could keep making episodes but if they do i REALLY HOPE they expand on more non traditional relationships and all the diverse ways people can love each other and enrich their lives because FUCK thats so important and theres ENDLESS ways to do it ehehehe

So true so true so true. I've always found that a lot of emphasis has been placed on Yellow's relationship in the jobs episode as 'proof' of something, either his canon age, or sexuality or whatever. But there's a post floating around on here that I CANNOT find again about Yellow's 'relationships' always having hidden meanings behind them or being a type of manipulation from the simulation they're trapped in!

He and Special One don't have any 'relationship' other than it being a cohesion from Shrignolds cult in an attempt to trap him in the religion with the promise of true love. Honestly it's not even clear if she 'exists' or not, she didn't show up in person, she was more of a hallucination/vision of a person that Yellow could potentially meet in the cult. So yeah, no go there.

As for him and Claire, I don't think Becky and Joe would really plop a healthy relationship dynamic down in the middle of an episode about the horrific nature of capitalism and how a job will suck the life out of you until you're too old to be useful and then you're tossed aside. Like. It was clearly commentary about all the wonderful potential jobs you could have and instead getting stuck in a mindlessly monotonous position that doesn't pay you enough, doesn't give you any free time, limits the relationships you can have, and basically wastes your life. Yellow and Claire (while being kind of cute I can't lie, I'd love them to be friends) are an example of the way people will settle for the easiest available option, after all it's easy to 'fall in love' with a person you see every day. And Claire/Andy/Dunkin really don't have personalities outside of their job! Like they're representation of those who make their jobs their lives, so of course Claires gonna echo the same phrase over and over, it's all she knows! (I also love that the workers that represent being lost to your job are like. sentient tools at a factory that makes nuts and bolts and things. Literally the job is PART OF THEM)

So yeah, I also see Yellow as being Aro/Ace, and the 'relationships' he has in the show really strike me as a manipulation tactic by whichever teacher they're dealing with on any given day, not something real!

[gay-jesus-probably]

A beginners guide for skiing/snowboarding

It totally just occured to me that with nothing else to do this winter, people are probably looking at skiing as a good way to get out, do something, and remember that other human life exists within this universe while not exposing yourself to the threat of plague. And that’s a great idea! Because skiing is fun as hell and vastly superior to snowboarding in every way.

But I also realize that most people don’t have parents that consider skiing a necessity of life, and therefor didn’t start skiing pretty much right after they got the hang of walking. So, for those of you who want to get into the sport, here’s some useful advice from someone that’s been skiing for... I think about seventeen years? I’m honestly not sure.

And unless specifically stated otherwise, yes all this advice applies to snowboarding as well. They’re pretty similar sports.

Under the cut because this is very long and I’m not doing that to your dashboard.

Step one: Gear

- The most expensive part is the skis and the boots. As in, buying one pair of good quality skis + boots will probably be $1000+. So if you’re buying gear, you’d better be absolutely certain that you’re going to get at least a decade of use out of it. So, complete beginner? Don’t buy. Rent. Same thing for children; kids just grow too fast, they’ll need new gear every season. I know most ski shops will let you rent gear for a full season though, so that makes things a lot easier (and cheaper).

- Skiiers, get the hang of the basics before you get poles. They’re basically for extra balance, help moving over flats, and navigating especially messy terrain. Get some confidence on just skis first. Feel free to buy your own poles though; poles are cheap and they don’t come with any sort of performance level. Literally the only difference is height, grab type and paint job. Sizing is easy, you just need to be able to grab the handles with your elbows at a ninety degree angle and the tips on the floor. Ask if you’re not sure. Everything else is just personal preference. 

- Snowboarders, get wrist guards. That’s non-optional. You’ll be landing on your hands a lot. Save yourself the fractured wrists. Skiers can get them too, but snowboarders are the ones that really need them.

- Helmets are mandatory. For everyone. You are never too good for a helmet. Olympic level skiers have died from bad wipeouts without a helmet. Put your fucking helmet on. And I don’t mean a bike helmet or a skating helmet, you need to get a proper ski helmet. This is not optional.

- Goggles are also a must, but this one isn’t controversial. Keeps the wind out of your eyes, and also helps you see the hill better. Different tints are better for different lighting, but don’t worry too much about it; I’ve never bothered with different lenses. Just get a light orange tint; it’s best for flat light, which is the hardest conditions to see in.

- Get ski socks. They’re not hard to find, just make sure you get a pair that are comfortably tight. Loose socks cause blisters. And normally socks will not do, the socks need to be long. The tops should be under your knees, but still a good way up your legs.

- For pants, you want something light and comfortable. Sweat pants or leggings are perfect. Honestly, pajama pants will work in a pinch too. Don’t wear jeans unless you really hate yourself.

Step two: Staying warm

- Waterproof outside and layers on the inside. That’s what it all boils down to, really.

- A good winter jacket is your main concern. If your hood can come off, take it off, it’ll just get in the way. Not one of those long jackets either, you want your legs free. Also, zip up your pockets before hitting the slope! Nobody likes finding snow in their pockets. Nobody.

- Snow pants. Again, freedom of movement is the goal, make sure you’re fine. Also snowpants with suspenders may not be the best idea; there’s nothing worse than being on the top of a mountain and having to unzip your jacket to pull up a suspender. Also the snowpants go on the outside of the boots, not the inside. Just to be clear.

- Gloves or mitts. Again, waterproof is a must. If your hands get cold easily, mitts are a better choice here; you can have your fingers wrapped around a heat pack all day, while with gloves all you get is toasty palms and frostbitten fingers.

- Neckwarmer! It’s damn windy on the hill, cover your face up. You’ll be glad for it.

- Cycling back to the layers thing, to explain in more detail. The bottom and top of your clothes stay the same. Bottom layer is a comfortable shirt, which will be horrifyingly sweaty by the end of the day. Top layer is your jacket, which is waterproof and windbreaking. Everything in between is optional. Some sort of fleece or sweater is a good idea. Don’t wear a hoodie though, the hood will just annoy you all day. If you’re way too warm, lose a layer. If there’s no more layers to lose, unzip the jacket a bit. Do not take the jacket off. Seriously. Don’t.

Step three: Safety on the hill

The Alpine Code is the agreed upon universal code of conduct for skiiers and snowboarders on a hill. This is the most important thing you need to know. Not just because you’ll be in trouble if you break it, but also because not following puts you and everyone around you in danger.

Always stay in control. You must be able to stop, or avoid other people or objects.

People ahead of you have the right-of-way. It is your responsibility to avoid them.

Do not stop where you obstruct a trail, or are not visible from above.

Before starting downhill or merging onto a trail, look uphill and yield to others.

If you are involved in or witness a collision/accident you must remain at the scene and identify yourself to the Ski Patrol.

Always use proper devices to help prevent runaway equipment.

Observe and obey all posted signs and warnings.

Keep off closed trails and obey area closures.

You must not use lifts or terrain if your ability is impaired through the use of alcohol or drugs.

You must have sufficient physical dexterity, ability, and knowledge to safely load, ride, and unload lifts. If in doubt, ask the lift attendant.

This exact text will be on the back of your lift ticket, and on signs around the hill. These are the rules. Follow them.

To clarify some points:

- Stopping on the hill is totally fine; just stay off to the side, and make sure people can see you. This is especially important for snowboarders, because your stopping means sitting down. Be very sure that people will spot you in time to move out of the way. And if you’re in a group, line up vertically. Don’t collectively block the hill.

- When they say it’s your responsibility to avoid people in front of you, they’re not fucking kidding. If you can’t stop in time, you have to fall. It’s better than a collision, trust me. I don’t care if someone accidentally swerves directly in front of you, if your momentum is going to hit a person or thing, you need to stop that momentum immediately. This goes double if you’re about to hit a tree or something; please, for the love of god, fall. A wipeout will hurt. Hitting the tree can kill you.

- When you get off a lift, move. Immediately. There’s probably people a few seconds behind you, and you need to be out of the way. Also, if there’s multiple ways to go when unloading from a lift, make sure you know which way everyone on the chair plans to unload. Don’t fall over each other.

- For witnessing an accident, you don’t have to hang around and call ski patrol any time someone has a wipeout. Just pay attention to the other people on the hill, especially if you see a bad wipeout. If someone has a group of three or more, keep going; they don’t need you. But if you see a person wiped out alone or with one person, and they look like they’re struggling to get up, stop and check in with them. Ask if they’re okay. If the downed person is actually hurt, offer to go get ski patrol for them, even if they’ve got an uninjured friend; it’s better to have a stranger going for help while their friend stays.

- If someone wipes out and loses skis and/or poles up the hill from where they end up, grab them and bring them down if you can. That’s not alpine code really, it’s just basic manners. It’s incredibly hard to walk up a hill in ski boots; they’ll be eternally grateful to you.

Step four: Difficulty

If you look at a map of a ski hill, you’ll see every run marked with a symbol. That tells you how difficult that run is, by the standards of that particular hill.

Green circles are the easiest runs; these are gentle slopes that usually have lots of room to turn. I say usually, because CAT tracks also become green runs - those are the roads that brought machinery up to clear trees and stuff when they were building the ski hill. They’re a little narrow sometimes, but always a very mild slope. All green runs are groomed every day, so don’t worry too much about terrain. Most hills will mark their very easiest run, so that’s the place to start if you’re brand new.

Blue square is intermediate. They’ll be steeper than greens, but they’re usually groomed daily. Being steeper means they’re at more risk of ice, so watch out. Don’t try a blue until you’ve got some experience and confidence; if you’re a skier, you should have been using poles for awhile before you hit a blue. Make sure you’re confident in stopping, and know how to slow down. If you’re still relying on the snowplow instead of a proper brake, you’re not ready for a blue.

Black diamond is the hardest. Some of them are groomers, but plenty aren’t; thats how you get moguls after all. Black diamond runs are for very skilled skiers with years of experience. If you’re on a black and not feeling confident, then take it slow and careful, and don’t be ashamed to give yourself a muttered pep talk all the way down, possibly interspaced by frightened owl noises.

Double black diamonds are a symbol of mans hubris. These are never groomed. These are steep, messy, and personally hate you. If you’re not 100% comfortable on moguls, don’t take a double black. Even I don’t do double blacks; it’s just not the kind of skiing I prefer. Basically if you’ve learned something new from this guide, you’re definitely not ready for a double black.

Please remember that while these are universal symbols and meanings, every hill has a different standard of difficult. For example, a river valley or a man made hill will call their runs green, blue and black, but for a mountain skier the whole place would be very tame greens. Different area have different standards. If you’re trying a new ski hill, always assume that they’ve got higher standards than you’re used to. It’s better to underestimate your skill and do a few easy runs to warm up than to overestimate and find yourself stuck on a run you’re not prepared for.

Step five: Getting up the hill

While chairlifts are the classic method, there’s actually a lot of different ways to get up a hill, and no telling what a particular place will use. So here’s a full list of lift types, how to use them, and where you’ll probably find them.

Magic Carpet

It’s a conveyer belt. It’s literally just a big conveyer belt. You stand on it, and it brings you up. Short, slow, simple. These are usually found in areas meant specifically for beginners, at the very bottom of the hill. If there’s nobody in front of you and you’ve got skis, you can kinda shuffle walk up to go a little faster. Just don’t fall.

Tow Rope

These are like magic carpets, but a little more annoying. Instead of hopping onto a conveyor belt, there’s a rope being turned in a circle. You grab on, it drags you up, and you let go at the top. Again, these are found in basic areas. If you’ve got poles, hold them both in one hand, hold the rope with the other.

T-bar

Like a tow rope, but it’s raised off the ground and has bars shaped like an upside down T attached. You grab one of them at the bottom, get half under your butt, then hold onto the middle as it drags you up. If you’ve got poles, take em off and hold them in one hand. Each T can hold two people, one on either side. For the love of god, don’t try to sit down. It can pull you up the hill, but you’ve gotta work to keep upright. If you try and sit, you’ll fall backwards. If you’re riding a T-bar alone, it helps to have one hand holding the middle bar, and the other hand balancing out the other side of the T. T-bar’s are usually found on the lower mountain in easy areas, but they’re not uncommon at the very top for access to the hardest areas.

Poma Lift

Exactly like a T-bar, but instead of the T shape it’s just a bar with a plastic disk at the bottom. Unlike a T-bar, Poma’s are a single person lift; you just straddle it so that the disk is on your butt, and off you go. Yes, this means the middle bar looks incredibly phallic. That’s part of the fun. These are only found at the very top of the mountain, for access to the hardest areas. Like the T-bar, poles are held in one hand.

Chairlift

Ah, the classic. Chairlifts are the most common lift, and they come in many variations. Singles might as well be extinct; I’ve never actually seen a one person chairlift. Doubles are uncommon, and usually tend to be older and rickety. These days most chairlifts are triples, quads or six packs, although I hear eight person chairs are a thing in the Alps. Chairlifts range the entire mountain; look at the map and make sure you know you’re going to an area you can ski. For skiers, remove the straps on your poles, and hold them normally until you get the loading spot; once you’re ready to sit down, hold them in one hand. Snowboarders, remove one foot from your binding before getting in line. All chairlifts have either a safety bar or a windshield. Lower it once everyone’s sititng down, then just sit back and enjoy the view. No matter how tempted you are to check your phone, don’t do it unless you absolutely have to, and be very careful. If you drop something, you’re fucked. Don’t be concerned if the lift stops, that’s perfectly normal; someone might’ve fallen at the top or bottom, or needed help loading/unloading. Once you get to the top, everyone in the chair should communicate which way their going (to avoid getting in each others way), then raise the bar as you approach the top. When you reach the platform, stand up and push forwards.

If you don’t get off the chairlift in time, or fall down, don’t panic. There’s lift operators for a reason, and they’ll hit the emergency stop if someone falls in the unload area. Likewise, if you don’t make it off the chair in time, you’ll trip a wire as you go around and trigger an emergency stop, so that the liftie can help you down. Don’t just jump the few feet down, because then the liftie gets mad and you and also many people are skeptical about your sanity. Which I know. Because reasons.

Gondola

Finally, the mighty gondola. These bad boys are the comfiest ride, but also the most work to get on/off, so you’ll only ride a gondola to get from the base to the upper mountain. Before getting in line, remove your poles, skis, and snowboards. Carry them through the line. When it’s your turn to load, give your skis/snowboard to the liftie, who will load them onto the outside of the gondola you’re riding in; poles go into the gondola with you. Don’t be slow about it, cause the gondola won’t stop. Then everyone load in, have a seat, and enjoy a nice ride up in comfort and privacy. Check your phone, take pictures, look at the map, have a snack... you’ve got time, and you’re in a nice little bubble, so you don’t have to worry about losing anything. When you’re at the top, unload, grab your gear, and walk out of the way to put your skis/snowboard back on.

Step six: Everything else

Now for all the little details that’ll make the whole thing a lot easier for you!

Bring your own food if you’re on a really tight budget; ski lodges are like airports or theme parks. You’re a captive audience; everything is horribly overpriced. But if you do want a hot meal, tbh it’s usually worth it; ski lodge food is expensive, but they at least have the decency to make it good. Try to time your meals to be before or after the typical lunch rush; the lodges get horribly crowded around noon. ...Well, do that when the pandemics over; these days avoid the lodge like the plague. Because it is the plague. Your vehicle is your locker; bring your own lunch, and eat there.

Always have a spare pair of gloves/mitts in your boot bag. If you lose one, or one gets ruined somehow, you’ll be thanking yourself.

You should always have some essentials in your jacket pockets when skiing. All your stuff might be in your locker, but mountains almost always have multiple lodges, so you don’t want to be needing something when it’s an hour of lifts and skiing away. The universal necessities is some money (i find a 20$ bill is best), your phone, and a map if you don’t know the hill very well. If you use them, then extra hair ties, and a tampon and/or pad are also a good idea. Even if it’s not shark week. Doesn’t hurt to be paranoid. A protein bar or some sort of snack is also good, or gum/hard candies if you want. Also, in this day and age, have a mask in your pocket.

Weed is a traditional favourite of skiers and snowboarders everywhere; blazing is a popular way to pass the time on a chairlift. Just be careful not to drop anything, and you probably shouldn’t blaze it while skiing/snowboarding if you don’t have the skill and experience to safely do it while blazed. ...Oh and if it’s not legal where you are, you should probably pick a more subtle location.

In your boot bag, locker, or vehicle, it’s a good idea to have at least one bottle of water, some ibuprofen, blister packs, bandaids, and some normal socks, especially if you’re skiing. Ski boots are very uncomfortable footwear. You don’t really notice it on the hill, but after. My god, when you’re taking your boots off at the end of the day, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world. Being able to put on normal socks and shoes again is like a religious experience. Trust me. Normal socks. It’s so good.

Know the symptoms of frostbite! If your fingers or toes are numb and painful, it’s time to take a break and thaw. If it keeps happening, try getting heat packs; they’re little packets with chemicals in them, and as soon as you open the plastic wrap it starts a reaction that produces heat. It’s not hot enough to burn, and it’ll last all day. Keeps the fingers nice and toasty. They’re a skiing staple, you’ll love it.

If the group splits up, make sure you know where and when to meet up again. Don’t count on being able to text each other, cell service is not a guarantee. And if a member of the group isnt there at the end of the day, check with ski patrol; they might have been injured and wound up in medical.

If for whatever reason you can’t get back down the mountain on your own, head the nearest lift that goes to the base, and talk to the liftie. You can always ride the lifts down if you need to. There’s no shame.

If you’re riding up a lift and pass a tree completely covered in bras, panties, and those shitty plastic bead necklaces, don’t worry. Every good ski mountain has an underwear tree somewhere. It’s a time honored tradition. Respect the underwear tree.

If you’re skiing several days in a row, then taking care of your gear is top priority. As soon as you’re back home or in your hotel room, everything comes out of the boot bag and gets set out to dry over a heat vent. Boots too. Make sure to close all the buckles on your boots or they’ll be a bitch and a half to do up later. That step is extra important if you’re not skiing the next day; never leave your boots unbuckled.

Skiing is a very intense sport, and a good day of skiing is a serious workout. Plan your après ski. Hot tubs are perfect if you’ve got access to one; if not, take the longest, hottest shower you can stand. You need it; not only will it wash all that sweat off, but also it’ll make your life a little easier tomorrow. If you can get out of bed the next morning without groaning in agony, you probably weren’t skiing hard enough.

Finally, before going to a ski hill with chairlifts, please watch these two videos. It’s a two part review gleefully mocking a suspense/horror movie about three people getting stuck on a chairlift when a ski hill closes. To this day when me and my sibling are on a chairlift together and it stops, one of us will immediately declare that we’ll be trapped for a whole weekend, and the wolves are hunting us. It’s an extremely stupid movie, and an extremely funny review mocking it. The wolves are coming. Those notorious ski hill wolf packs.

[luked4nuke]

If, I were President of the United States. (I just wanna state I’m not a democrat or republican)

First I’d enforce Quarantine and extend it. I’d also attend the poorest families or individuals first and provide them with the financial assistance they need. People are struggling hard enough as it is living paycheck to paycheck.

Second I’d shut down the schools as I believe safty more important especially for the future kids who will rule this place. I also don’t like how schools give so much homework and stress. They just condition kids into beleiving working 40 hours a week is normal and that you should be lucky to have weekends. Staying in classes all day then returning home only to be forced to complete more homework that takes up time and robs them of social interactions. These schools don’t even test knowledge. They test obedience and reward them for being quiet little slaves that will slowly become a “regular worker.” They really don’t care about how smart you are, they test memory over all else, when they study a subject and pass the test they move on quickly to the next one stressing them out. If they failed the test, to bad they’re still moving on with you. (Sorry this got way of topic. I just hate how schools operate and also how low they pay the teachers)

Third I would dismantle the police force and create a new one. A better one that focuses on real problems like sex trafficking and drugs. All the horrible crimes that are allowed to fly under the radar. Any excessive use of force would be heavily punished. Fired, fined and jail time. No shooting at peaceful protesters, seriously dafaq is wrong with them unleashing hell upon unarmed civilians and sneaking in rioters to escalate it to justify the force.

Fourth, gold is a finite resource. Pretty much all the money you’ve ever spent is fake, all digital backed by nothing. Personally I hate it but you’ve all becomes achstomed to it so I would attempt to fix the economy so people can afford essential things, like homes and food. Instead of kicking out homeless people Id build shelters. They make it to easy to fall down into poverty and nearly impossible to climb back up. Once you’ve been arrested, once you’ve been homeless, you understand the struggle of trying to reintergrate with society. The easiest path become the dark one. I would attempt to control the population, America is a gigantic habitat and likewise it has a carrying capacity. If you’re gonna argue people have to pay unreasonable amounts of money for food you’re crazy.

Immigrants are definitely allowed as long as they follow the rules and don’t commit crimes. America was litterally founded on immigrants. American stole land from the natives violently and even managed to capture Hawaii, which was its own nation. They taxed us and recognized us as a small power. Iolani Palace has electricity flush toilets and even phones before the White House did. Queen Lili’uokalani signed in duress. It horrible and sheforfeited her whole kingdom in exchange for the people, as a leader should. The people make a country, the government already should put the people first. Without all the hardworking Americans working, there is no country.

We don’t serve the government. As a government worker we serve the people. It’s our duty to ensure everybody is treated fairly. To make sure everybody that we oversee has the essentials for life, a home and food.

And for LGBT rights. I personally don’t care what the heck they do. Love is love, let it be. They can chose to identify as whoever they want and pursue relationships with whoever. You can’t force things onto people. America is supposed to be freedom personified, we can chose to do as we please as long as we don’t bring harm to others. Those camps are wrong. America is also religion free, you can be whatever you want, Christian Muslim, litterally anything. Being a satanist is totally legal as long as you don’t hurt anything. Believe in what you want and don’t force it on others. Gay people are amazing! We all are, were all human and we can change and create change. We are all human at the core and we always have been. We have a right to love, and to be loved by all around us. Love is love, let it be, theres always been love. I can identify as a man or woman, and I can damn well love either as I please as long it’s reciprocated. I’d always rather say I love you too much then not enough.

Climate change is real. The pollution of those stupidly large companies is also VERY real. As an individual you contribute less than a percent of the actual pollution, it’s literally the big corporations. That needs to stop. I’m not exactly sure how but I AM GOING to start a wave of change that will benefit the worlds health. We all live here. This is not political, I don’t have time for games, scientists that have studied their whole lives are begging for us to change. We can all have solar electricity farms and then it’d be FREE. “But you can’t charge people for that you can’t make money.” I’m NOT TRYING TO MAKE MONEY I DO NOT CARE ANOUT MONEY. IM AIMING FOR SOMETHING BIGGER THAN GREED THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANITY. I don’t care about ruining electric companies and other random fossil fuels bullshits that will run out, I want the future to be bright!

Screw it im going off the rails, schools main courses should focus on stuff like self sustainment, like farming and wilderness survival. Creativity because that’s the most human thing about us! Empathy basic Psychology. Kids can get mad they should learn and understand why. Understand why they feel the feelings they feel and giving them all better emotional control. EMPATHY. They need to learn things like taxes since they’re such a big part. Also why the heck are taxes so complicated. It’s just targeting the illiterate foreigners and immigrants who struggle and try to understand it and I believe that’s horrible. Make it easier to become apart of America the land of freedom and the getaway from the crueler areas of earth. Maybe just limit the population. Also seriously fuck off with taxes! Why the hell are you charging and taxing 14 year olds that aren’t allowed to vote, thats taxation without representation.

Taxes should be like Mario kart and Ancient Greece. Quote from some thing I googled

“The philosopher Aristotle developed the theme. His "magnificent man" gave vast sums to the community. But poor men could never be "magnificent" because they did not have the financial means. True wealth consists in doing good, Aristotle argued in the Art of Rhetoric: in handing out money and gifts, and helping others to maintain an existence.

The idea is simple the higher up you are on the financial ladder the more you have to pay taxes and contribute to society. The large taxes from the rich help fund financial aid for the poor and stuff. The rich did not earn that money they climbed to top on top a mountain of millions of shortcuts and underpaid workers It should be an honor to be taxed and help the poor people survive. Like in Mario kart, the higher you’re placed the harder it is to maintain it and the last place people always get the better power ups giving them a constant fighting chance. At most I believe wealth should be hoarded to sustain like one generation of kids, two at the most. Maybe three but theres no reason anybody should have all that money that your never going to spend or all that money that becomes worthless once a war or breaks out or aliens attack or something. Life is more important than money. Something simple everyone should consider.

I think everybody should be able to pursue a career and each career should be sustainable. Enjoyment in a job of your choosing without worrying about financial burden. Jobs would be divided into smaller simple groups and the pay would based on their contribution to society. Like doctors getting paid more and getting teachers paid more, but small retailers wouldn’t get paid as much but they could survive not living paycheck to paycheck. The motivation is everybody should free to pursue the hobby they love without being punished. Maybe little Timmy doesn’t want to be a firefighter, maybe he desires a simple fun life selling flowers. That’s fine! Maybe they don’t wanna become the hero but it’ll be an honor to society. As long as you have a job that contributes to society you can live for free. If everybody is constantly trying to make the most profit, then we all become a bucket of crabs dragging each other down. I can’t sell my $10 good that costed me $2 to make. Also the whole buy back thing irritates me, I spent $60 on this goddamn game and GameStop can only give me like $10 in store credit or $5 in real life? That’s isn’t fair and that applies to pretty much everything. That’s $1000 phone you bought is barley worth $357 right now. I’m pretty sure it didn’t cost that much to make these things but like DAMN. Capitalism sucks.

In summary, I don’t know much about politics but I would be the human party. I don’t care about left or right. I’m the one that doesn’t care about money. I care more about life and creativity. Peoples right to enjoyment and living a happy life with others regardless of gender. Survival of the human race and advancement into the future where more things are free and we can constantly focus on creating an even BETTER one. We can’t go anywhere without each other especially if we’re all just a bucket of crabs. To greedy and self destructive constantly looking out only for themselves. Seriously get your act together humans before you kickstart your own downfall. If we’re all trying to make a profit, nobody does. The best things in life are free. You can pursue wealth for your future or you can focus and live and enjoy and love the now. Mario kart style, where all in this race for life and we all deserve a winning chance.

[ssweeneys]

i’m having a REALLY bad day

or really past couple of weeks where work is concerned and i just wanna vent bc you know sometimes people out there in the working world understand ya know???

its long, beware. idek if i’ll keep this up its more so for me to just let it out.

so like i’m an office admin for a company (we’ll leave it nameless for protection purposes) and like i supervise receptionists for my office so i’m kinda an office manager but not technically? if that makes sense.

anyway. people these days just don’t want to fucking work like EVER and like to start jobs and then up and vanish to collect that unemployment which to me is really just dumb since there are rules to it in every state and nine times out of ten you’re making like 60% of what your normal paycheck would be and thats surely not enough to live on, so like ??? i don’t get it.

there’s been a constant rotation of receptionists come and go over the last couple of months and two girls who work for me have stepped in on numerous occasions. one lady is in her 60s and doesn’t know anything about computers and is kind of dense?? to say the least. nothing against old ladies. i actually find a majority of them cute or hilarious bc they say what they think and dont give a f*ck who it offends and sometimes that blunt honesty is refreshing and you just need it in a world where people bullshit you 24/7 to further themselves for selfish gain and yaddy yada

anyways.. over recent weeks she’s become more and more intolerable to deal with. i ask her to do things and she gives me attitude and its like the simplest of things.. like email this person, make sure you let this person know they got a package, etc, etc. she can’t do even the most basic of tasks without screwing up. her attitude is just atrocious.

and due to people coming and going i’ve had to alter our schedule a lot. recently, one girl requested off so i adjusted the older lady’s hours (lets call her--carla) mind you carla only works 1 day a week and i’ve been super generous in giving her the entire week of christmas off so -- yeah.

anyways the girl who requested off (we’ll call her nicole) told me she didnt need those days off anymore and so i fixed the schedule one more time to her original days/hours.

now, i print off the schedule every time a change is made and whoever is at the reception desk i tell them to let the other girls know and post it right by the computer they sit at every day so theres no excuse for anyone to say i didnt make them aware. well carla is not the brightest bulb as we already established and she doesnt pay attention so we pretty much have to coddle her apparently and make sure she understands (although its pointless bc she doesnt no matter how hard you try to explain something to her) ANYWAYS she comes in on nicoles day when she wasnt supposed to anymore bc the schedule was fixed, posted, etc. and she gets mad when i ask her why shes there. and yes, i understand that the rotation has fucked us all over and up in so many ways. she is not the only victim here. this has been stressing me out left and right and to no end for MONTHSSSSS. so like i get it? i’m sympathetic to that. i understand the confusion and frustration, i’m right there with them.

HOWEVER, because she’s annoyed/mad/whatever she gives me attitude all day yesterday and is flagrantly disrespectful. i’m her supervisor, regardless is someone upsets you, act professional.

but she doesn’t. we know that. or at least I DO. anyhow.. she’s mad. she’s pissed off right? she’s got an attitude. she sees the new schedule, she brings it to me in my office and asks if its the correct one for tomorrow WHICH SHE IS ON!!! let me make that clear. she was on. she asks if its correct, i’m in the middle of composing an email so i take a moment to respond ‘yes’ she huffs, storms off and goes “you know what? nevermind” i’m like.... okay?? i brush it off. i’ve been brushing off her poor attitude all damn day and i dont say A THING. BC I GET IT. I UNDERSTAND. IM SYMPATHETIC TO THAT. we all have bad days. we all get a little frustrated sometimes. we’re human, yeah?

yeah. right. ok.

so then like... carla is working the morning shift for nicole. both carla and nicole showed up. carla pitched a fit bc she came in and was already there and didnt want to go home so nicole was so sweet about it and said thats okay, she can work i understand. bc even though nicole is like half her age, she’s MATURE.

at this point i dont even understand why carla is so upset? she got to stay. she got the hours. she’ll be making the money. all is good right? WRONG.

when the next girl comes in for the afternoon shift, i over hear carla telling her about the mishap that happened that morning (yesterday) and my office is literally maybe 6-7 feet from the front desk so i can hear EVERYTHING that goes on. i mean this is my job. i’m pretty much in charge of making sure the office is running, our employees are happy, etc.

so yeah i over hear carla telling this girl that and i quote “yeah nicole came in this morning and the schedule was switched around and i stayed because i was already here. (then something unintelligible I cant make out bc her voice lowers) you know, it really pisses me off that this keeps happening.”

SHE SAID THIS. TO A NEW GIRL. MAKING ME, NICOLE, EVERYONE LOOK BAD EVEN THOUGH SHE GOT WHAT SHE WANTED, NICOLE APOLOGIZED, I APOLOGIZED FOR THE MISHAP, IVE DONE EVERYTHING FOR THIS LADY TO PACIFY HER OR WORK WITH HER OR COMPENSATE HER.

so its so infuriating, disrespectful and really downright disgusting for her to trash me, my name, etc to someone. but you know what? I DONT SAY ANYTHING. I dont cause a scene. I go about my business and let it roll off my shoulders bc at this point I know if I say anything its just going to turn ugly and I’m in a professional setting. Sometimes its better to bite your tongue, hold your head up high and move the fuck on about your business.

NOW... oh now, we’re on today. carla is scheduled to work. she came into my office, confirmed it, she was FULLY AWARE OF THIS.

so nicole calls her 5 mins before shes scheduled to clock in and is politely like hey you on your way? and carla is like oh no i don’t work today.

BITCH! THE FUcK YOU MEAN????? WE CONFIRMED THIS LITERALLY!!!!!!!!

omg i cannot at this point i really cannot

but lets proceed... so carla. she’s like yeah i dont come in, tells nicole to check with me. nicole comes to me, i smh and just sigh and am like ok i’m sorry can you please call her back and tell her shes supposed to be here and if theres any issues, transfer the call to me. so nicole calls her, they’re talking, carla is being a cunt (sorry at this point you are) and so i talk to her and shes like you know, this is so frustrating i came in there i asked you if i was supposed to work and you said no (the other girl she trash talked to idk who to name her) and IM LIKE SITTING THERE GOING ????? WHEN????? TO MYSELF BC WE JUST HAD THIS CONVERSATION

MY PATIENCE IS SO THIN, ITS NON EXISTENT AT THIS POINT IM OVER IT

IM TIRED

IM SO FUCKING TIRED AND SICK OF HAVING TO PICK UP THE SLACK AND DO EVERYTHING MY FUCKING SELF BC NO ONE CAN COME TO WORK, DO THEIR JOB AND GO HOME.

can i just make a point too that we make $12 an hour here. sometimes we are LITERALLY SO BORED we have nothing to do. we can read books or watch netflix if no one is around or i even have time to rp at times. so like THIS IS THE EASIEST JOB IN THE WORLD A FUCKING MONKEY could do it.

all you do is answer phones and transfer calls or send an email

its LITERALLY. THAT. FUCKING. SIMPLE????

so like i just dont get it

but back to the point... carla is arguing with me, basically saying my communication sucks, i’m unprofessional (which is laughable but ok) etc...

and i just cant hold it in anymore?? and i’m like well carla, i’m sorry you feel that way and i understand where you’re coming from but i don’t appreciate that you were disrespectful yesterday, you told (new girl) that you were pissed off about what happened and proceeded to talk about me in a really unsatisfactory way.

and she WANTED TO TRY AND SAY THAT THIS WAS A DEFAMATION TO HER CHARACTER. WHEN SHE FUCKING SAID IT!!!!!!!!!!! i mean you can’t but if you were to ask anyone i know i have freakishly good hearing and it gets on my family’s nerves all the time bc i need quiet when writing and i have to beg them to turn their tvs down low just so i can concentrate.

I FUcKIng HEARD THESE EXACT WORDS COME OUT OF HER MOUTH!!!! and she wants to sit here and say that i’m defaming her character.

NO BITCH. Im repeating what I fucking heard you say!!!

why would i make that up? why??? how does that benefit me in any way??? what does that do for me???? NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! i’m not benefitting from anything here.

in addition when talking to her on the phone i bring up the fact that she brought the schedule to me (the correct one which SHE IS ON) and asked me to verify if it was correct. but then proceeds to say in the same breath (contradicting herself) that she’s going off the old one????? like okay????? but you’re wrong?? SHE EVEN SAYS ITS AN OVERSIGHT ON HER CHARACTER, SHE ALREADY MADE PLANS YADDY YADA, SHE CANT COME IN TODAY

moral of the story is... she’s dumb. she’s a fucking cunt. and i hate people who try to spin things and victim blame and tell you you’re defaming their character when you call them out on something real they actually said because they’re scared little pussies and can’t just admit its what they fucking said.

yo i’d have a lot more respect for you if you just admit it. i’m not even mad??? i dont give a fuck what you think or feel about me. when i leave here every day i dont come home and cry about work or how people feel about me there.

work me is different from real me. I. DO. NOT. FUCKING. CARE. work people do not know me on a real level only a professional one. i am here to do a job, to make money, to pay bills, to LIVE. i am not here to fret over the opinions of people who do not follow me home, who do not know the real me. WHO. DO. NOT. FUCKING. MATTER.

POINT FUCKING BLANK.

THANK YOU AND GOODBYE

like seriously?? GOD FUCK! i’m so angry.

if you read all of this, like thanks for letting me vent to a total stranger lmao you’re a real one, may you be blessed today and always.

onto that note... i gotta get back to work. (lmfao fucking irony at its finest)

[uiruu]

I see posts sometimes saying not to correct people’s grammar and pronunciation especially if theyre a non-native speaker, and I wholeheartedly agree, but sometimes they say stuff like “English is a fucked up language and none of the rules make any sense” and stuff like that, and thats a really common sentiment among English speakers and stuff and you see it in conversations about other topics too, yeah, idk about that though

English isn’t some outlier language. As languages go.... I mean.... it’s a language, lol. It’s not hard or easy. It just is what it is. It might be hard for a speaker of Mongolian but easy for a speaker of German, because English is related to German and a lot of the grammar and especially vocabulary is extremely similar. Learning English might also just be hard for one speaker and easy for another, even if they both are coming from the same other language, just cause some people learn languages easier than others. it happens. 

English’s spelling got to where it is for all sorts of historical reasons... basically just a mix of native Germanic influence, early French/Norman loanwords, and borrowings from Latin and Ancient Greek for “sophisticated” words, but that last thing isn’t unique to English and exists in every European language so actually those words are often some of the easiest to remember for learners who come from European languages. English’s spelling isn’t even thaaat bad. like, sure, if you hear a word you won’t necessarily know how to spell it, though you can probably think of a handful of the most likely ways, but if you see a word written there’s usually only a couple ways to pronounce it. and yeah, i know, it should be exactly 1-to-1, only one way to write something and only one way to pronounce what was written, but English is hardly the only language with this problem. With French, you can know exactly how to pronounce something that was written, but you have countless options of how to spell something that you hear. With Chinese, you literally won’t have a clue how to write something you hear or pronounce something you see unless you just learn it. Sure, there are clues with radicals in Chinese characters, but they’re only clues, not guides. 

But you know what? None of that is all that important at the end of the day. It would be nice if writing was super clear right from the get-go, but it doesn’t seem to be that big of a barrier to learning, because people do it all the time. Like I said with Chinese, it’s incredibly daunting to have to learn a character for each word, some of them with very little information in the way of meaning or pronunciation... but... people do it, and have done it for thousands of years. If kids can grow up learning to read and write in Chinese, then it must not be as impossible as you would think, you know? With English too, like, clearly it gets the job done well enough that we’re able to communicate. It’s not that big of a problem. And it’s definitely not without rules and things that are extremely common vs completely unheard of, like, it’s something we just get a feel for. And like, okay, so there’s plenty of words that could be simplified, or words where you just kinda have to learn that it’s pronounced a certain way cause you’d never guess it on your own, something like “laugh” for example. But... think of it like Chinese characters, you know? We see that word and know how to pronounce it because we’ve learned it. It’s not that different from the concept of a character that you are supposed to recognize and know how to pronounce. And we do. 

And the bigger thing is just.... writing has nothing to do with language. At all. Countless people learn languages without ever learning to read or write them, even their own native languages. I know that seems like an obvious thing to point out, but bear with me. If we remove the conversation of writing entirely.... then is English actually that hard of a language? Like, it may be hard for a specific person, and it depends on where youre coming from and how you’re learning it but... doesn’t that apply to learning any language? Is there really anything uniquely difficult about English, in terms of the actual spoken language? We have a ton of vowels, and related words often change vowels based on position of stress... like “unite” (juˈnaɪt) vs “unity” (ˈjuːnɪti), but that’s not that uncommon, that happens in so many languages it would take too much time to list them all. Changing the vowel when you make something a plural, like “man” to “men” and “goose” to “geese” happens in literally every Germanic language. The fact that English’s vocabulary seems to be like mostly words of Latin/French origin and native Germanic words aren’t as common... that’s something that is found literally everywhere... about 60% of Korean words are of Chinese origin, for instance, and while English and Latin are in the same language family (Indo-European), Korean and Chinese are not. This is just something that happens in languages, especially one that was at one point on the bottom end of a stark difference in power and status. Nowadays plenty of languages obviously have a huge number of English loanwords. I obviously wish that wasn’t the case, but all I’m saying is that that’s just something that happens when two languages come in contact. So what is really unique about English at all?

I would say... nothing, lol. There’s nothing unique about English. It’s just another one of the thousands upon thousands of languages in the world. I understand the impulse of like... hearing nationalists say that English is the best language ever and wanting to challenge that by saying actually it’s the worst and it’s a nightmare language... refuting the idea of English being an exceptional language by asserting that it’s an exception in the other direction...  but I think the more radical and correct thing to do is to remove the notion of there being exceptional languages in the first place. Anything you can say in one language, you can say in another. Languages are tools, not products. 

Anyway this has nothing to do with correcting someone’s grammar or pronunciation or even spelling, it’s just that a post talking about that is what got me thinking about this. I’m on board completely with the sentiment of that post though. 

[charlyoddsox27]

its 6am, i havent slept, im bored, so im posting a list of the mercs in order of whom i like the most and reasons why, because thats something i should do i guess?

here goes

(spoilers for the comics down below but either way i think im the only person on earth who has never read them before now)

~~~

~~1. Medic~~

reasons for being my favourite:

• fucking. look. at. him. 👌

• 'mad german doctor' is one of my favourite tropes and he is a pretty bang-on satirical depiction of it

• cute-ass german accent

• he has pet pidgeons hE LOVES HIS PIDGEON PALS THEY KEEP HIM COMPANY

• healers are the most respectable class imo and since Medic pretty much started it he's automatically the best, thats how it works right?

• he sold some random persons soul to satan in exchange for a ***ballpoint pen*** and can i just say, fucking mood??? (he is literally the "i'd sell you to satan for one cornchip" meme)

• "yes, Archimedes...I couldn't agree more." *shudders* b oi .. .

• so many more reasons to love this gross old doctor so little room in Tumblrs posts.

~~2. Spy~~

reasons for being my second favourite:

• cranky, done with everyones shit, just wants to be left alone, fucking mood

• he's a spy i mean c'mon. look at the swanky-ass suit, look at the class radiating from this asshole.

• he may be a dick but he has a soft side he's just too jaded to show it most of the time (see: Scouts death in the comics?? real tears. honestly wish they'd panned that out more.)

• masks are hot tbFH--

• he enjoys a nice glass of whisky by the fireplace and so do i (fun fact: france is the biggest importer of scottish whisky in the world so its a nice touch)

• shapeshifting is fucking cool are you serious like he can just. do that. what a legend

• "i have a cyanide pill in one of my molars, if i break it then spit some in your mouth before i die, we can avoid being tortured." *'heavy' bursts in to save them* "PFFTHBTHF--"

• "SEDUCE ME."

• arrogant frenchman is one of my other favourite tropes and this is the most arrogant frenchman ive ever seen

• he's the only fully sane Merc, maybe apart from Engie.

• people love to hate him bc he's an asshole but...come on. after working with all those other weirdos for years, you'd be pretty jaded too.

• as a gross shipper, he's the easiest and the most fun (imo) to ship with Medic (rip me)

~~3. Pyro~~

reasons for being my third favourite:

• would have tied with Soldier if it werent for that one picture of them in the comics holding a puppy over their head with the most adoring expression on their mask??? good Pyro. goodest Pyro.

• doesn't do much in the comics but makes up for it in pure charm. look at that soulless face and tell me you dont love it.

• ambiguous gender ambiguous gender amBIGUOUS GENDER AMBIGUOUS GENDER. she/he/they? trans? nb? whatever you headcanon, it'll never be confirmed so its literally up to your own imagination. fucking ace, Valve 👌👌👌

• likes to burn things. god damnit. they like to burn things, guys. but they enjoy it so much, you just cant hate them, you can only feel a sympathetic joy that this precious lunatic is having fun in their own little world.

• canonically mentally ill (schizoprenia? it could be hallucinogenic drugs but i like to think its schizophrenia.)

• pretty sure they burned a pair of pedophiles in the comics. at least i think thats what those panels were insinuating. "lets open an orphanage and have an endless supply of kids to--" sounds pretty red-flaggy to me tbh. plus they were the villains so, eh?

• bludgeoned a bear to death until its skull was pulp because it insulted their special interest. you go, Pyro.

• for a few bits in the comics they have a really cute family dynamic going on with other Mercs, Soldier for example."Miss Pauling, Pyros on my side of the car." "Miss Pauling, Pyro cut off my hand." fuckin' cuties.

• when they start putting on like 50 shirts to keep warm in the Russian mountains. chubby.

• a gas mask that can function as both badass, and completely adorable.

• just. everything about them. how could you not love them. they're not in the wrong, you are. stay away from my misunderstood child and let them burn things god damnit.

~~4. Soldier~~

look I'm sorry, I love Soldier and he was gonna be tied with Pyro but that fucking puppy drawing sold me.

• absolute gold every second he speaks. he could sneeze and i'll laugh.

• such a dumbass you cant get annoyed at him for it. like. just agree with him and move on. no point reasoning with a boulder. "haha! silly Miss Pauling, thinking theres different types of blood." Medic: "haha yes! indeed, silly."

• HUTTAH *NECK SNAP*

• i'm not American and even i can see how blatantly his character mocks stereotypical Patriotic Americans™. but its so dumb and laughable, its adorable.

• EVERYTHING ABOUT HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH ZHANNA IS A BLESSING. EVERYTHING.

• the first "meet the Mercs" video i ever saw was "meet the Soldier" so he holds a special place in my heart

• (preaches about experiencing the horrors of war; has never actually been to war. shh dont tell anyone though--) *neck gets snapped*

~~5. Demoman~~

• I'm Scottish. even though his accent is absolute garbage (no offense to the VA), any representation is very nice.

• Black AND Scottish?? i mean has a character like that even existed before TF2??? amazing example of representation right there. there are barely even any black people in Scotland, how did this happen. I love it. more of this, please.

• he's a drunk guy who blows shit up for shits and giggles and god I wish I could too, sounds like a miracle stress-reliever.

• his sassy black scottish mother. combining the stereotypical black mother with the stereotypical scottish mother is literally the best thing that ever happened.

• the bit in the comic where Medic explains that Demo can't remember what happened to his eye bc he scooped out part of his brain, and the look on Demo's face. just. the look.

• again, he's scottish, he's stereotypical, and he's awesome.

~~6. Sniper~~

• underrated

• piss jars. piss jars everywhere.

• "no dad, im not a crazed murdering lunatic, I'm an assassin. ...well one's a job and the other's mental sickness!!"

• "meet the Sniper" has kickass music

• ruffled gross old man who isn't actually old, he's just seen some SHIT

• actually given development in the comics + some really good scenes with Spy.

• so suave...so...handsome. handsome ruffled bushman. me like.

• he dies first in the comics but gets brought back and gets a cool-ass scar. and then he's just walking around naked everywhere for the rest of the comic. Medic, where the fuck did you put his clothes.

• isn't actually Australian. thats like one of the biggest twists in the comic. "no wonder i was never inhumanly strong and my chest hair didn't grow into the shape of Australia!!" Classic.

• says "bugger" a lot and i love that word

• he needs a hug, let me hug him. and give him a bath.

~~7. Heavy~~

I'm gonna be crucified for putting the big lad so low but i promise i dont dislike any of the Mercs. he'd be higher up but...ive never really liked big huge tank-men tbh :/

• loveable as fuck

• will murder you if you bully his puny little Medic

• i looove Russian accents omfg

• he like big gun. i can respect that.

• when Medic was killed and he went APESHIT on Classic!Heavy and I lost my fuckin' mind over that shit

• he probably has a soft spot for small cute animals. i love imagining him being swarmed by Medics flock of doves and petting them like "good bird...so many good bird..."

• actually smarter than people give him credit for???

• i really really wish his character was a lil more fleshed out but. that's just me. i love him but he doesn't have the same appeal to me as Medic or Spy.

• his entire relationship with Medic...ugh. yes. best friends and/or boyfriends. all good to me 👌

• he named his gun Sasha and that's adorable

~~8. Engineer~~

• gOD, FUCK, I REALLY WISH HE DID MORE IN THE COMICS. i barely know anything about his character. i like him a lot but...god, he...he doesn't...do.....anything.......

• he built a cool robot arm for himself and AI turrets and teleporter machines and guns that fire magic healing powers and immortality machines, in the 1960s. what. some kind of wizard fuckery is this.

• smoothest voice in the west

• "y'all"

~~9. Scout~~

oh god i really am gonna be crucified. i dont hate him i just. like him the least.

• shitboy

• reminds me of a shitty ex but also kinda relateable in a way

• some genuinely funny bits in the shorts.

• gross horny hetero teen boy with a god complex and serious daddy issues. also, he can't read. the "sex bom" tattoo on his chest will be an eternal testament to that. nice job, Spy. you raised him good.

~~~

hoo boy there we go theres all the boys, all the beautiful boys (and Scout) in order of how much i love them. if i made any errors in my info about the canon, feel free to send me death threats 💙 (no seriously tell me though, being a newbie is embarrassing)

so uh. yeah. that took two hours to write. its now 8am. im still bored lol. bye i guess.

[ithisatanytime]

  thanks to a very small but evil group of jewish men dominating the field of psychology and also our mass media, essentially any part of our country that influences public opinion, (Look just check for yourself before you get mad, just fucking look! the statistically over representation is undeniable and severe.) we have to pretend that men and women are the same, we fucking arent. Sexual dimorphism is real, and its observable throughout the animal kingdom and especially in human beings, and behavior is certainly a part of that. one of the easiest ways to prove that is to think about sexual selection, women by and large are picky about who they fuck, men not so much. imagine a woman who was not just “easy” but completely non discerning about who she had sex with and she’d have sex for free, she would be famous just for having a vagina any man could rent for a couple minutes to relieve sexual frustration, where is that woman? men would be lining up around the block, meanwhile fucking a quarter of all men are similarly not picky, and yet women arent lining up around the block to hop on that dick, this is undeniable. girl logic will kick in at this point, “she would get sore!” blah blah blah, other similar faulty logic, women are different, they behave and THINK differently, ok now that thats out of the way.

  women are fickle, it benefits them greatly to be fickle in the early stages of courtship so they can find the best possible mate to reproduce with, obviously this is not what they are thinking when they are expressing this behavior, both men and women are largely unaware of their natural biological drives, especially when it comes to mating behaviors. this psychological function of women however becomes incredibly detrimental to women once they have selected a mate, as the more mates they have dramatically lowers their perceived sexual fitness, and leads to an observable (and proven) drop in their ability to find and keep a mate. this is not good for them as they tend to be much worse at securing resources, they didnt evolve to do that we did, and our physiology reflects that (strong upper bodies) and our psychology as well. men essentially evolved to be swiss army knives with the ability to adapt to changes in requirements for requiring resources. women did not, they evolved to be Geiger counters, they are very good at one very specific task, namely having and raising all humans. they will be offended thanks to the hard work of our jewish ruling class, but here’s the thing, you have giant baby food makers/dispensers on your chest, its the most important job there is and every human on earth is grateful for it, just own it. long story short, they arent very good at securing resources for their offspring (and themselves). this biological reality is reflected by the fact that they receive by far the most government assistance, which is essentially just our jewish ruling class stealing resources from men and handing them out to women. obviously this is not ideal and we didnt evolve with this system for very long and being without a mate while having children leads to a ton of psychological distress especially for the children, there is more data comparing and contrasting the outcomes of children with and without a father than maybe any other topic in the field of psychology, which i will summarize thusly: shits fucked.

 the point is, having more than one mate is terrible for not just women and men, but for society at large, we didnt evolve with this terrible idea in mind and nearly all cultures separated by logic and language barriers independently evolved what we call marriage independent from each other, and they evolved it early too, the basic idea is, once you’ve selected a mate you stick with them. we have some kind of ceremony which signifies to woman that there will be social ramifications for leaving your mate. women evolved to be very socially conscious, their behavior is almost entirely based on what they perceive to be societal norms, i could go on and on showing why this is beneficial and proving that this is true about them, but just look at the mess of a paragraph that came before this one. in the west christian marriage served that function, and its clear from what the western christian ceremony is actually comprised of, all of our friends and family attend and you solemnly swear not to leave the future father of your children no matter what (in sickness and in health) and you do this in front of a local shaman (priest). this might seem like some shadowy group of men are controlling women, but thats fucking retarded if you think about it for more than a couple seconds, this arrangement is MORE beneficial for men than women and it serves society at large, remember women start off as children too and children greatly benefit from two parents. this ceremony serves to let something “click” in womens brains, they are through being fickle and its actually a huge relief for them and much anxiety just suddenly vanishes. this biological adaption no longer exists in western cultures as “divorce” became common place, as well as the jewish sexual revolution making it socially acceptable to have premarital sex. marriage is now basically meaningless and no longer serves its role as an important adaption to our mating strategies. the results of this are catastrophic and are plainly evident when you just look around you. literally everyone has been affected by this act of tribal warfare. the results have been devastating. 

[annathetrickster]

part 4 of my thoughts on FE4, covering chapter 3. 

spoilers under the cut obviously.

so first a bit of backstory that will help explain whats going on up to this point; 

in chapter 2 we helped lachesis defend nordion, and rescued eldigan who was being held captive after his unsuccessful attempt at negotiating peace. unfortunately, in the process we also conquered most of augustria (think of it as the state, and nordion one of its many cities/castles). eldigan was obviously unhappy about this and told sigurd he’d have one year to sort out the mess and get them back on their feet and under their own rule.

TLDR: we had no choice but to take over a bunch of land, and now we’re trying to get them back to being self governed.

a lot of this game is politics so i can understand if its hard to follow for most of you.

so even though eldigan said we’d have one year to sort things out, and he opted to let chagall live (ugly guy who locked him up), chagall decided that he’d rather attack us even though we’re apparently almost done restoring the peace.

its about time deirdre opened up more. she’s usually so formal with him even though they’ve been married for a while now. i wonder if something happened between them.

OHHHHHHH SHIT 

they fucked.

no idea why, but i completey forgot about seliph and julia while playing this so this still surprised me quite a bit. still, its very interesting to see deirdre finally go from calling him ‘milord’ to ‘my love’ now that they’ve done the deed. 

its time.

its worth noting that changing class doesn’t reset your lvl, so you stay whatever lvl you are and just gain additional stats. pretty interesting way of handling class change.

right so onto the map. 

as far as difficulty goes, this one seems like the easiest one so far. my main concern is the desert area towards the north of the map since i don’t see any way to access that part of the map, but we’ll cross that currently non-existent bridge when we get there.

and just like that a wild ship appears.

im a total sucker for the whole “girl who’s normally tired of a guys shit ends up actually liking him” deal. its part of why i ship inigo and severa so much. 

take notes guys: flowers are old news. want to impress a girl? get her a 12 might weapon capable of attacking up to 4 times in one round of combat.

and now she feels bad for being so rude to him. lex seems like a genuinely nice guy tbh.

so it took me a few tries but i think we’re just about ready to seize the castle. this chapter so far has definitely been the easiest yet. you really just had to defend your base for a good few turns but once thats taken care of taking the castle is fairly simple.

again, chagall is the ugly guy who imprisoned eldigan and he’s only still alive because eldigan thought it’d be totally cool to let him live and we’d be able to work out a peaceful solution, even though he literally already tried that and it got him locked up.

he goes on to tell sigurd about how his father, lord byron, is a prime suspect in the murder of prince kurth (the prince of grannvale, which is basically the state sigurd’s castle/city, chalphy resides in), and how theres rumors that both he and his father worked together to murder the prince. this is obviously just more of sigurd being setup to fail by the higher ups since his father and prince kurth were very close.

also tailtu was there and she apparently wants in the holy man’s pants.

1 down, possibly 2 more to go.

shanan: deirdre no

deirdre: deirdre yes

so deirdre gets abducted by this cloaked figure who’s been manipulating everything behind the scenes. earlier in the game, i believe around chapter 1, he mentions something along the lines of wanting to ‘resurrect the dark lord’, and that in order to do that you need deirdre. the exact details of what he said are hard to remember atm but there’s definitely some heavy NTR implications with what he said earlier in the game, as well as him mentioning ‘cleansing’ the slate of her life for her ‘true husband’. 

im sure more will be revealed as i progress through the story. as for seliph, he’s still with shanan.

eldigans patience with this guy is incredible. remember he had the chance to kill him last chapter but eldigan opted to let him go, even though he locked him up.

hes about to ride against his best friend all for the sake of honor, loyalty to his country, and his own pride. he reminds me a lot of camus actually in that both are loyal to an extreme fault. if battling against his best friend is whats best for the future of augustria then he’s willing to lay his life on the line for that cause.

great idea, because that totally went well the last 10 times.

top 10 photos taken seconds before disaster

and there it is.

the source of all the headless horseman eldigan memes you’ve probably seen

eldigan fucking dies.

not only does he die, but the way he’s killed is extremely dark compared to other games in the series. its not enough chagall wants him dead, he wants him decapitated, and humiliated. even though all eldigan did was what he felt was best for the future of his country. pretty heavy stuff.

so how is eldigan as a character? basically camus is his closest comparison. both of them have extreme loyalty towards their country, and while eldigan might not have the added complexity of a love interest, i think the fact that he pays the ultimate price for his unyielding loyalty makes him every bit as good of a character as camus is.

rip in pepperoni eldigan. press F to pay respects.

another handsome sailor moon villan appears

also wyvern emblem is a thing

apparently they’re dracoknights, interesting to learn that this is the first you see of them, and not FE8 with the ability to class branch pegasus knights or wyvern riders into them.

of course dracoknight emblem is not match for finn emblem.

also, im not sure how advised this is, but out of all the characters ive gotten so far this is my main force. 

sigurd

finn

quan

ethlyn

lex

ayra

sylvia

lachesis

i tend to favor smaller armies in the main series games and prefer to have a handful of OP units vs a bunch of mediocre ones so we’ll see if i can continue that strategy going forward.

meanwhile all the other characters just kind of hang around the castle. mostly because im way too lazy to drag them along on these ungodly maps.

its time

E҉̳͎̟̖̼̙̞̀n҉̫̩̪͎̮͞t͏̖̯̫̻̫̖̳̱̦e̩̫̟̰̤̙ͅr͎͇̠̼̻̥͔͘͟ ̵͓͟͝t̶̨̢͇̟h̡͉̲̗̱̫̜͔e̜͕ͅ ̼͈̠̖͈̻̩V̥̙̩͔͜ͅÓ̵̠̪͖̗̱͖͍̟Ì̮̬̞̰D̪̯̮̖

gotta say, so far this is my favorite sprite by far. his class is great knight unlike finn and quan who are duke knights. the sprites in FE1-8 just have a certain charm that the newer games can’t match. even with fully rendered 3d models.

ok, several things to point out here;

how does he know eldigan died? we were literally halfway across the globe when he was killed, and we’re currently outside the castle, whereas eldigans body is presumably inside. unless of course he literally has his head on display or something extremely gruesome to that effect.

“youve murdered countless innocents, and eldigan” >implying eldigan isnt innocent?

this guy literally killed your best friend, possibly has his head on display, and the worst you can come up with is something you’d find on a negative yelp review?

i’d really like to see both him and marth just drop an F bomb once in a while.

#let sigurd say fuck

and finally this annoying fuck is dead.

oh boy, not only does he have to face his best friends lifeless body but now he’s about to learn his wife was abducted. i would really hate to be sigurd right about now.

not that shanan is in any easier of a position. imagine telling someone like sigurd you failed to do the one thing he told you to do. as kind and compassionate of a leader he is, he would still be an extremely imposing figure for shanan.

you had one job.

given the heavy NTR implcations, probably getting banged out by some other guy right about now to “resurrect the dark lord”.

after some pretty heavy storyline developments, the second castle is taken, one more to go.

so after all thats happened with eldigan, deirdre, and sigurd we’re kind of forced to care about this nameless character who is now the commander of a group of pirates after their boss died/was killed. she’s been telling them not to pillage and loot but they refuse to acknowledge her authority because she was just some girl their captain found rather than his actual daughter, and they’d rather do whatever they want (as pirates tend to do) than listen to her.

personally i find it hard to suddenly care about the well being of this character after eldigan literally gave his life for his country, and no one knows what happend to deirdre, but apparently the castle must be taken so here we go.

you’ve heard of horse emblem, now get ready for.. pirate emblem

“i know we’re pirates and we’re capable of traveling across water and all, but lets all invade this country through this one fucking bridge where we can only cross one at a time. single file everyone, mind your manners.”

then we have these guys to deal with who somehow ended up on the other side of the map before the bridge was placed.

this guy being a holy man is the only way he has the patience to deal with her tbh.

seriously why wait till now to give him such a powerful weapon, what is with this game and holding out weapons until you’re 80% done with the chapter.

so to put in perspective what you have to go through if you want to recruit tailtu, as i mentioned she starts at the upper left corner of the map and the hoard of pirates from earlier will chase bridget forcing her to retreat west. keep in mind: the only way to progress through the chaper is to seize the castle where we defeated chagall, meaning sigurd needs to be all the way down there. unless you’ve played this game before you have no real way of knowing whats going to happen next and therefore no way to prepare for the shit ton of pirates who will make their way west in an attempt to kill bridget. 

sure you could check the wiki and preemtptively place your units near the bridge, but even then unless you have cavalry movement you still have to chase after them pretty hard and keep bridget, tailtu, and claude out of danger. so again this would be another case where you’d have to reset the original game and try the whole chapter all over again if you want to recruit any of the 3.

thankfully we have the wiki and an ungodly amount of patience and i was able to save all 3 of them, even though ill probably never use either.

auntie ayra took care of all the pirates pretty easily so aside from running away from pirates with tailtu and bridget, this chapter was probably the easiest so far.

again, im not sure why we went out of our way to take this particular castle, and its not really helping sigurds case as a traitor. unless im missing something, the pirates had nothing to do with us as far as i know.

so after we take the pirate castle langobalt (pictured) shows up and apparently has orders to arrest sigurd who is being branded a traitor. another random guy (presumably his advisor) admits that it was langobalt himself who murdered prince kurth and is framing sigurd for the crime.

of course we knew sigurd was innocent already, but we didnt know who exactly killed the prince.

in a rare moment of weakness, sigurd actually loses his cool which is to be expected really. his best friend died, his wife kidnapped, and he’s about to be arrested. how would anyone not lose their cool at this point.

well that is going to do it for chapter 3. to recap, eldigan fucking dies, sigurd and deirdre have a child (seliph), deirdre gets kidnapped and possibly NTR’s sigurd unwillingy or otherwise, some pirate stuff happened, and sigurd is about to be arrested so he’ll be laying low in silesse for the time being.

overall the story sure took an interesting and very dark turn pretty quickly so im definitely looking forward to seeing what happens, especially with deirdre.

thanks for reading and thanks for your patience with me getting these posted.

[planetcrayon]

uhh i did all 52 anyways so i guess 

1. tough call between the original trilogy games but I've always had a soft spot for gateway to glimmer/riptos rage 2. oh man yknow my boy spyro is the best but i do love Elora too 3. original trilogy, legend of spyro series, shadow legacy, heros tail, dawn of the dragon fly, uhh i think thats it?? 4. i have earliest memories of glimmer i think but definitely the original trilogy games 5. insomniac no question 6. top few would have to be fracture hills, lofty castle, idol springs, tree tops and enchanted towers 7. 2nd-3rd game design. little less harsh than the original but still with all the style 8. Tom Kenny did such a good job 9. I mean kinda idk if there is one 10. i do not know much abt it but the people seem nice and theres some real quality art 11. ive done a lil bit of spyro art but i should do more 12. nope 13. theres fan games?? 14. summer forest has always felt like home to me 15. fighting gulp was always a good time 16. i have a spyro skybox crop top that i made and fanart/fan made stuff but nothing official i dont think 17. probably lofty castle music, my favourite music and my favourite realms often go hand in hand 18. impossible to answer tbh original trilogy/stewart copeland ones 19. i didnt really love many of the ones that came after insomniac. Dawn of the dragonfly definitely had the most flaws. probably eternal night tho. 20. a lot of the characters in heros tail WHOOPS 21. ya i used to have a lot when i was little 22. i recall eternal night being insanely difficult as a youngster but i havent played it in years 23. spyro the dragon was the easiest to beat bc u can just blast through it without having to return to any realms or anything but idk easiest overall 24. cinder is overrated bferjhvfbjwk 25. that super niche one from haunted towers that gives u super fire breath 26. hes a good boy!! 27. 'im a faun you dork' of coursse 28. ive 100%+ completed all the original games many many times 29. the difficult speed run bits and really tough games 30. i do love the honey speedway bees 31. ndvfkws i literally dont know them so ?? my new beginning game was for gameboy sejkfnke 32. HD remake of the original trilogy full stop 33. nah i dont wanna fuck with my disks and i dont have it on comp or anything 34. yeah i saw part of one at a con near me in 2015 35. i try to replay original trilogy yearly but mostly just when i get nostalgic 36. i played dawn of the dragon not too long ago bc i finally had a 2nd player 37. cursed 38. porque no los dos? 39. shiela holds a special place in my australian heart but i think i played as byrd more than anything 40. summer forest is home but i also looove dream weavers and midday gardens 41. nah 42. ripto was a really tough fight but so rewarding 43. 2-3 of the insomniac games were a good time but probably 3 overall 44. i have 2 copies of spyro the dragon on disk 45. i love the skateboarding in spyro nrekfn its like the one time i like it 46. whomst sklefn 47. yeah i played it all this year with my bf 48. spyro is my BOY but granted cinders stuff was p interesting 49. i dont fukcign know 50. original ofc 51. noooooooooooooo 52. i did not even know they existed my dude.

[jiminnamoro]

tags ♡

ill just put them here! i won't tag anyone but feel free to do this!

i was tagged by my wonderful flower @inourshineeworld thank you bub!!

Answer the questions in a new post and tag blogs you would like to know better.

A: Age - 21! ill be 22 next year im ready for my retirement :( B: Birthplace - a little city near milan, italy!! C: Current time - its,, late djfhshfhsh D: Drink you had last - sparkling water wow look at me being healthy dkfhdh E: Easiest person to talk to - my cat obviously  F: Favorite song - right now it’s robbers by the 1975 bc it makes me cry  G: Grossest memory - waking up with a spider on my fuckingngng pillow H: Hogwarts house - hufflepuff (this is so predictable :( ) I: In love? - with wonho?? yes a lot so much i might die  J: Jealous of people - yes. I'm possessive over my friends :( K: Killed someone - not yet L: Love at first sight or should I walk by again - thats cheesy but i smiled M: Middle name - luisa but i never use it bc its just my baptismal name N: Number of siblings - a v older alien sister O: One wish - i want my family to always be happy and healthy i don't care about myself i just want them to smile everyday P: Person you called last - ?? i never call anyone. i just watch the phone as it rings,,, then i send a text kfjjdhfhshf Q: Question you are always asked - 'can you open this for me’ bc apparently i'm hulk or ‘can u make dinner’ R: Reason to smile - wonho’s existence what kind of questions is thAT S: Song you sang last - as long as you love me by bsb COME ON  T: Time you woke up - ill pass  U: Underwear color - white and baby pink V: Vacation Destination - idk i wanna go where there are lots of bright lights W: Worst habit - i lose things, clothes, make up, friends X: X-rays - once, ages ago Y: Your favorite food - spicy things!! and meat!!! and uhh gummy candy Z: Zodiac sign - aries 

i was also tagged by this precious star @harumin-t ! thank you bub! 

Post 10 facts about yourself and pass it on to 10 favorites

i'm literally a sponge, i drink everything?? and i drink so much?? its v unhealthy but. when i was little, after drinking lots, i walked around and you could hear the water in my tummy. no joke. my tummy was the size of a fucking watermelon. sigh

i like v spicy stuff. if something on the menu has that lil red pepper next to it, i’ll get that (and i get v disappointed if its not as spicy as i want it to be :(( like...i want my tongue to feel numb and i wanna feel tears in my eyes)

my mom was born in a tiny village near the town where we actually live (v northern,,v foggy,, v cold) but my dad was born in sicily (which is a tiny isle in the deep south) and im a weird mix of them?? because even if i grew up here and I've been to sicily literally twice in my life, i still relate to so many southern things its v weird :( (esp cannoli and being loud and kdfjdhhf) 

baking relaxes me a lot. i love baking more than i love wonho

when i was a kid i wanted to be a chef :(( i used to mix mud and water, place it on a leaf and pretend it was gourmet food :( but then i changed my mind and decided to become a baker like my mother (she was against it bc its a hard job but :) i never listened to her lmao)

i don’t like tea :( i really, really, really don’t like it

i have tattoos and piercings and i wish i had more :(

its v easy for me to fall in love and its also v easy for me to just lose the spark for someone. like, it takes,, two days

when i speak english my accent is v ugly. i hate it

my favorite tv series is x files!!! 

[getinmypantskbcw]

33 - 59 B)

33.“Draw me like one of your french girls”. Who most likely to say that?

-Probably Scout, and i would more than likely attack him with a pillow. 

34. Who would drive you crazy the most?. Either on adventure or living together?

-OH MY GOD KYLO FUCKING REN. He’s a brat when he wants to be, and I just KNOW he would enjoy the fact that I am so short and just put things up high to harass me.

35. Who would most likely preform a strip show for you?

- Scout. I’m not complaining either.

36. Who would be the most offended if you didn’t cosplay as them for a convention/costume Party?. And who would be the most smug?

- Ronaldo would. But I would ALWAYS agree to a couples cosplay, or just a cosplay in general. I guess for smug, Osomatsu would be?

37. Who would make the best team?

- There is no way I am letting those guys be on a team.

38. Who would most likely to fight with each other?. And who would be most likely to be good friends?

- I think Kylo would fight everyone because he’s Kylo. But Scout and Osomatsu would be friends.

39. Which two faves would be rivals, who would always go against one other in silly contests?

- Again, Scout and Osomatsu. They’re both proud as shit and try to one-up the other.

40. Who would make the most cutest bride? OWO 

-Put all of them in wedding gowns. I will be the groom.

41. What five items would you take from five characters, to always be with you?.

- Oso’s wallet, Ronaldo’s shirts, Kylo’s lightsaber, Scout’s dog tags, and I guess I’ll go ahead and take Kylo’s wallet too while I’m at it?

42. Your a pokemon trainer!, what is your pokemon team type?

- I don’t have a set type, but my pokemon are: Espeon, Pikachu, Skitty, Granbull, Misdreavus, and Komala. 

43.Who would make a awesome magical girl/boy?

- Ronaldo is the prettiest magical boy.

44. Who is the character you love to hate?

- OSOMATSU

45. Marry, kiss, fuck, sleep, punch, kill?.

- Marry Ronaldo, kiss Jyushi, fuck scout, sleep with Kylo, punch scout, kill osomatsu

46. Who do you think would make the best or worst room mate?

- Honestly? They all suck. Ronaldo would have paperwork everywhere, Jyushi would hog the bed, Oso would be up in my space 24/7, Kylo would break stuff, and Scout would just be a nuisance. But I love them all.

47. Are you a goddess to your many husbands?, do they worship the ground to which you step?

- Editing that typo in the question, I guess so in some cases? I cook and clean for my Matsuno boys, and they love how sweet I am. I’m just a humble potato queen trying to be a good housewife.

48. Your in a final battle to save all your friends!. How will you save them?!. Power of friendship?, Love? or AWESOMENESS?!

- With my love and super magical girl skills.

49. Who would pamper you?, and give you makeovers and such?.

- I’d like to think they all would, but really, it would just be me going to their mothers or siblings for the pampering. 

50. What kind of magical girl/boy would you be?

-The Sailor Moon kind, Magical girl warrior. I’d kick serious ass.

51. How would you stop your favourites horrible habit?

- ME? Stop Osomatsu from gambling? NO way, I’d be there trying to get money too. Kylo throwing a tantrum? Catch me walking out on him and him throwing a bigger one. I’d have to talk to him about it.

52. Your favourite has come into this world. How would you help them adapt to this world? and how well would you be able to hide the fact that they are from an other world?. Would they be staying with you?, or would you help them find a place of their own?.

- I’ll do this in a list:

Kylo- He’d get his own place, but I’d have to teach him a lot about this world. He would not like how much people dislike him, and throw bigger fits. I would help him calm down as best as I could. Also, he would have to hide because Adam Driver exists and seeing both would be weird.

Jyushi and Oso- They would be easiest to get into this world, but they need to chill. I’d let them live with me, but I would force them to get jobs. 

Ronaldo- Probably the most easy to adapt, he wouldn’t like how boring things get where I live. I’d take him on trips to paranormal locations, and he would enjoy going to conventions with me.

Scout- Mainly easy too, he would just roll with it and let me teach him everything.

53. What would be the best crossover for you?

- I guess TF2 and Star Wars would be hella cool.

54. You encounter your favourite for the first time?. How would your first meeting go?. What would your and their reaction be?

- Again, list mode.

Kylo- In my opinion, I’m a tad bit force sensitive. So yeah, he would notice that and immediately want to know why. He would intimidate me and I would be freaked out.

Ronaldo- GEEKING OUT GEEKING OUT BESTIES

Jyushi- He’d call me pretty, I’d blush, he would probably ask me out 

Oso- He’d flirt, i’d slap him. Probably.

Scout- I’d be so shy and sweet, and he would totally ask me out for chicken. I’d be there immediately because I love chicken.

55. What if you suddenly appeared into your favourites world. And they were actually your biggest fan. What would you think? and how would you reaction?

- Okay but? This is literally my plot to my SU story? But Ronaldo doesn’t believe I am really me at first, so he is cautious. And I’m cautious too because what if I leave and don’t get to see him again?

56. Your favourite is about to be attacked, you only have a second to make a quick choice to decide on how to save your fave. Would you jump in the way and take the blow, knowing you could die from it?. Or would you be able to warn them in time?. Or would you freeze helpless as you failed to get in time, so you watch your favourite die?. 

-I’d do it, I would save them.

57. What would your wedding be like with one of your favourites?

- List time!

Kylo- Royal wedding, it would be elegant and big and oh who am I kidding, it’s a private wedding and I’d be mad because he didn’t invite my idol, General Leia.

Ronaldo- Beach wedding, fries and chicken for the reception.

Jyushi/Oso- Either wedding would be over the top and give me a migraine that would put me to bed and not let our marriage be consummated. 

Scout- We just want to get papers signed and be done with it, but SOMEONE (scouts mom probably) would want us to have a wedding. All the mercs get invited and it’s absolute chaos when I walk out and scout starts crying.

58. Choosing four characters. Which ones would be winter, summer, spring and autumn?.

- Spring: Jyushi, Summer: Scout, Fall: Ronaldo, Winter: Kylo

59. Would you rather bring all your favourites to this world, and be able to be with them. But they bring all the danger and chaos with them?. Or would you rather be able to travel to other worlds using a device, that could possibly break and trap you in one of your faves worlds forever?.

- 100000% I would go to that world. Peace out!

[tumblunni]

OH MAN Why Am I Dead At Sea is SO FUCKIN GOOD

god I’m full of FEEEELS and THEORIES and GAHHHH I cant talk about ANYTHING about this game without spoiling stuff!! So I’m gonna make a spoilery ramble post woo! I havent actually finished it yet so this is spoils for like... up to the very last bit before the start of the final chapter. And I’ll try and talk about stuff in order so like, if you dont mind seeing a few spoils then you can read halfway thru i guess?? I just really wanna be able to reccommend this game and gush about characters without having to talk spoils!! GAHHH!!

ANYWAY U CAN BUY IT HERE Its really cheap and really worth it! Its even on sale right now so its £1.50 instead of £3! DOUBLE CHEAP!! But absolutely remember to backup your savefiles frequently, there’s a pathfinding glitch that can make the game unwinnable. And its a damn shame cos that nearly made me stop playing before I got to any of the good bits! Its easy to avoid once you know about it, at least.

Man, I’m so sad the gameplay has that one big glitch cos its really cool aside from that?? Its super basic and probably not everyone’s cup of tea though, this is a game that you’d only enjoy if you’re the sort of people who like when a game has like.. a codex of extra info you can collect.  There’s not as much ‘control people to affect the world’ as you’d expect, its 99% controlling people to unlock different dialogue options. All word puzzles and stuff! And the easiest way to get out of being stuck is just to methodically possess everyone you havent possessed yet, and talk to everyone and click on everything using them. I can imagine that’d be frustrating for people who like.. weren’t already doing that anyway. I Wanted to do that instantly cos I wanna find all the optional insights into everyone’s character! And some funny moments and sweetheart moments and AAAA I care about these people too much already... Oh, and its even more reason to love Paulo cos he gives you tips if you chat to him, and can even outright tell you the solution if you get really stuck. So for players who dont like being all completionist on the dialogue, he’s a very useful helper! I just wish that the ‘outright give you the solution’ option was better labelled so you dont click it by accident. Its just ‘tell me more’, I didnt know itd ruin the current puzzle for me :P

And MAAAAAN this game gets really trancey and atmospheric and I cant even really explain why?? You spend the whole game within this one small area but stuff gets opened up over time and things are revealed about seemingly innocent areas when you gain the new abilities of different people you possess. And how the player character is just this ethereal floaty flame, and how you get used to all the rules of how it works, and how neat the lil animations are. And how you start memorizing the place and all the details about everyone and getting REALLY DETERMINED to protect them GAHHH And the soundtrack is REALLY GOOD

PAULO IS MY SMALL SON PLEASE TELL ME I CAN PROTECT HIM FOREVER tiny necromancer boy aaaaaa he’s so lonely aaaaa he’s on this ship cos he has to ride it all the time on his own to get back from boarding school, his parents cant be bothered to pick him up and he’s just SO YOUNGGGG aaaa he’s like a child prodigy, he’s going to this big scary boarding school several grades above him and his parents are so distant and everyone thinks he can just handle everything because he’s smart and on top of all that he has to keep the secret that he can see ghosts, and theyre like his ONLY FRIENDS even though he only gets to talk to them for a little while before they pass on. YET HE STILL KEEPS HELPING THEM! He says all ‘oh im only summoning you for selfish reasons, I want you to save everyone else on the ship’ but he still helps you resolve your own death even when he knows it means he’ll never see you again. He has to mourn his best friend every damn time he makes one! Aside from that all he has is his teddy bear, showing just how young he really is and how much he FUCKING NEEDS GOOD PARENTS no matter how damn smart the poor kid is and AAAAA... And when you start getting clues about who you maybe are, it gets even sadder cos he’s like... “I didnt know her well but... I liked her. She helped me with my geometry homework.” God he had just ONE MOMENT of incredibly ordinary minimal friendship with this lady and then as soon as he’d got his hopes up THIS SHIT HAD TO HAPPEN! No wonder he locked his door for the entire cruise and refused to be near anyone except his new ghost friend. And gahhh he must have had his suspicions from the start about who it was that died, as soon as she didn’t come back to help with his homework. From his perspective this was just like an inevitable conclusion and he was begging you to find any other answer...

MORE SPOILERY SPOILER I was so fucking terrified when his door finally opened, and all you see inside is empty space. I mean it was a punch to the gut indeed that someone else died that we only really just met, but I’m WAY more terrified that the main sidekick for the whole game is potentially gonna die! He’s just vanished though, so I’m hoping that whether you save him or not is what determines the bad endings? So it IS possible to save him right?? SPOILER ENDDDDDDD

I’m still really confused how to feel about Xu though. I mean she’s such a huge jerk but I still cant help but feel sympathy for her?? And I feel like.. if I am supposed to hate her then its kinda annoying that the game brings up all these sympathetic concepts just to sorta discard them, they only exist to be her failed excuses for her actions. I dunno, its just sorta messed up. But it also means that if I AM supposed to agree with her actions then its messed up too?? And either way its frustrating cos she’s the only chinese character in the cast and her plot is so... gah. She’s this jerkass to everybody and she steals from the customers and then her excuse is ‘but I’m so poor and I’m a minority, how dare you yell at me for stealing’ and then she NEVER GIVES THE STUFF BACK and you never have any option to tell anyone?? And its so messed up cos like.. Anton actually IS a privilaged guy and I can see why she’d be mad that he’s in this job because he ‘wants to travel’ whereas she has to take it because she’s literally homeless. I mean if they actually discussed that then it’d be a good plot. And its a shame you cant bring up the secrets you find about Anton even when you get full possession of him, you find out he also had a meltdown and flunked out of college cos he just couldnt handle it, they could have been able to bond over that and realise they were both having misconceptions about each other’s motives for things. Like, she saw him as some guy who just chose to drop out of the education she wishes she could go back to, because he’s soooo rich and he can do whatever he wants. And he’d never considered how good he’s got it, and how other people are denied the same opportunities, and how he can use his privilage to help make the world fairer for these other people! Its just.. like.. you dont even find out that Anton IS rich until AFTER the conversation about Xu stealing his stuff, so it comes out of nowhere and feels like the game is saying privilage is a stupid concept thats not real and its being used as an excuse for her to be horrid. Either that or its on Xu’s side and its saying shoplifting is fine as long as you steal from white people?? And like.. Anton didnt do ANYTHING to make it seem like he deserved it, as far as we see. He’s never even rude to her?? He doesnt seem to do anything racist or classist. Its just like she assumes he;s that way because he’s a rich white guy but the game shows him to be Super Innocent so is it saying that everyone who ever accuses anyone of racism is always lying or.. gahhh?? It just feels like its trying to make a statement but I have no clue what it is! And this is the only time racism is ever discussed so it kinda stands out?? Also.. like.. NOBODY ever discusses the name issue?? Its really confusing, cos even her steam trading card calls her ‘Xu/Sue’. Ingame EVERYONE calls her Sue except herself and the interface. But its never drawn attention to, or explained?? So like, am I actually meant to assume that everyone is mispronouncing her name? But there’s no option to not do it! Or to bring up the subject! Anyway I just CANNOT stop feeling sympathy for her every time I see the damn wrong name in all these text boxes. Even if she’s an abrasive asshole half the time she feels like she has some sense of morality deep down, and that she’s been pushed to this extent by a terrible life rather than just choosing to become this sort of person. She’s just kinda like the ‘token evil good guy’ on the team. Even though she’s committing petty crimes it pales in comparison to the bigger horror that’s going on here :P

MAN it felt so damn good to finally get the reveal on Donavan and play as him for the first time! I mean whoa what a good climactic moment! What an uplifting! And what a downlifting when it gets cut short by tragedy, lol I TOTALLY KNEW IT that he was a cop! I mean seriously he was such a clear red herring, he was being pushed so heavily as the killer and we never got to know anything actually about him. And when you read his mind the ‘I WILL FIND YOU. I WILL EXTERMINATE YOU.’ struck me as something that could easily have a double meaning if he was a detective looking for the real killer! It was just SO BADASS when you finally get to control him and you have the power to enter every room and find clues that were locked off for ages! And it feels like you’re finally making progress so it was such a great story decision that the killer gets him immediately afterwards. And how their last taunt to him is that he was NO WHERE NEAR solving the mystery! Its just a taste of power and then its all thrown away and it makes you SO FUCKING DETERMINED to finish what donovan started with your weak lil protagonist hands NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES GAHHHHH

And then finally regaining a humanoid ghost form and being able to unlock the last two people’s tragic backstories by visiting their dreams!! And gahhh it was so interesting and sad that you have to lie and pretend to be the ghost of someone else they care about, in order to get through to them and say what that person would have said if they had got the chance to be the protagonist instead of you. It was actually a genuine huge surprise to learn that Gwen wasnt remotely involved with the murder! Like, she spent the whole game being paranoid that someone is coming after her, and everyone was saying she’s JUST paranoid, and then it turns out she WAS just paranoid! But I love that the game is actually sympathetic to her paranoia and shows how it’s a legitimate mental illness. Its left more mysterious than a lot of the other backstories, but it seems that her father or uncle or someone abused her and her sister when she was a child, and her sister was killed while she escaped. And even though its over she’s been haunted by the belief he’ll find her any second now, causing her to destroy her own life through reckless decisions, jumping up and running away every time things start getting good in her life. She doesnt even know where she’s running to! And GOD I really liked how you resolve it, you dont just cure people’s mental illnesses by giving them a  motivational speech. But you help them feel like they’re able to endure it, that they’ll get better someday and that they should accept help from therapists. And NOT BLAME THEMSELVES for being sick! I just really liked the line “yes, this is a living nightmare, but if you’re awake you can change things”.

And when you do the similar dream sequence for Darryl there’s an even better climactic line! Its like, after a whole game of him blaming himself for his wife’s suicide, going over a bazillion different scenarios of how he could have prevented it, you just say... “I was sick, there was nothing you could do.” There isnt some magical REASON why she became depressed, her life with him was as happy as he could have given her. It wouldnt have just stopped if her life was perfect, she had to get treatment, its an illness. It wasnt anyone’s fault, it was just a bad stroke of chance that she never told anyone about it and never got a chance to be treated, or even to talk it through with her husband at all. Her diary is just full of her feeling guilty that she must be making it up because she loves her husband so much and it’d be like insulting him to admit she isnt happy within her own skin, when he does everything to be the best husband he can. Goddd.... its so sad that its BECAUSE THEY WERE HAPPY that she was in this position where she never sought help! Where she just shouldered it herself and hoped it would go away on its own! And god, you get to see that Darryl does indeed have antidepressants in his room, unlike her he did seek therapy and its just because of his guilt that he isnt fully accessing that help. And he’s taking these drugs instead of his proper medication, and he’s planning his own suicide at the end of the trip. And god, you get to talk him down from it and say what his wife wanted to say, and save him from meeting the same fate as her! You’re just sick, Darryl. She was sick too. Its not anyone’s fault that someone stays depressed, nothing can magically make depression go away, you have to see a doctor like with any other illness. You cant just talk it away by telling yourself that you ‘should’ be happy and youre somehow choosing to feel this way...

GODDDD I hope poor mr stubble grandpa is okay after the end of the game And I hope him and Quella stay in touch as friends! Her backstory made me cry too, goddddd She’s been diagnosed with cancer and has anywhere between three and seven months to live, because she was too poor to afford treatment until it was already too late. And she’s just so positive and okay with it?? Everyone else are the only ones crying for her.. She just wants to finish her final novel before she runs out of time, she’s crying more about not having enough inspiration for this. She just wants to be remembered, she knows she cant change her own death and this is the only thing she CAN change... I want Darryl to be her friend and help beta read her novel aaaa And dear god can everyone please be okay and stick together and GOD why can’t protagonist stay T_T I want you all to be safe when I’m gone, my friends. God I get to know them so closely yet never be able to really even talk to them, they’ll just remember me as someone they talked to only once before I died... And DEAR GOD let me rescue Paulo please!!!! everyone be safe please I don’t want to be able to hug Paulo and stay with him forever There is no way this can happen unless the worst possible thing happened I have to say goodbye okay i HAVE TO SAVE EVERYONE if all goes well I’ll never see any of you in person, okay? just let me be a shadow on this boat and pass away with no regrets knowing all of you will live a lot longer than me THIS GAME GETS ME SO EMOTIONALLLLL

[chradi]

okey, but how many genders do YOU think there are?

[brendajhensonblog]

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Click on the video above to watch Episode 224 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

 Announcement

Bradley: Okay. Now we’re live. This is screwing me up. Hey everybody! This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts Episode 224. It is February 20th, 2019. I’m sorry I don’t have my camera today. For some reason Google Hangouts decided it did not wanna recognize my camera at the last minute. You guys would probably appreciate the fact you don’t have to look at my face. I’ve only got two people on with me today because Adam and Hernan are out at the Funnel Hacking Live event. They’re out having fun while we’re hard at work.

Let me say hi to Chris. What’s up, Chris? How are you?

Chris: Doing good. Great to be here.

Bradley: Marco.

Marco: I made it, man. I’m here.

Bradley: Good. I don’t really have any announcements specifically, except that we’ve got a Mastermind webinar tomorrow, for those of you that are in the Mastermind. We’re gonna be covering several things that I’ve been tracking for the last few weeks now as far as doing some off-page tests for ranking GMBs, doing a whole bunch of different types of off-page tests and isolation.

In fact, let me se, for one moment, I’ve got pause the screen for a minute. Marco, do you have any announcements while I do that?

Marco: No. But I’m so glad you’re gonna talk about this because my write-up for the Mastermind, which I’m finishing up today by the way, is about that, testing, whether it’s single variable testing or whether it’s testing in isolation, or what it actually is that you’re trying to do.

What you’re trying to do is gauge whether there’s an effect. You’re not trying to show that something doesn’t work. It’s crazy going in and trying to test that something doesn’t work. The test should be, what does it do? You should get the data. The data should speak for what the tests. You’re testing a variable, but does the variable move the needle? No, it doesn’t. Okay, onto the next thing, which is what you’re doing, you’re testing all of these different variables and you’re isolating so that you can do whatever it is that you’re doing to each one.

I’m really glad that you’re talking about this. I’m gonna go a little bit more in-depth in the Mastermind newsletter about testing and how people are being misled by so-called, all of these are expert testers that don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So I’ll just leave it at that.

Bradley: Yeah. I’ve been tracking, well, about a month ago was. It was around January 21st when I started setting these tests up. I’m testing every one of these methods and isolation. In other words, they’re GMB or Google My Business profiles that had the initial on-page stuff done and what my standard operating procedure is for optimizing a new profile, and then from there, all I’m doing is specifically one of these methods.

I’m testing across multiple properties per methods so that I can see if we get positive results or negative results or no results on any one method, I want to see if that occurs across more than one property for the same type of method. Because if we get positive results on two properties, if I’m only doing two tests or testing on two locations per method and they’re both positive, then that’s a really good indication that that’s a viable method or something that moves the needle.

Like he says, that’s actually funny you said that because that’s the title or the subtitle of the actual test that I’m doing Which Method Moves the Needle the Most? These different tests that I’m doing, and like I said, if a positive result occurs on two properties, two separate locations, then I know that it’s a good method to use and that it will continue … It will be duplicatable, in other words.

I will obviously set it up and see if I can repeat it again across other properties. If I get two no changes, or two negative changes, then it’s probably the case also. But if we get one that’s positive and one it’s neutral, or one that’s positive, one is negative, then it’s obviously gonna have to require further investigation.

So that’s essentially what I’m doing. I’ve tried several these things and I’ve got some really super good results back with one of these methods in particular. I’m not gonna tell which one here, guys, you got to join a Mastermind for that. But I’m gonna be covering it tomorrow because I’ve got really, really good results from one method in particular. It’s actually one of the easiest methods and that’s what I love about. I’m pleasantly surprised. Actually, I was not surprised that the method works because of what I know about that method, but I’m glad that it’s one of the easier methods for any one of us to achieve, or to implement, I should say.

Again, I’m gonna be covering that in the Mastermind webinar tomorrow as well as I’m also gonna be covering some questions about PR stacking from some of our members. I’m also gonna be talking about setting up display ads for remarketing using the Google Display Network because it’s a much, much easier process now and it’s very, very effective.

So that’s what I’ve got to tease with for tomorrow. It looks like we don’t have that many questions. But I’m gonna get right into it.

Chris: I got a question, man.

Bradley: Go ahead.

Chris: I scrolled through my Facebook feed today, people are literally scared of GMB and Google all of a sudden. You just were talking about, yeah, which method is the most potent or the biggest needle move of them. Anybody, you wanna share your insights on that, Marco or Bradley?

Bradley: I’ll start. Yeah. Armageddon is coming, right? The sky is always falling, Chicken Little type stuff. By the way, that screenshot that you’re looking at there, guys, that’s the tease for tomorrow’s webinar in Mastermind because those are the movements that I’ve seen occur just in the last few days from that one particular method I’m gonna be covering.

Anyways, Marco and I, well, we’ve been around long enough to know that shit changes all the time. It’s SEO. For the last several months we’ve been pushing really hard on GMB stuff because it’s been working so well and I’ve been saying all along it at some point Google’s gonna shut it down. I don’t necessarily think that existing properties are gonna be taken down. What I think is gonna happen, and this is just my assumption, guys, my educated opinion about this or my educated guess, prediction I should say, is that it’s gonna become damn near impossible to register new GMB profiles. I think that’s how it’s gonna be shut down.

That’s why I’ve been pushing for people to build, build, build for the last several months, and to build your ass off and to build a team for scaling your build processes so that you can secure as many location as possible prior to what I think is going to happen, which is going to be damn near impossible to register new businesses.

I don’t know exactly what they’re gonna do to shut it down, but it’s likely going to be something like having to take photographs at a storefront or at the business location. It could also be requiring … Again, guys, just speculation, but it could also require you to send corporate documents in or something that shows proof of address with the business name on it, so like a utility bill or something. I know because I’ve actually had to call Google Support before to get help moving a legit business for a client of mine to get the Maps listing updated. That was one of the things required, was a bank statement, the account details and everything could be blurred, but it had to show the company name and the mailing address and all that.

Those are things that I assume or that I predict are going to happen. But we always find workarounds and we always find ways to continue to make money. That’s really the name of the game, guys. Don’t freak out. Don’t go into panic mode. Relax. Know that you’re gonna have other options. We’re gonna figure them out eventually and other people will figure them out as well, and you can too. But it’s about keeping your head cool and realizing that this is a cat-and-mouse game that we play and that’s the business that we’re in.

Marco, what are your thoughts?

Marco: I get a little bit more basic, man. Yeah, I don’t care. Why? I say basic because there’s basic web principles. The foundational stuff that we teach is based on web principles, right? We’re in the semantic web. We all know that, right? We talked about ART, activity, relevance, trust and authority, and how to generate all that. But there’s foundation of principles. You can only code one way. If you write spaghetti code, you’re writing garbage that nobody’s ever going to be able to tell what it is if someone needs to come and take over. So there’s international standards that are set.

There are basic principles where the guidelines are not set by Google. Google’s Terms of Service and Google’s guidelines are determined by Google, but coding standards are set by other people. In order for Google to mess with that, Google has to go and push at a higher level where there’s a bunch of other people pushing back. I’ve been talking about this since Semantic Mastery began. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Correct, but there’s others on the web. Google can’t just go and do whatever the fuck they want to do. There’s some stuff that they just can’t touch.

While that goes on we’ll just keep going and getting the results that we get. That’s what you saw. The test that you’re shown, which is beautiful because it’s based on basic foundational principles, that’s what we work from. Now all of these other stuff, yes, they’re hacks, guys. We manipulate. That’s our job. We’re in this to make money. We’re not here to make people happy. We’re not here to make Google happy. I’m in this to make money. I don’t care. They can’t tell me that it’s wrong to do what I’m doing, well then, Google should go and change their whole scheme for making money online because it’s all based on lies and it’s all based on moving people into their funnel and keeping them there as long as possible; they don’t care how they do it, they just want to do it. Well, that’s fine. That’s their business model. I have mine.

Just to get back to this, basic principles, they still work. Why? Because everyone has to adhere to the same standards no matter what. That’s my rant for today – well, hopefully.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree with that. Let’s get into questions, guys. Not a whole lot of questions and I’m surprised. Maybe it’s this new platform that’s scaring people off, the discus platform. All right.

Chris: The sky is always falling.

Bradley: What’s that?

Chris: The sky is always falling. Some people say it’s …

Bradley: Chicken Little, yeah. Okay. Ben’s up. He says, “Hey Bradley, thanks for our call last Thursday.” Okay. Ben’s one of our Mastermind members and I’d been doing Mastermind calls. I opened up an opportunity for our Mastermind members to schedule a 30-minute call with me. It started the first week in January and this is the seventh week that I’ve been doing those calls. Next week, I’ll wrap it up and then it’ll be closed down until June. In June, I’m gonna open it back up again.

I encourage our Mastermind members that even scheduled to call with me in this first round to call schedule a second call with me in June because in six months you will have hopefully overcome some of the issues that we discussed on our call, and hopefully you have a new set of issues. I really want to continue to find out what’s going on with our members. It’s been super insightful for me to learn more about what’s going …

Well, first, to get to know our members on a more personal level. It’s been great. It really has been. I’ve really enjoyed the calls. Number two, it’s given us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, and in our Mastermind, which is our top level program, what’s going on in our members’ businesses, so that we can develop better tools and resources and training to help them overcome their obstacles. It really has been beneficial to me as well as, hopefully, to others.

Is Local GMB Pro Included In The MasterMind?

That’s what Ben is referring to here. He says, “Thanks for our call last Thursday. It was good to talk to you and I got a lot out of it.” Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that. He says, “A couple of questions. Number one, is Local GMB Pro included in the Mastermind? Not that I need it. Local Lease Pro is looking pretty comprehensive as I go through it. I’m just curious as it doesn’t recognize my username.”

Yeah, I know. We had Rob Beale collaborate on that with us and so there is an additional charge for that. But as a Mastermind member you get it at a silly ridiculous discount from what the advertised price is, if you look at the sales page publicly. Just contact Support when you’re ready for that, Ben. But since I did talk with you, trust me, you’re not ready for that yet. Go through Local Lease Pro, start implementing those strategies, provided that they’re still going to work, depending on what happens with the GMB stuff going forward.

As it stands right now, it’s still working just fine. But just keep in mind that you should be implementing that right now and then the Local GMB Pro training would really be more about assets that need the additional push, or if you’re in super competitive areas, that’s where you’re going to want to implement Local GMB Pro. But again, that’s not something that I would recommend you start with right now, you’re gonna be overwhelmed. I know you and I talked about that. Do not overwhelm yourself with too much training. I’d rather you take action and Local Lease Pro is set up with actionable data, actionable information for you to go out and implement immediately to start building, and that’s the most important thing. Okay.

Good question. But, yeah, as a Mastermind member, you’ll get a significant discount on that when you’re ready. But I can tell you right now you’re not ready for that. Okay.

How Do You Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome?

Number two, he says, “You said you were a former shiny object syndrome sufferer.” Yes, I was. That’s absolutely true. I think most of us in this industry or in this space are or have suffered from that, and maybe still do at this point. As SOS is so clearly at the root of my lack of progress to this point, I was wondering what it was that helped you turn the corner. You are clearly totally recovered and in control today.”

Yeah. You know what it was, honestly, it was kind of a perfect storm in that I was trying to do too many things and trying to not only teach on too many different topics as far as digital marketing, but I was trying to do too many things for my agency and provide too many services. What happens is I became overwhelmed with chasing different methods and trying to implement every method that I could learn about. So every time I saw a marketing email come through, and you guys know, I’m sure you are all on a million email list too, I would get the same type of emails, you guys would about new methods, about new tools and processes and things like that and I would get sucked in. The grass is always greener, right? I would see the opportunity that I thought, as an entrepreneur, I would see opportunity and I’m want to go after it, I want to chase it.

But what happened was over time things started to accumulate and accrue to the point where I had 15 projects going on and none of them were really progressing because I was spread too thin across too much. We, as a corporation, Semantic Mastery kind of suffered that for a period of time too and in part, I’m the face of the company, I should say, not to discredit my partners or anything, but in part because I was doing that in my own business as well. So we were kind of going that way with Semantic Mastery, trying to be too many things to too many people.

Really what happened was, and fortunately, my partner Adam, he’s not here today, but he introduced us to a book by Gino Wickman, I think it is, called Traction. It’s a program for really zeroing in on a singular focus and purpose for a company, for any organization. We’ve been working through that now, guys. What are we, over a year now into that, Traction? Are we on our fifth quarter now? Somebody would comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what quarter we’re on.

Bradley: I think we’re on our fifth quarter now. Anyways, we do everything now. It’s kind of a combination of various methods, but the 12-week year is one of the books that we provide to our Mastermind members when they come join. Another one is That One Thing. That’s another book that where it teaches you how to really focus in on one thing to get results and find out what is the most important thing, the one thing that I can do such that everything else becomes irrelevant or less important or irrelevant, or something like that. It’s a great book. Then there’s the 12-week year, which is about taking 12-month goals and boiling them down into 12 weeks, which is a 90-day period. What we call them 12-week Sprints. It’s a quarter every year.

We started implementing these strategies and then traction really kind of started giving us the organizational structure as a corporation to start developing our goals, figuring out what our primary focus was going to be, zeroing in on that, and then building out our processes and systems to achieve those goals. Like I said. I think we’re on our fifth quarter of that process now. That’s why over the last probably six months or so, you guys have been following us and probably noticed we’ve really shifted to just local marketing stuff. Not that we don’t still talk about and teach and share and present information in the Mastermind about all types of marketing, but our primary push is local.

That’s because I needed to do that in my own business in order for me to get better results for my clients to increase my own income and to get some of my time and my sanity back because I was just all over the place and it was overwhelming and, honestly, it was exhausting. Also, as you guys know, shit’s changing all the time in the digital marketing space, so having to stay on the cutting edge of everything is incredibly difficult.

So I really wanted to shift my focus into something that I preferred, which was local marketing. I also feel that that’s one of the quickest ways to earn revenue, is local marketing. So I kind of shifted to that. We took several surveys of you guys, our members, to find out that that’s what the vast majority of our audience was doing, was local marketing or lead generation, that kind of stuff. So we really shifted all of our focus to that.

Again, Ben, to answer your question, how I got over it was kind of a combination of recognizing the fact that I was really spinning my wheels and not making any progress in a lot of different areas because I was going after too many things, my attention was spread too thin, and then also, again, when the student is ready the teacher appears.

Adam kind of presented us or brought to our attention like this, Gino Wickman’s Traction program and they call the EOS, I guess the employee operating system, and all this stuff. Just get the book, guys, it’s inexpensive, and go through it. It’s a lot of work. We’ve been at it for five months now-, or excuse me, five quarters now, I think five quarters, and it’s a lot of work. But it’s totally worth it because we’re seeing the benefits and the fruits of the work that we’re putting in.

So a combination of those two things for me really kind of got me to stop … Guys, I’m not kidding, I’ve unsubscribed from just about every single email list. I got one specific email that I would always sign up for stuff and now, because over the years I’ve subscribed to so many lists, I’ve unsubscribed from just about everything. But yeah, I still get emails for internet marketing products and stuff all the time, from stuff that I’ve never even subscribed from. You guys know how that goes, people sell lists and your name gets passed, your email gets passed around from one list to another, whether you subscribed or not.

I’m not gonna lie, every single day now when I get a marketing email unless it’s from somebody that I want to be on their list, I go find the unsubscribe button. as soon as I open an email, hit the unsubscribe button, and then I come back and hit the spam button. I do it every fucking day every single day. Some days I might only get one email now, other days I might get five or six spam type marketing emails. But I do the same thing. I open them up, I don’t even read them, I just go right find an Unsubscribe button, click Unsubscribe, and then I come back it’s hit the Spam button. What it’s done is it’s really reduced the amount of junk that I see on a daily basis.

I was telling this to Ben when we had our call, our Mastermind call, it’s like being an alcoholic and going to a bar. Right? When you open your email account, if you know you have shiny object syndrome and you’re not getting any traction in any one area of your business because you keep chasing opportunity, stop, stop going in your email box and reading these emails, guys. Stop. It’s like get yourself out of the bar if you’re a recovering alcoholic, right? It’s the same principle. You need to avoid the shit that’s detracting from you being able to get make progress in your business.

So for me, it was just eliminating the marketing messages. I’m a marketer so I’m susceptible to marketing messages, right? For me, it was just avoiding them. Out of sight, out of mind. Putting blinders on. Putting my nose down. Working through what I knew I needed to do and that was local marketing. Right now it’s about building a lead gen business and developing processes but I’m not doing all the work and then teaching our members about what I’m doing and how we’re doing it. So that’s what’s worked for me.

Any of you guys have comments on that?

Chris: Yeah. You probably should read the latest Mastermind issue, for February, because what I wrote about was pretty much what you’ve just talked about, but in steroids. It’s like if you’re struggling with that there’s something really, really valuable in there for this month.

Bradley: It’s awesome.

Chris: Not to reveal everything, so from Masterminding members, you can be looking forward to some really sweet stuff. I recommend you check it out as well, Bradley.

Bradley: I sure will. Marco?

Marco: Well, the way that I stopped is I realized that we’re producing better shit than most people out there. So I focus on our own things and I know that you focus, we, the Mastermind’s focus is local. But I’m still in the lab looking at manipulation methods for national, global, just whatever, because that’s just how my mind works. I can’t just do the local thing and be happy. I have to be able to see where all of the algorithms are going, where Google is going, where it’s taking us and why, and then try to intercept at the right time, which is kind of like how RYS Academy was born, then RYS Reloaded, Local GMB Pro, as a matter of fact, came through because of that. It was just looking to see where Google was going and why. So I’m constantly after that, where is Google going, why?

As long as I’m on that, I don’t care about somebody else’s shit because I’m too busy with my own shit. That’s how I was able to overcome. We’ve all been there. If you’ve been online for any length of time, it could be a week, you bought something. Yeah. That’s just the way it is.

Are Both G+ Personal And Business Profiles Be Shut Down By Google?

Bradley: Yeah. That’s a great question, Ben. I really appreciated that question. Hopefully, that was helpful. Ken. What’s up, Ken? He says, “Are both G Plus personal and business profiles going away or is it just personal?” I believe it’s all Google Plus. I think the only Google Plus that’s going to remain, and I could be wrong about this guys, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all being killed off unless you’re what they call Google Plus Enterprise, which is only for like, it’s like internal Google Plus for large organizations. I don’t even know anything about it. I just read somewhere about it.

So as far as I know, Google Plus is being completely killed. I think in April it’s gonna be down completely. You won’t be able to access even your old stuff. I got notifications, dozens and dozens of notifications about it where they say if you got any photos in Google Plus, the notifications, you got to download the photos and all that kind of stuff because in April they’re gone. That’s it. They’re extinct. Whatever. Good riddance. No big deal. Move on.

Which, by the way, guys, we covered the Google Plus … Oh, yeah, guys, if you’re in the Syndication Academy and you didn’t watch the update webinar from last week, go back and watch it. I mean, literally, as soon as Hump Day Hangouts is over, go watch it because it’s super, super powerful what I was talking about, because one of the things I was covering was Google Plus being shut down. We had a lot of people comment and question about, “What’s going to happen? Because Google Plus is down and that’s one of our main social hubs.” Yeah. So what? We find others.

I shared exactly what I’m using now, which is so much more effective anyways, and it’s really, really powerful. If you’re in Syndication Academy, guys, go watch the update webinar that was just recorded last week. It’s in the archives area, the updates area along with all the notes and everything in there. Super powerful and it’s easy to do. Okay. AlL right. I’m gonna keep on moving.

What Photo Selection In GMB Is It That Dictates Which Image Is Displayed In Google Maps?

Jay says, what’s up, Jay? “Inside the GMB, what photo selection option is it that the dictates which image is displayed in Google Maps? I’ve tried several options there but it won’t change.” Yeah. I’ve had that issue in the past too, Jay. I don’t know, maybe Marco has an answer. I’ve tried in some cases to get an image to change too and not been able to get it to change. I just don’t even care at this point. I know some clients do, but it’s not been a major issue for me so I haven’t dug into it that much.

Marco, do you have an idea as to what you can do to get Google to display what you want?

Marco: No. I don’t have an answer for that. It sometimes displays the latest one, it sometimes displays what it wants to, I don’t know. If you have GMB that is legit, that is tied to a company or whatever, you might wanna get in touch with a Google rep and see if they can help you out. If you act really ignorant, if you act really stupid, like you don’t know what’s going on, they’ll really help you out. They’ll go out of their way to help you out. I found that the more ignorant you act and the more that they … “I don’t know …” “Oh, you mean like Chrome?” I mean they go that deep into … Just totally being blissfully ignorant about everything online.

Because you’re a business owner who doesn’t have time for all of this. The only people who have time for this are marketers who are in there trying to manipulate every day, who are the first ones that find out what doesn’t work and what does. So you wanna try to avoid being that know-it-all marketer because if you do that you’re gonna get nuked, your IP is gonna get tagged, and you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree. If it’s a legit business, man, just contact the Google My Business Support. Again, if it’s legit verifiable business, guys, I don’t have any problem contacting Support anymore. I found them to be quite helpful when needed. Again, don’t be afraid to do that. I remember years ago it was damn near impossible to get support help from Google and it was only via email and it would be sometimes days or even weeks before they would reply and it was just a bitch. But now it’s a lot easier to get in touch with Google Support. Again, if it’s for legit business, don’t be afraid of trying.

What Are Your Most Successful Tactics In Getting Client Response From Cold Emails?

Okay. Jeff says, a minute, I still got to get used to this platform, guys. Jeff says, what’s up, Jeff? He says, “Two questions. What is the record for most F-bombs dropped by Marco in one rant?” Well, apparently, Ken’s been counting, he says 87.

Chris: Did you see the RYS Academy sales video, the webinar, the very first one? I bet it goes higher.

Marco: Guys, listen, I don’t do it purposely. It’s just when I get excited I get really animated and it just flows. Please excuse me, I don’t mean to offend. Well, I have meant to offend people in the past, let me change that. You guys, in general, I don’t intend to offend you. If you are, please excuse me. Please understand that that’s just … My partners know that that’s me because they have to deal with me on a daily basis, so they know. They know Marco.

So you guys, just please excuse me. Next time if you come to my webinars or whatever, please put the kids away and you might not want the wife, girlfriend, boyfriend or whatever around while you’re listening to me talk.

Bradley: Yeah. I remember we had a Mastermind webinar about three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago, and Marco and I, we’re a little loose with our lips as far as some of the things we were saying. One of the members posted like “I’ve got kids in the room.” It was so funny because immediately after that I put a parental guidance suggested explicit language, image, or whatever, graphic on the bottom of the header image for the page that we were hosting the webinars on. In that point forward, we always kept it to be like, hey, keep your kids out. It’s not safe for work-type stuff. I think it was really funny. I think Carolyn was her name.

Anyway, so to carry on with the real stuff here, guys. Jeff says, “I know you mentioned this previously, but I couldn’t find it when researching out-, or excuse me when reaching out to business owners. In an effort to sell them the leads we were generating, what has been your more successful tactics for getting them to respond? This is primarily a cold email question.” Jeff, that’s a great question. That’s something we’re going to be covering a lot in depth in actually going through real live tests in case studies and such for monetizing GMB assets. We’re gonna be doing a lot of outreach stuff in the Mastermind coming up over the next several weeks. In fact, that was supposed to be started this week. I’m a little bit delayed, but I’m gonna be working on that a lot next week. I’ve got several assets that I need to start doing outreach for too.

But to answer your question, what I found and I spent a lot of time last year, in 2018, doing prospecting and trying to do sales for traditional agency services. I got really good at prospecting, getting the conversation started. As far as sales, I failed miserably. I think we spent like $18,000 between our salesperson and our VA staff which was handling the cold email outreach and all that stuff. I think we made like $6,000 in sales. It was ridiculous. That in part is just because I think that the local business market is so saturated with solicitation calls from marketing and advertising agency.

So long story short, that’s part of the reason we shifted back to the lead generation model because it changes the dynamic entirely, and I know that’s what you’re asking about. But when it came to prospecting, I found the easiest thing to do is, are quick question type emails.

There’s a great book by the guy that the developer of quickmail.io. If you go to quickmail.io, it’s a service that you can subscribe to, it’s like an email tracking service and all that. I personally like gmass.co better as an email marketing platform, but I started out with using quickmail.io. There’s a book by the developer. It’s a real short book. You can get it on Amazon, Kindle. I think you can get in paperback too, but I got it on Kindle. It’s a real short book, it’s only like 30-some pages I think, really inexpensive. I think it might only be $1 or $2.99 or something like that.

Go get it. Go to quickmail.io and probably click through some of the links and you’ll find the guy’s name, the developer’s name, and then you can find the book on Amazon. Pick that book up. Guys, I tested last year multiple types of cold email outreach methods for prospecting. Out of everything that I tested, and I tested David Sprague stuff, David Sprague’s got some really good tools, guys, there’s no question, but as far as his cold email outreach programs and stuff, I just had miserable success and we gave it full on effort.

I mean, for months, not just his program but all different types of outreach methods. What I found that produced the most success, especially dealing with contractors, was the quick question type emails. That strategy is outlaid perfectly in that short little book by the developer quickmail.io. His name is Jeremy something, I think. Anyways, just go pick it up, read through that book, and then start testing. That’s what I did and it worked really, really, really well.

We’re actually gonna be testing in the Mastermind. I’m gonna be using a combination of the more mass email approach, which is what I was talking about with the quick question type emails, which all you’re trying to do is solicit a response, a reply, that’s it. No, you’re not asking them to click through any links, you’re not getting diarrhea of the mouth and dumping a whole bunch of information and doing an email. You just ask them a simple question that’s kind of disguised like a lead for them. It’s a little bit misleading, but not so, because you’re gonna present them with an opportunity.

Again, it’s not unethical. Like I said, it’s just a way to ask questions. For example, maybe if I got a tree service site or assets that I need to monetize, I might contact 10 or 15 different … When I was doing the mass prospect, I would contact 50, 60 tree service contractors with these quick question type emails. Now I’m going to be doing a hybrid model that it incorporates the video email process, which is, we have a training program that I developed that I’ve used for years to get results for prospecting and sales and that’s called the video lead gen system.

It’s how to use video emails to get people’s attention. It’s a bit time-consuming because you got to record videos that are personalized to each person you reach out to. I’m trying to templatize that now to where it’s going to be a lot easier and more efficient and have a team that does the video editing and all that kind of stuff so that we can turn it into more of a process. Like an assembly line to where we can do 10 or 15 videos in a short period of time and then targeted emails out.

But I’m still going to be using those quick question type emails where I might say like, “Quick question, are you guys accepting or are you guys providing estimates for tree removal right now?” When they reply yes, that’s the conversation starter. “Okay, great. Would you mind if I sent you a video explaining what it is that I’ve got?” Then if they reply yes again, now you they’ve given you permission to send them a video. Then you send them the damn video, which is a personalized video explaining what you got.

“Hey, look, I got these leads coming in right now.” You don’t show your assets, guys. You show call volume or you show the fact that you’re generating leads. Show proof. Say, “Look, I really need somebody who can take these leads. If you’re interested, let me know I’ll send a few of them to you for the next week, or I’ll send you five leads or 10 leads or whatever, whatever your business model is good for. You say to them, “I’ll send you five leads for free,” and then, “I’ll follow up with you after that to find out if you’re if you like them. If they were good genuine valid leads that you’d like to continue that service, we can talk then,” stuff like that. Just real simple little questions, guys.

I’ve tested all kinds of processes and what I found was those quick questions where you don’t drop a link in it, you don’t ask them to click, you don’t ask them to go to a landing page and fill out a survey, or watch a video on the first email, none of that, you just ask them to reply. That’s a conversation starter. That starts the dialogue. Once the dialogue starts, then you ask permission to send them a link for them to click, which is just a video essentially. You say, “Can I send you a video to explain what I’ve got?” If they say yes, now they’re giving you permission.

Then you send them the video link, and then they’ll click on it, and now watch the video. Then sometimes they will reply, sometimes they won’t. But that’s really the whole point. Again, video lead-gen system was the course that we did on how to use video email. Then I’m going to be kind of mixing that with the more … I’m trying to templatize that and make it towards a process to where it’s not so time-consuming to do those emails, although they’re very, very effective. Okay?

Again, this is stuff that in the Mastermind, guys, were gonna be covering over the next several weeks. Okay. Those were great questions, Jeff.

Does anybody else have-

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second.

Bradley: I’m sorry?

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second. I already got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On WebFire 3.0 Tool?

Bradley: Okay. Cool. Yeah, it’s a great little book. All right, moving on. Martin says, “Have you any experience with the WebFire 3.0 tool?” No, Martin. When you said that, I clicked on it and I looked, I don’t, so I can’t really comment on that. I don’t have time to look through it right now. Perhaps, if you remind me, next week I will take a look at that before. I might look through that thing when we’re off this webinar today.

Marco: Hey Bradley, those are all like, those are click … Well, what do you call that, the auto traffic-

Bradley: It’s like a click-through spambot?

Marco: Yeah. Tons of websites like that.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: The problem that I’m seeing, and by the way, they’re working. Some are working better than others. I’m not gonna say which one because then everyone will run there and ruin it for me. I don’t want you guys messing with my money. At any rate, they are working, go and test them out. But interestingly enough, what I found works the best is … You did a course on it, it’s only available in the Mastermind.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: The way that you teach it becomes actually cheaper than most of these click-through spams or spam traffic networks, which is really interesting because you’re targeting real people to come and visit your stuff. These real people have a genuine interest in whatever it is that you’re doing right and they’re going to ask way-, they’re going to act, excuse me, way differently than the people that have to click on your link. Does that make sense? They pay for it. Well, you paid for it, they go, they click, then they get credit. It just becomes crazy because they’re not really interested in your stuff, they’re only interested in theirs.

Now since we’re targeting real people with the real interest, through Bradley’s training, it becomes that much better. Guys, activity, relevance, trust and authority. We’re in trusted and authoritative to the max because were inside Google.

Bradley: That’s right.

Marco: Relevance because we’re targeting whatever it is that we’re targeting. I’m not gonna say anything because it’s something that’s right now only available in the Mastermind. Then, activity on that link. It’s relevant activity. People clicking on that link going and acting the way that real people do. Some might not like it and bounce back, many will. But that’s what real people do and that’s what we’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m not gonna reveal the method here either, but exactly what Marco was saying, because that is real genuine traffic that Google knows has an interest in what you’re sending them to. So guys, when you’re talking about activity and engagement, which is one of the primary ranking signals now, is engagement, it’s not just blind engagement.

Again, if you are trying to rank something locally and you’re getting clicks from China and Russia and Korea and UK, and I’m talking about in the US, I’m just using this as an example, guys. But if you’re getting a bunch of clicks from things that are non-relevant either geographically especially for local stuff or non-topically relevant, in other words it’s just kind of like random traffic coming, do you think Google counts that traffic as an engagement signal, the same type, and gives it the same amount of weight as somebody that is in the local area that’s clicking from a local IP, likely from a mobile device that is intimately connected to them at all times, that they have a history of being interested in that particular type of content or service or product? Think about that guys, which click, which engagement signal is gonna be given more weight by Google? You already know the answer to that.

It’s not that these kind of tools and stuff can’t produce some nominal results, they can, but if you wanna get really good results and do it within terms of service, there are alternative ways to do it and it’s super, super effective. I mean, super effective. So it’s absolutely true.

Marco: I just want to be clear, Fiverr geeks, Fiverr traffic geeks, they get some results. These types of websites, the spam traffic, they get some results. But when you compare them all and compare them to the course that we have, it’s night and day. it’s just totally different because it’s just targeted traffic, people that are targeted to the geolocation so that they interact with whatever it is that you’re doing at that level, if that’s necessary. If not, then you can adjust to whatever it is that you’re doing and get traffic for pennies on the dollar, guys. That’s what it’s all about.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, topical relevance and geographic relevance, and you can combine both and get super, super good results. It doesn’t take a lot of traffic to get good results when you have heavily weighted engagement signals, which is what that is. It only takes a few engagements to get significant results when you have a really targeted audience that Google knows about. All right.

Anyways, we’re gonna keep moving. Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer on that. Bryan says, “What is the backlog on GMB listings in MGYB purchases. I’m out about four weeks.” Bryan, you’d have to contact support. I don’t manage any of that stuff, I’m sorry. Just contact support or send us ticket to support@mgyb.co and we’ll get it answered for you. Okay?

Marco: I was just talking to Rob about this to make sure. We have to deal with whatever it is that Google decides. I mean, they were on the show, we don’t control them. So we can’t say it’s definitely this or definitely that, or we’ll have it in a day, in seven days or whatever. It takes however long it takes. Some of them are nearly impossible. I believe that Bryan has already contacted Support and gotten an answer.

Now my thing is if you go through Support and then you come here, it just slows the process because then I have to go reach back to support, ask what’s going on, track it down, and then they all go and track it down and try to see what’s going on when it has already been answered.

The only thing that I can add to this is, guys, we’re not in control of this. We’re trying to do what we can. Bryan, you’re welcome to request a refund. If it gets too long, you’re welcome to request a refund and try to find someone who stands behind the product like we do 60-day guarantee replacement. If it gets suspended within those 60 days, we offer a legitimate guarantee. Now how long it takes to get it for you, that’s another question altogether.

Bradley: What’s up, Daniel? Hey man, the question you asked two weeks ago on Mastermind that we didn’t get to because the training went so long, please repost that for tomorrow because the Mastermind webinar is tomorrow and I didn’t want to spend some time on that. It was about a GMB question you had. We’re gonna have time. I’m gonna be covering specific training tomorrow, but it will be a lot shorter because I just did the Mastermind newsletter entry specifically about that. So that we’re gonna do some video training on it tomorrow, but you guys will have the written process.

You guys know how I do my process stocks. Well, you’re gonna have the written processes, the newsletter entry that you’re gonna get in about two or three weeks, whenever you get the next newsletter. That means my training tomorrow, the video training, will be a bit more streamlined so I should be able to get to your question. All right. I apologize I didn’t get to that, man, and it’s been weighing on me for almost two weeks now.

Is It A Good Idea To Leverage A Popular Family Name Or Brand To Get Press And Media Attention?

Anyways, Quentin’s up. He says, “Hello my name is Quentin Ravenel. I’m a full-time musician based in Charleston, South Carolina. Arthur Ravenel Jr. is a staple here. We’ve named a bridge after him that gathers 25,000 people every year in April to run or walk on the Ravenel Bridge. Is there any way to use my last name as leverage?”

That’s a really good question. Yeah. I would think Press Releases would probably be a great way to kind of piggyback off of that name recognition because that’s essentially … It’s a brand, right? Ravenel is a brand, right? If you can use that … There’s a strategy called newsjacking. Look into that, Quentin. Look in the newsjacking. In fact, you could just do a Google search for newsjacking and find plenty of resources, Amazon books, whatever that can teach you the strategy of newsjacking that I think would be perfect for that, for what you’re saying here because you have the same last name-, excuse me, as a brand that’s well-known in that area. I would use that newsjacking strategy as a way to get some press and some media. It’s almost like click bait but in a proper way, in an ethical way.

Again, I don’t do a lot of that stuff, I just haven’t had the opportunity to, but I’m familiar with that strategy. That’s something that I think you could implement here.

Marco, do you have any suggestions for that?

Marco: Entity relationship, man. That’s what he’d have to do. Relate his name to the Ravenel Bridge name so that when it comes in the, what they call, the Google auto predict, autosuggest, so when people go looking for the Ravenel Bridge walk, or a Ravenel Bridge run, Ravenel Bridge weekend, all of that stuff, your name comes up in there too. I mean, we’ve done that, right? Social conditioning?

Bradley: Yeah, social engineering.

Marco: Yep.

Bradley: Newsjacking, go check it out. There’s tons of information about it. There’s the book, David Meerman Scott, I think is the pioneer of that or whatever, at least the most well-known, but you can find all kinds of information about this free and paid. Just spend some time researching that newsjacking because it’s something that I think you could implement and get some significant results that way. Okay. By the way, go to mgyb.co to purchase Press Releases and we’ll publish them for you, they’re really, really nicely done. Okay.

Gregg. What’s up, Greg? You and I got a Mastermind call tomorrow, Gregg. Looking forward to it. We got a lot to catch up on.

Urban Towing says, “Does SerpClix work well for traffic to RYS or is there something else you would recommend?” Again, I’m not familiar with SerpClix. If it’s another CT spambot or crowd search, click-through thing-

Marco: It is.

Bradley: -which I imagine it would be. Yeah, I would probably produce some results, I don’t know how much. But I would recommend finding some better methods where you can actually buy or get real targeted traffic from real people that may have a genuine interest in your potential product or service. Guys, paid traffic is a good way to do that kind of stuff.

Marco: I actually went to SerpClix and did the math. It’s 14 cents per click. We can beat that through your method, can’t we, Bradley?

Bradley: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Marco: And this is real people. Real people targeted, remember that. Activity, relevance, trust, authority, that’s what you’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. Guys, we did … for years, Dan Anton had a product called crowdsearch.me. It works like gangbusters for a long time. Click-through spam was an engagement signal … I call it click-through spam. But that’s when somebody does a search on Google for example, keyword search, it could be a brand search, which is called a navigational search.

Guys, you can go to our YouTube channel. You can just go to Google and search crowdsearch.me and you’re gonna find this Semantic Mastery webinars. I’ve done two of them because we did one webinar and I think two years later we did another webinar because it was still working so well. I explained in that webinar, and both of those webinars and great length what click-through spam is and why it works so well.

It was actually a method that I learned way back in 2011 from Ivan Budimir, who was my most influential mentor in the local marketing, digital marketing space. It was Ivan Budimir. He’s no longer in the space, but he was absolutely amazing. I learned so much from that guy. He actually introduced that method to me back in 2011 and showed the Google patent. It’s not the actual official name of the Google patent, but he always called it site weight.

Site weight. In other words, if all things being equal, if there were two sites that were identical, which we know is impossible, pretty much, but theoretically, if two sites were equally authoritative, like they had the same amount of on-page optimization, the same amount of off-page optimization but one site got navigational search queries, which now in the semantic web is incredibly important, what is a navigational search query?

That’s a brand search or a variation of a brand search, like brand plus keyword, or brand a plus phone, like for somebody looking for the phone number of a company, or brand plus location, or brand plus map so that people looking for how to get to that location or get to that company or that store or whatever the case may be. Those are called navigational queries. If all things being equal, there were two identical sites competing brands and one had navigational queries and the other did not, the navigational query site would outrank the other, one hands down, two to one every time. Every time and it was tested over and over and over again. That was because of the site weight algorithm, or filter, or whatever you call that shit. Again, I’m not the patent nerd like Marco. Marco, that’s a term of endearment, by the way.

He introduced that way back in 2011 and the strategy then was to hire microtask workers to set up these little gigs. You would pay microtask workers two or three cents or something like that to go do a particular search, preferably with the brand dimension. Then find the link that you told them to find, click through, and then you would tell them, “Go find copy and paste the third word of the seventh paragraph on that page into the answer box,” and the answer box was their proof that they did the task that you assigned.

The reason why you wouldn’t just tell him to go click the link and copy because you want them to dwell on the page. That dwell time counted as an engagement signal, right? They would land on the page and then they’d have a hunt for that specific word or phrase or whatever it was that you told them to do that would make the answer. That would be the answer that means they solved the task that you gave them to do. That would create the dwell time, potentially scroll, you might ask them to click through to another page, whatever the task might be, click through to the link, then click through to the contact page, and then leave a message or whatever the case may be. You could set it up multiple different ways, but those were engagement signals way back in 2011 guys and it moved the needle like almost overnight.

The problem was as soon as you would stop paying in microtasks workers within just a few days your rank positioning start falling again because it was all about those engagement signals. Guys, again, this was eight years ago. Well, now, we’ve just been talking on this webinar alone about how important engagement signals are. So engagement signals are weighted even more now than they were back then.

Now the engagement signals are weighted more because Google can track and knows its users and the users’ behavior and their history. That’s what I was talking about. If you can get engagement signals from people that are locally and/or topically relevant to the content that you’re having them engage with, then that’s going to be weighted so much more.

What I’m saying is, again on a local level, if you can get people from a local geographic area that have a history for having an interest in that topic or that product or service as well as being local, a handful of clicks from them can produce better results than dozens or hundreds of click from non-relevant and non-non topically and non-geographically relevant clicks. Does that make sense?

So the click-through spam, and that’s what I called it because we were literally spamming click-throughs, isn’t as effective as it is when you can get relevant audience to engage because Google understands its audience, guys. Google knows its audience because everybody’s connected to Google all the time, right? So it knows what their history is and what their interests are and where they’re located and all that kind of stuff.

So that’s what I’m getting at. As far as the click-through spam stuff, for a long time it was working really well. Dan Anton’s, I think the best bot that came out, which was crowdsearch.me and for I think three, four years, I mean, I used it heavily. I was getting 50,000 credits per month and I was using every bit of them. It worked like gangbusters. But over time, it slowly started to stop working as well. I know that service is still out there. There are potential uses for it but it’s not something that I would do to direct to money site anymore. There are better alternatives now in my opinion, which is what we we’ve been talking about. We did some training about that in the Mastermind a few weeks ago.

It was a good question though. I was worried we’re not gonna have enough to talk about today, man, and look, we’re almost up. It’s awesome. Let’s see. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” That should actually be how stupid the median person is, right? It’s awesome. Thanks, Greg.

Okay. Grant says, “It might be easier to just close/delete designed junk email accounts ThAn unsubscribe endlessly.” Yeah. I know what you’re saying, Grant, but this is an email account that I’ve had for, God, 15 years, so it’s not something I wanna get rid of. But, yeah, I know what you mean.

By the way, I did all the heavy lifting. Now it’s just a daily maintenance thing. If I see an email come in, if that’s from something that was unsolicited, I open it, unsubscribe, and then as soon as the unsubscribe is successful, I go back and hit the spam button. Again, most days now guys, I might only get one or two spam emails. There are some days where I’ll get five or six or whatever, but almost every day now it’s just a bare minimum. So it’s manageable now. It just took a little bit of time.

Also, there’s a service called unroll.me. Guys, go check it out. Go to unroll.me, especially any of you suffering from shiny object syndrome. Type in your email and it’ll take a few minutes to run and it’ll come back and show you how many lists you’re subscribe to, and tell me it doesn’t take your breath away. It’s like, holy shit, how did I get subscribed … It’s just over the years, you accumulate, you get added to so many subscription lists either voluntarily or involuntarily, a combination of both really.

If you go to unroll.me, it’s amazing. It’ll just take your breath away when you see how many email lists you’re on, and you can start to systematically unsubscribe. Okay.

Chris: You’re the nightmare of every email marketer.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, now, I am, yeah. But trust me, a lot of email marketers made a lot of money from me too. All right. Let’s see, Walt says, “Not an affiliate link.” Okay. This is the quick, probably the quick … There you go, Grow Your Business With Cold Emails, Jeremy Chatelaine. That’s correct. He’s got an accent or whatever. It’s awesome, guys. Really short book. Look at that, it used to be cheaper, but 10 bucks, buy it, guys, it’s worth it. 100% worth it, buy it, and read it. It’s a great book for anybody’s doing prospecting. Guys, hands down, that has been the best strategy for me that I’ve ever found. Okay.

I’ll keep moving. Grow Your Business With Cold Emails: Everything You Need to Know. Go, perfect. Thanks, guys. I appreciate that.

Daniel, awesome. “Guys, I’m not whining about the GMB question, and I do have faith in SM.” Bryan, I think he took offense to which you said, Marco. Just looking to start implementing building out the local strategy and certainly anxious to get moving.” I totally get it, Bryan. I totally get it.

Marco: Yeah, so do we. I didn’t expect or intend again to offend. I just come across that way. I was just explaining that it just takes time. We try to get as quickly as possible. We know all you guys were anxious, but there’s only so much we could do when the beast keeps changing shit around.

Bradley: Correct. Yeah. That’s one of the issues, guys. Again, we all have to keep changing our methods to get these things done verified and such. I don’t even know what they’re doing to do it. I don’t care. Bryan, I’m just like you. I placed my orders too. I’m not kidding. Guys, I placed my orders just like you do now. I do have a little bit of pull sometimes, most of my orders are in queue still now because they’re not critical. But sometimes, for clients, for example, that have requested maps expansion, then I pull some strings to get them pushed forward a little bit. So that’s one of the benefits I guess of the CEO.

But for the most part, guys, I’m in queue just like you guys. It’s not you guys aren’t waiting because I’m getting all mine done. Trust me. I’m waiting too. Awesome. Unroll.me, You’re welcome, Grant

All right, guys. We gotta wrap it up. “Marco, you didn’t drop an F-bomb on me so I was unsure about the love.” It was Bryan again.

Chris: It’s coming.

Bradley: Marco, you got to say fuck just to make everybody happy once.

Marco: Yeah. Let me just close this off with this: fuck Google.

Bradley: All right, there you go. ‘Nuff said. All right everybody. Thanks for being here. Mastermind webinar tomorrow, don’t forget. If you did not check out the Syndication Academy update webinar from last week, do it, guys. Super, super powerful stuff. I showed you how to use RSS feeds there with geo-tagging.

By the way, I’m doing a lot of testing with I have it … No, I must already closed it down. No, there it is, RankFeedr. I’ve got it open. I’m not gonna show my projects. But Lisa Allen’s RankFeedr, guys. I know the coupon has expired now. She actually extended it because of the Syndication Academy update webinar that I did last week. I talked about it in there. Although the method that I showed was how to use Feedburner feeds to create local geotag feeds and they’re super powerful too, not as powerful as the RankFeedr feeds though because RankFeedr you can splice together and create static or sticky items and you can add the geotag and not just a specific geo coordinate but you can add what’s called a geo box, which is like a service area business. Super powerful stuff, guys.

I’ve been testing really hard for the last week now with the RankFeedr stuff and I’m seeing good results. Again, I know the coupon that she gave is expired, but it’s still totally worth it. It’s super inexpensive guys for the elite subscription, which I think allows you to create eleven hundred RankFeedr feeds.

Guys, it’s a set and forget. You set up a RankFeedr feed one time and you let it go. It just runs for as long as you keep your subscription active and you don’t have to do anything else. It will help to create co-citation geographic and topical relevancy on autopilot, guys. I’m telling you and for the elite service the elite subscription level, which again I think is 1,100 feeds, it’s $47 a month. It’s a no-brainer.

So if you haven’t already picked it up, guys, go watch the Syndication Academy update webinar, and go pick up the RankFeedr subscription service, which is how you create those things. I’m only telling you guys, we don’t pimp other people’s products unless we truly believe in them and I’m endorsing this because it’s such a good product and you can go to our website SemanticMastery.com I think it’s RSS-authority-sniper-3 I think. You could find the webinar replay and go through that process, if you want to watch the webinar where she talks about it.

But honestly, you don’t even need to watch the webinar, just go pick up the damn service because it’s really powerful. All right. With that, we’re gonna close it out. See you all next week. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Marco. Thanks, Chris.

Marco: Bye everybody.

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224 posted first on your-t1-blog-url

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Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Weekly Digital Marketing Q&A – Hump Day Hangouts – Episode 224

Click on the video above to watch Episode 224 of the Semantic Mastery Hump Day Hangouts.

Full timestamps with topics and times can be found at the link above.

The latest upcoming free SEO Q&A Hump Day Hangout can be found at http://semanticmastery.com/humpday.

  Announcement

Bradley: Okay. Now we’re live. This is screwing me up. Hey everybody! This is Bradley Benner with Semantic Mastery. This is Hump Day Hangouts Episode 224. It is February 20th, 2019. I’m sorry I don’t have my camera today. For some reason Google Hangouts decided it did not wanna recognize my camera at the last minute. You guys would probably appreciate the fact you don’t have to look at my face. I’ve only got two people on with me today because Adam and Hernan are out at the Funnel Hacking Live event. They’re out having fun while we’re hard at work.

Let me say hi to Chris. What’s up, Chris? How are you?

Chris: Doing good. Great to be here.

Bradley: Marco.

Marco: I made it, man. I’m here.

Bradley: Good. I don’t really have any announcements specifically, except that we’ve got a Mastermind webinar tomorrow, for those of you that are in the Mastermind. We’re gonna be covering several things that I’ve been tracking for the last few weeks now as far as doing some off-page tests for ranking GMBs, doing a whole bunch of different types of off-page tests and isolation.

In fact, let me se, for one moment, I’ve got pause the screen for a minute. Marco, do you have any announcements while I do that?

Marco: No. But I’m so glad you’re gonna talk about this because my write-up for the Mastermind, which I’m finishing up today by the way, is about that, testing, whether it’s single variable testing or whether it’s testing in isolation, or what it actually is that you’re trying to do.

What you’re trying to do is gauge whether there’s an effect. You’re not trying to show that something doesn’t work. It’s crazy going in and trying to test that something doesn’t work. The test should be, what does it do? You should get the data. The data should speak for what the tests. You’re testing a variable, but does the variable move the needle? No, it doesn’t. Okay, onto the next thing, which is what you’re doing, you’re testing all of these different variables and you’re isolating so that you can do whatever it is that you’re doing to each one.

I’m really glad that you’re talking about this. I’m gonna go a little bit more in-depth in the Mastermind newsletter about testing and how people are being misled by so-called, all of these are expert testers that don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. So I’ll just leave it at that.

Bradley: Yeah. I’ve been tracking, well, about a month ago was. It was around January 21st when I started setting these tests up. I’m testing every one of these methods and isolation. In other words, they’re GMB or Google My Business profiles that had the initial on-page stuff done and what my standard operating procedure is for optimizing a new profile, and then from there, all I’m doing is specifically one of these methods.

I’m testing across multiple properties per methods so that I can see if we get positive results or negative results or no results on any one method, I want to see if that occurs across more than one property for the same type of method. Because if we get positive results on two properties, if I’m only doing two tests or testing on two locations per method and they’re both positive, then that’s a really good indication that that’s a viable method or something that moves the needle.

Like he says, that’s actually funny you said that because that’s the title or the subtitle of the actual test that I’m doing Which Method Moves the Needle the Most? These different tests that I’m doing, and like I said, if a positive result occurs on two properties, two separate locations, then I know that it’s a good method to use and that it will continue … It will be duplicatable, in other words.

I will obviously set it up and see if I can repeat it again across other properties. If I get two no changes, or two negative changes, then it’s probably the case also. But if we get one that’s positive and one it’s neutral, or one that’s positive, one is negative, then it’s obviously gonna have to require further investigation.

So that’s essentially what I’m doing. I’ve tried several these things and I’ve got some really super good results back with one of these methods in particular. I’m not gonna tell which one here, guys, you got to join a Mastermind for that. But I’m gonna be covering it tomorrow because I’ve got really, really good results from one method in particular. It’s actually one of the easiest methods and that’s what I love about. I’m pleasantly surprised. Actually, I was not surprised that the method works because of what I know about that method, but I’m glad that it’s one of the easier methods for any one of us to achieve, or to implement, I should say.

Again, I’m gonna be covering that in the Mastermind webinar tomorrow as well as I’m also gonna be covering some questions about PR stacking from some of our members. I’m also gonna be talking about setting up display ads for remarketing using the Google Display Network because it’s a much, much easier process now and it’s very, very effective.

So that’s what I’ve got to tease with for tomorrow. It looks like we don’t have that many questions. But I’m gonna get right into it.

Chris: I got a question, man.

Bradley: Go ahead.

Chris: I scrolled through my Facebook feed today, people are literally scared of GMB and Google all of a sudden. You just were talking about, yeah, which method is the most potent or the biggest needle move of them. Anybody, you wanna share your insights on that, Marco or Bradley?

Bradley: I’ll start. Yeah. Armageddon is coming, right? The sky is always falling, Chicken Little type stuff. By the way, that screenshot that you’re looking at there, guys, that’s the tease for tomorrow’s webinar in Mastermind because those are the movements that I’ve seen occur just in the last few days from that one particular method I’m gonna be covering.

Anyways, Marco and I, well, we’ve been around long enough to know that shit changes all the time. It’s SEO. For the last several months we’ve been pushing really hard on GMB stuff because it’s been working so well and I’ve been saying all along it at some point Google’s gonna shut it down. I don’t necessarily think that existing properties are gonna be taken down. What I think is gonna happen, and this is just my assumption, guys, my educated opinion about this or my educated guess, prediction I should say, is that it’s gonna become damn near impossible to register new GMB profiles. I think that’s how it’s gonna be shut down.

That’s why I’ve been pushing for people to build, build, build for the last several months, and to build your ass off and to build a team for scaling your build processes so that you can secure as many location as possible prior to what I think is going to happen, which is going to be damn near impossible to register new businesses.

I don’t know exactly what they’re gonna do to shut it down, but it’s likely going to be something like having to take photographs at a storefront or at the business location. It could also be requiring … Again, guys, just speculation, but it could also require you to send corporate documents in or something that shows proof of address with the business name on it, so like a utility bill or something. I know because I’ve actually had to call Google Support before to get help moving a legit business for a client of mine to get the Maps listing updated. That was one of the things required, was a bank statement, the account details and everything could be blurred, but it had to show the company name and the mailing address and all that.

Those are things that I assume or that I predict are going to happen. But we always find workarounds and we always find ways to continue to make money. That’s really the name of the game, guys. Don’t freak out. Don’t go into panic mode. Relax. Know that you’re gonna have other options. We’re gonna figure them out eventually and other people will figure them out as well, and you can too. But it’s about keeping your head cool and realizing that this is a cat-and-mouse game that we play and that’s the business that we’re in.

Marco, what are your thoughts?

Marco: I get a little bit more basic, man. Yeah, I don’t care. Why? I say basic because there’s basic web principles. The foundational stuff that we teach is based on web principles, right? We’re in the semantic web. We all know that, right? We talked about ART, activity, relevance, trust and authority, and how to generate all that. But there’s foundation of principles. You can only code one way. If you write spaghetti code, you’re writing garbage that nobody’s ever going to be able to tell what it is if someone needs to come and take over. So there’s international standards that are set.

There are basic principles where the guidelines are not set by Google. Google’s Terms of Service and Google’s guidelines are determined by Google, but coding standards are set by other people. In order for Google to mess with that, Google has to go and push at a higher level where there’s a bunch of other people pushing back. I’ve been talking about this since Semantic Mastery began. Google is the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Correct, but there’s others on the web. Google can’t just go and do whatever the fuck they want to do. There’s some stuff that they just can’t touch.

While that goes on we’ll just keep going and getting the results that we get. That’s what you saw. The test that you’re shown, which is beautiful because it’s based on basic foundational principles, that’s what we work from. Now all of these other stuff, yes, they’re hacks, guys. We manipulate. That’s our job. We’re in this to make money. We’re not here to make people happy. We’re not here to make Google happy. I’m in this to make money. I don’t care. They can’t tell me that it’s wrong to do what I’m doing, well then, Google should go and change their whole scheme for making money online because it’s all based on lies and it’s all based on moving people into their funnel and keeping them there as long as possible; they don’t care how they do it, they just want to do it. Well, that’s fine. That’s their business model. I have mine.

Just to get back to this, basic principles, they still work. Why? Because everyone has to adhere to the same standards no matter what. That’s my rant for today – well, hopefully.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree with that. Let’s get into questions, guys. Not a whole lot of questions and I’m surprised. Maybe it’s this new platform that’s scaring people off, the discus platform. All right.

Chris: The sky is always falling.

Bradley: What’s that?

Chris: The sky is always falling. Some people say it’s …

Bradley: Chicken Little, yeah. Okay. Ben’s up. He says, “Hey Bradley, thanks for our call last Thursday.” Okay. Ben’s one of our Mastermind members and I’d been doing Mastermind calls. I opened up an opportunity for our Mastermind members to schedule a 30-minute call with me. It started the first week in January and this is the seventh week that I’ve been doing those calls. Next week, I’ll wrap it up and then it’ll be closed down until June. In June, I’m gonna open it back up again.

I encourage our Mastermind members that even scheduled to call with me in this first round to call schedule a second call with me in June because in six months you will have hopefully overcome some of the issues that we discussed on our call, and hopefully you have a new set of issues. I really want to continue to find out what’s going on with our members. It’s been super insightful for me to learn more about what’s going …

Well, first, to get to know our members on a more personal level. It’s been great. It really has been. I’ve really enjoyed the calls. Number two, it’s given us a lot of insight as to what’s going on, and in our Mastermind, which is our top level program, what’s going on in our members’ businesses, so that we can develop better tools and resources and training to help them overcome their obstacles. It really has been beneficial to me as well as, hopefully, to others.

Is Local GMB Pro Included In The MasterMind?

That’s what Ben is referring to here. He says, “Thanks for our call last Thursday. It was good to talk to you and I got a lot out of it.” Well, thank you, man. I appreciate that. He says, “A couple of questions. Number one, is Local GMB Pro included in the Mastermind? Not that I need it. Local Lease Pro is looking pretty comprehensive as I go through it. I’m just curious as it doesn’t recognize my username.”

Yeah, I know. We had Rob Beale collaborate on that with us and so there is an additional charge for that. But as a Mastermind member you get it at a silly ridiculous discount from what the advertised price is, if you look at the sales page publicly. Just contact Support when you’re ready for that, Ben. But since I did talk with you, trust me, you’re not ready for that yet. Go through Local Lease Pro, start implementing those strategies, provided that they’re still going to work, depending on what happens with the GMB stuff going forward.

As it stands right now, it’s still working just fine. But just keep in mind that you should be implementing that right now and then the Local GMB Pro training would really be more about assets that need the additional push, or if you’re in super competitive areas, that’s where you’re going to want to implement Local GMB Pro. But again, that’s not something that I would recommend you start with right now, you’re gonna be overwhelmed. I know you and I talked about that. Do not overwhelm yourself with too much training. I’d rather you take action and Local Lease Pro is set up with actionable data, actionable information for you to go out and implement immediately to start building, and that’s the most important thing. Okay.

Good question. But, yeah, as a Mastermind member, you’ll get a significant discount on that when you’re ready. But I can tell you right now you’re not ready for that. Okay.

How Do You Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome?

Number two, he says, “You said you were a former shiny object syndrome sufferer.” Yes, I was. That’s absolutely true. I think most of us in this industry or in this space are or have suffered from that, and maybe still do at this point. As SOS is so clearly at the root of my lack of progress to this point, I was wondering what it was that helped you turn the corner. You are clearly totally recovered and in control today.”

Yeah. You know what it was, honestly, it was kind of a perfect storm in that I was trying to do too many things and trying to not only teach on too many different topics as far as digital marketing, but I was trying to do too many things for my agency and provide too many services. What happens is I became overwhelmed with chasing different methods and trying to implement every method that I could learn about. So every time I saw a marketing email come through, and you guys know, I’m sure you are all on a million email list too, I would get the same type of emails, you guys would about new methods, about new tools and processes and things like that and I would get sucked in. The grass is always greener, right? I would see the opportunity that I thought, as an entrepreneur, I would see opportunity and I’m want to go after it, I want to chase it.

But what happened was over time things started to accumulate and accrue to the point where I had 15 projects going on and none of them were really progressing because I was spread too thin across too much. We, as a corporation, Semantic Mastery kind of suffered that for a period of time too and in part, I’m the face of the company, I should say, not to discredit my partners or anything, but in part because I was doing that in my own business as well. So we were kind of going that way with Semantic Mastery, trying to be too many things to too many people.

Really what happened was, and fortunately, my partner Adam, he’s not here today, but he introduced us to a book by Gino Wickman, I think it is, called Traction. It’s a program for really zeroing in on a singular focus and purpose for a company, for any organization. We’ve been working through that now, guys. What are we, over a year now into that, Traction? Are we on our fifth quarter now? Somebody would comment on that?

Marco: Yeah. I can’t remember exactly what quarter we’re on.

Bradley: I think we’re on our fifth quarter now. Anyways, we do everything now. It’s kind of a combination of various methods, but the 12-week year is one of the books that we provide to our Mastermind members when they come join. Another one is That One Thing. That’s another book that where it teaches you how to really focus in on one thing to get results and find out what is the most important thing, the one thing that I can do such that everything else becomes irrelevant or less important or irrelevant, or something like that. It’s a great book. Then there’s the 12-week year, which is about taking 12-month goals and boiling them down into 12 weeks, which is a 90-day period. What we call them 12-week Sprints. It’s a quarter every year.

We started implementing these strategies and then traction really kind of started giving us the organizational structure as a corporation to start developing our goals, figuring out what our primary focus was going to be, zeroing in on that, and then building out our processes and systems to achieve those goals. Like I said. I think we’re on our fifth quarter of that process now. That’s why over the last probably six months or so, you guys have been following us and probably noticed we’ve really shifted to just local marketing stuff. Not that we don’t still talk about and teach and share and present information in the Mastermind about all types of marketing, but our primary push is local.

That’s because I needed to do that in my own business in order for me to get better results for my clients to increase my own income and to get some of my time and my sanity back because I was just all over the place and it was overwhelming and, honestly, it was exhausting. Also, as you guys know, shit’s changing all the time in the digital marketing space, so having to stay on the cutting edge of everything is incredibly difficult.

So I really wanted to shift my focus into something that I preferred, which was local marketing. I also feel that that’s one of the quickest ways to earn revenue, is local marketing. So I kind of shifted to that. We took several surveys of you guys, our members, to find out that that’s what the vast majority of our audience was doing, was local marketing or lead generation, that kind of stuff. So we really shifted all of our focus to that.

Again, Ben, to answer your question, how I got over it was kind of a combination of recognizing the fact that I was really spinning my wheels and not making any progress in a lot of different areas because I was going after too many things, my attention was spread too thin, and then also, again, when the student is ready the teacher appears.

Adam kind of presented us or brought to our attention like this, Gino Wickman’s Traction program and they call the EOS, I guess the employee operating system, and all this stuff. Just get the book, guys, it’s inexpensive, and go through it. It’s a lot of work. We’ve been at it for five months now-, or excuse me, five quarters now, I think five quarters, and it’s a lot of work. But it’s totally worth it because we’re seeing the benefits and the fruits of the work that we’re putting in.

So a combination of those two things for me really kind of got me to stop … Guys, I’m not kidding, I’ve unsubscribed from just about every single email list. I got one specific email that I would always sign up for stuff and now, because over the years I’ve subscribed to so many lists, I’ve unsubscribed from just about everything. But yeah, I still get emails for internet marketing products and stuff all the time, from stuff that I’ve never even subscribed from. You guys know how that goes, people sell lists and your name gets passed, your email gets passed around from one list to another, whether you subscribed or not.

I’m not gonna lie, every single day now when I get a marketing email unless it’s from somebody that I want to be on their list, I go find the unsubscribe button. as soon as I open an email, hit the unsubscribe button, and then I come back and hit the spam button. I do it every fucking day every single day. Some days I might only get one email now, other days I might get five or six spam type marketing emails. But I do the same thing. I open them up, I don’t even read them, I just go right find an Unsubscribe button, click Unsubscribe, and then I come back it’s hit the Spam button. What it’s done is it’s really reduced the amount of junk that I see on a daily basis.

I was telling this to Ben when we had our call, our Mastermind call, it’s like being an alcoholic and going to a bar. Right? When you open your email account, if you know you have shiny object syndrome and you’re not getting any traction in any one area of your business because you keep chasing opportunity, stop, stop going in your email box and reading these emails, guys. Stop. It’s like get yourself out of the bar if you’re a recovering alcoholic, right? It’s the same principle. You need to avoid the shit that’s detracting from you being able to get make progress in your business.

So for me, it was just eliminating the marketing messages. I’m a marketer so I’m susceptible to marketing messages, right? For me, it was just avoiding them. Out of sight, out of mind. Putting blinders on. Putting my nose down. Working through what I knew I needed to do and that was local marketing. Right now it’s about building a lead gen business and developing processes but I’m not doing all the work and then teaching our members about what I’m doing and how we’re doing it. So that’s what’s worked for me.

Any of you guys have comments on that?

Chris: Yeah. You probably should read the latest Mastermind issue, for February, because what I wrote about was pretty much what you’ve just talked about, but in steroids. It’s like if you’re struggling with that there’s something really, really valuable in there for this month.

Bradley: It’s awesome.

Chris: Not to reveal everything, so from Masterminding members, you can be looking forward to some really sweet stuff. I recommend you check it out as well, Bradley.

Bradley: I sure will. Marco?

Marco: Well, the way that I stopped is I realized that we’re producing better shit than most people out there. So I focus on our own things and I know that you focus, we, the Mastermind’s focus is local. But I’m still in the lab looking at manipulation methods for national, global, just whatever, because that’s just how my mind works. I can’t just do the local thing and be happy. I have to be able to see where all of the algorithms are going, where Google is going, where it’s taking us and why, and then try to intercept at the right time, which is kind of like how RYS Academy was born, then RYS Reloaded, Local GMB Pro, as a matter of fact, came through because of that. It was just looking to see where Google was going and why. So I’m constantly after that, where is Google going, why?

As long as I’m on that, I don’t care about somebody else’s shit because I’m too busy with my own shit. That’s how I was able to overcome. We’ve all been there. If you’ve been online for any length of time, it could be a week, you bought something. Yeah. That’s just the way it is.

Are Both G+ Personal And Business Profiles Be Shut Down By Google?

Bradley: Yeah. That’s a great question, Ben. I really appreciated that question. Hopefully, that was helpful. Ken. What’s up, Ken? He says, “Are both G Plus personal and business profiles going away or is it just personal?” I believe it’s all Google Plus. I think the only Google Plus that’s going to remain, and I could be wrong about this guys, but I’m pretty sure that they’re all being killed off unless you’re what they call Google Plus Enterprise, which is only for like, it’s like internal Google Plus for large organizations. I don’t even know anything about it. I just read somewhere about it.

So as far as I know, Google Plus is being completely killed. I think in April it’s gonna be down completely. You won’t be able to access even your old stuff. I got notifications, dozens and dozens of notifications about it where they say if you got any photos in Google Plus, the notifications, you got to download the photos and all that kind of stuff because in April they’re gone. That’s it. They’re extinct. Whatever. Good riddance. No big deal. Move on.

Which, by the way, guys, we covered the Google Plus … Oh, yeah, guys, if you’re in the Syndication Academy and you didn’t watch the update webinar from last week, go back and watch it. I mean, literally, as soon as Hump Day Hangouts is over, go watch it because it’s super, super powerful what I was talking about, because one of the things I was covering was Google Plus being shut down. We had a lot of people comment and question about, “What’s going to happen? Because Google Plus is down and that’s one of our main social hubs.” Yeah. So what? We find others.

I shared exactly what I’m using now, which is so much more effective anyways, and it’s really, really powerful. If you’re in Syndication Academy, guys, go watch the update webinar that was just recorded last week. It’s in the archives area, the updates area along with all the notes and everything in there. Super powerful and it’s easy to do. Okay. AlL right. I’m gonna keep on moving.

What Photo Selection In GMB Is It That Dictates Which Image Is Displayed In Google Maps?

Jay says, what’s up, Jay? “Inside the GMB, what photo selection option is it that the dictates which image is displayed in Google Maps? I’ve tried several options there but it won’t change.” Yeah. I’ve had that issue in the past too, Jay. I don’t know, maybe Marco has an answer. I’ve tried in some cases to get an image to change too and not been able to get it to change. I just don’t even care at this point. I know some clients do, but it’s not been a major issue for me so I haven’t dug into it that much.

Marco, do you have an idea as to what you can do to get Google to display what you want?

Marco: No. I don’t have an answer for that. It sometimes displays the latest one, it sometimes displays what it wants to, I don’t know. If you have GMB that is legit, that is tied to a company or whatever, you might wanna get in touch with a Google rep and see if they can help you out. If you act really ignorant, if you act really stupid, like you don’t know what’s going on, they’ll really help you out. They’ll go out of their way to help you out. I found that the more ignorant you act and the more that they … “I don’t know …” “Oh, you mean like Chrome?” I mean they go that deep into … Just totally being blissfully ignorant about everything online.

Because you’re a business owner who doesn’t have time for all of this. The only people who have time for this are marketers who are in there trying to manipulate every day, who are the first ones that find out what doesn’t work and what does. So you wanna try to avoid being that know-it-all marketer because if you do that you’re gonna get nuked, your IP is gonna get tagged, and you’re in for a lot of trouble.

Bradley: Yeah, I agree. If it’s a legit business, man, just contact the Google My Business Support. Again, if it’s legit verifiable business, guys, I don’t have any problem contacting Support anymore. I found them to be quite helpful when needed. Again, don’t be afraid to do that. I remember years ago it was damn near impossible to get support help from Google and it was only via email and it would be sometimes days or even weeks before they would reply and it was just a bitch. But now it’s a lot easier to get in touch with Google Support. Again, if it’s for legit business, don’t be afraid of trying.

What Are Your Most Successful Tactics In Getting Client Response From Cold Emails?

Okay. Jeff says, a minute, I still got to get used to this platform, guys. Jeff says, what’s up, Jeff? He says, “Two questions. What is the record for most F-bombs dropped by Marco in one rant?” Well, apparently, Ken’s been counting, he says 87.

Chris: Did you see the RYS Academy sales video, the webinar, the very first one? I bet it goes higher.

Marco: Guys, listen, I don’t do it purposely. It’s just when I get excited I get really animated and it just flows. Please excuse me, I don’t mean to offend. Well, I have meant to offend people in the past, let me change that. You guys, in general, I don’t intend to offend you. If you are, please excuse me. Please understand that that’s just … My partners know that that’s me because they have to deal with me on a daily basis, so they know. They know Marco.

So you guys, just please excuse me. Next time if you come to my webinars or whatever, please put the kids away and you might not want the wife, girlfriend, boyfriend or whatever around while you’re listening to me talk.

Bradley: Yeah. I remember we had a Mastermind webinar about three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago, and Marco and I, we’re a little loose with our lips as far as some of the things we were saying. One of the members posted like “I’ve got kids in the room.” It was so funny because immediately after that I put a parental guidance suggested explicit language, image, or whatever, graphic on the bottom of the header image for the page that we were hosting the webinars on. In that point forward, we always kept it to be like, hey, keep your kids out. It’s not safe for work-type stuff. I think it was really funny. I think Carolyn was her name.

Anyway, so to carry on with the real stuff here, guys. Jeff says, “I know you mentioned this previously, but I couldn’t find it when researching out-, or excuse me when reaching out to business owners. In an effort to sell them the leads we were generating, what has been your more successful tactics for getting them to respond? This is primarily a cold email question.” Jeff, that’s a great question. That’s something we’re going to be covering a lot in depth in actually going through real live tests in case studies and such for monetizing GMB assets. We’re gonna be doing a lot of outreach stuff in the Mastermind coming up over the next several weeks. In fact, that was supposed to be started this week. I’m a little bit delayed, but I’m gonna be working on that a lot next week. I’ve got several assets that I need to start doing outreach for too.

But to answer your question, what I found and I spent a lot of time last year, in 2018, doing prospecting and trying to do sales for traditional agency services. I got really good at prospecting, getting the conversation started. As far as sales, I failed miserably. I think we spent like $18,000 between our salesperson and our VA staff which was handling the cold email outreach and all that stuff. I think we made like $6,000 in sales. It was ridiculous. That in part is just because I think that the local business market is so saturated with solicitation calls from marketing and advertising agency.

So long story short, that’s part of the reason we shifted back to the lead generation model because it changes the dynamic entirely, and I know that’s what you’re asking about. But when it came to prospecting, I found the easiest thing to do is, are quick question type emails.

There’s a great book by the guy that the developer of quickmail.io. If you go to quickmail.io, it’s a service that you can subscribe to, it’s like an email tracking service and all that. I personally like gmass.co better as an email marketing platform, but I started out with using quickmail.io. There’s a book by the developer. It’s a real short book. You can get it on Amazon, Kindle. I think you can get in paperback too, but I got it on Kindle. It’s a real short book, it’s only like 30-some pages I think, really inexpensive. I think it might only be $1 or $2.99 or something like that.

Go get it. Go to quickmail.io and probably click through some of the links and you’ll find the guy’s name, the developer’s name, and then you can find the book on Amazon. Pick that book up. Guys, I tested last year multiple types of cold email outreach methods for prospecting. Out of everything that I tested, and I tested David Sprague stuff, David Sprague’s got some really good tools, guys, there’s no question, but as far as his cold email outreach programs and stuff, I just had miserable success and we gave it full on effort.

I mean, for months, not just his program but all different types of outreach methods. What I found that produced the most success, especially dealing with contractors, was the quick question type emails. That strategy is outlaid perfectly in that short little book by the developer quickmail.io. His name is Jeremy something, I think. Anyways, just go pick it up, read through that book, and then start testing. That’s what I did and it worked really, really, really well.

We’re actually gonna be testing in the Mastermind. I’m gonna be using a combination of the more mass email approach, which is what I was talking about with the quick question type emails, which all you’re trying to do is solicit a response, a reply, that’s it. No, you’re not asking them to click through any links, you’re not getting diarrhea of the mouth and dumping a whole bunch of information and doing an email. You just ask them a simple question that’s kind of disguised like a lead for them. It’s a little bit misleading, but not so, because you’re gonna present them with an opportunity.

Again, it’s not unethical. Like I said, it’s just a way to ask questions. For example, maybe if I got a tree service site or assets that I need to monetize, I might contact 10 or 15 different … When I was doing the mass prospect, I would contact 50, 60 tree service contractors with these quick question type emails. Now I’m going to be doing a hybrid model that it incorporates the video email process, which is, we have a training program that I developed that I’ve used for years to get results for prospecting and sales and that’s called the video lead gen system.

It’s how to use video emails to get people’s attention. It’s a bit time-consuming because you got to record videos that are personalized to each person you reach out to. I’m trying to templatize that now to where it’s going to be a lot easier and more efficient and have a team that does the video editing and all that kind of stuff so that we can turn it into more of a process. Like an assembly line to where we can do 10 or 15 videos in a short period of time and then targeted emails out.

But I’m still going to be using those quick question type emails where I might say like, “Quick question, are you guys accepting or are you guys providing estimates for tree removal right now?” When they reply yes, that’s the conversation starter. “Okay, great. Would you mind if I sent you a video explaining what it is that I’ve got?” Then if they reply yes again, now you they’ve given you permission to send them a video. Then you send them the damn video, which is a personalized video explaining what you got.

“Hey, look, I got these leads coming in right now.” You don’t show your assets, guys. You show call volume or you show the fact that you’re generating leads. Show proof. Say, “Look, I really need somebody who can take these leads. If you’re interested, let me know I’ll send a few of them to you for the next week, or I’ll send you five leads or 10 leads or whatever, whatever your business model is good for. You say to them, “I’ll send you five leads for free,” and then, “I’ll follow up with you after that to find out if you’re if you like them. If they were good genuine valid leads that you’d like to continue that service, we can talk then,” stuff like that. Just real simple little questions, guys.

I’ve tested all kinds of processes and what I found was those quick questions where you don’t drop a link in it, you don’t ask them to click, you don’t ask them to go to a landing page and fill out a survey, or watch a video on the first email, none of that, you just ask them to reply. That’s a conversation starter. That starts the dialogue. Once the dialogue starts, then you ask permission to send them a link for them to click, which is just a video essentially. You say, “Can I send you a video to explain what I’ve got?” If they say yes, now they’re giving you permission.

Then you send them the video link, and then they’ll click on it, and now watch the video. Then sometimes they will reply, sometimes they won’t. But that’s really the whole point. Again, video lead-gen system was the course that we did on how to use video email. Then I’m going to be kind of mixing that with the more … I’m trying to templatize that and make it towards a process to where it’s not so time-consuming to do those emails, although they’re very, very effective. Okay?

Again, this is stuff that in the Mastermind, guys, were gonna be covering over the next several weeks. Okay. Those were great questions, Jeff.

Does anybody else have-

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second.

Bradley: I’m sorry?

Chris: I’ll post a link to the book in a second. I already got it.

What Are Your Thoughts On WebFire 3.0 Tool?

Bradley: Okay. Cool. Yeah, it’s a great little book. All right, moving on. Martin says, “Have you any experience with the WebFire 3.0 tool?” No, Martin. When you said that, I clicked on it and I looked, I don’t, so I can’t really comment on that. I don’t have time to look through it right now. Perhaps, if you remind me, next week I will take a look at that before. I might look through that thing when we’re off this webinar today.

Marco: Hey Bradley, those are all like, those are click … Well, what do you call that, the auto traffic-

Bradley: It’s like a click-through spambot?

Marco: Yeah. Tons of websites like that.

Bradley: Okay.

Marco: The problem that I’m seeing, and by the way, they’re working. Some are working better than others. I’m not gonna say which one because then everyone will run there and ruin it for me. I don’t want you guys messing with my money. At any rate, they are working, go and test them out. But interestingly enough, what I found works the best is … You did a course on it, it’s only available in the Mastermind.

Bradley: Yeah.

Marco: The way that you teach it becomes actually cheaper than most of these click-through spams or spam traffic networks, which is really interesting because you’re targeting real people to come and visit your stuff. These real people have a genuine interest in whatever it is that you’re doing right and they’re going to ask way-, they’re going to act, excuse me, way differently than the people that have to click on your link. Does that make sense? They pay for it. Well, you paid for it, they go, they click, then they get credit. It just becomes crazy because they’re not really interested in your stuff, they’re only interested in theirs.

Now since we’re targeting real people with the real interest, through Bradley’s training, it becomes that much better. Guys, activity, relevance, trust and authority. We’re in trusted and authoritative to the max because were inside Google.

Bradley: That’s right.

Marco: Relevance because we’re targeting whatever it is that we’re targeting. I’m not gonna say anything because it’s something that’s right now only available in the Mastermind. Then, activity on that link. It’s relevant activity. People clicking on that link going and acting the way that real people do. Some might not like it and bounce back, many will. But that’s what real people do and that’s what we’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. I’m not gonna reveal the method here either, but exactly what Marco was saying, because that is real genuine traffic that Google knows has an interest in what you’re sending them to. So guys, when you’re talking about activity and engagement, which is one of the primary ranking signals now, is engagement, it’s not just blind engagement.

Again, if you are trying to rank something locally and you’re getting clicks from China and Russia and Korea and UK, and I’m talking about in the US, I’m just using this as an example, guys. But if you’re getting a bunch of clicks from things that are non-relevant either geographically especially for local stuff or non-topically relevant, in other words it’s just kind of like random traffic coming, do you think Google counts that traffic as an engagement signal, the same type, and gives it the same amount of weight as somebody that is in the local area that’s clicking from a local IP, likely from a mobile device that is intimately connected to them at all times, that they have a history of being interested in that particular type of content or service or product? Think about that guys, which click, which engagement signal is gonna be given more weight by Google? You already know the answer to that.

It’s not that these kind of tools and stuff can’t produce some nominal results, they can, but if you wanna get really good results and do it within terms of service, there are alternative ways to do it and it’s super, super effective. I mean, super effective. So it’s absolutely true.

Marco: I just want to be clear, Fiverr geeks, Fiverr traffic geeks, they get some results. These types of websites, the spam traffic, they get some results. But when you compare them all and compare them to the course that we have, it’s night and day. it’s just totally different because it’s just targeted traffic, people that are targeted to the geolocation so that they interact with whatever it is that you’re doing at that level, if that’s necessary. If not, then you can adjust to whatever it is that you’re doing and get traffic for pennies on the dollar, guys. That’s what it’s all about.

Bradley: Yeah. Again, topical relevance and geographic relevance, and you can combine both and get super, super good results. It doesn’t take a lot of traffic to get good results when you have heavily weighted engagement signals, which is what that is. It only takes a few engagements to get significant results when you have a really targeted audience that Google knows about. All right.

Anyways, we’re gonna keep moving. Sorry, I can’t give you a better answer on that. Bryan says, “What is the backlog on GMB listings in MGYB purchases. I’m out about four weeks.” Bryan, you’d have to contact support. I don’t manage any of that stuff, I’m sorry. Just contact support or send us ticket to support@mgyb.co and we’ll get it answered for you. Okay?

Marco: I was just talking to Rob about this to make sure. We have to deal with whatever it is that Google decides. I mean, they were on the show, we don’t control them. So we can’t say it’s definitely this or definitely that, or we’ll have it in a day, in seven days or whatever. It takes however long it takes. Some of them are nearly impossible. I believe that Bryan has already contacted Support and gotten an answer.

Now my thing is if you go through Support and then you come here, it just slows the process because then I have to go reach back to support, ask what’s going on, track it down, and then they all go and track it down and try to see what’s going on when it has already been answered.

The only thing that I can add to this is, guys, we’re not in control of this. We’re trying to do what we can. Bryan, you’re welcome to request a refund. If it gets too long, you’re welcome to request a refund and try to find someone who stands behind the product like we do 60-day guarantee replacement. If it gets suspended within those 60 days, we offer a legitimate guarantee. Now how long it takes to get it for you, that’s another question altogether.

Bradley: What’s up, Daniel? Hey man, the question you asked two weeks ago on Mastermind that we didn’t get to because the training went so long, please repost that for tomorrow because the Mastermind webinar is tomorrow and I didn’t want to spend some time on that. It was about a GMB question you had. We’re gonna have time. I’m gonna be covering specific training tomorrow, but it will be a lot shorter because I just did the Mastermind newsletter entry specifically about that. So that we’re gonna do some video training on it tomorrow, but you guys will have the written process.

You guys know how I do my process stocks. Well, you’re gonna have the written processes, the newsletter entry that you’re gonna get in about two or three weeks, whenever you get the next newsletter. That means my training tomorrow, the video training, will be a bit more streamlined so I should be able to get to your question. All right. I apologize I didn’t get to that, man, and it’s been weighing on me for almost two weeks now.

Is It A Good Idea To Leverage A Popular Family Name Or Brand To Get Press And Media Attention?

Anyways, Quentin’s up. He says, “Hello my name is Quentin Ravenel. I’m a full-time musician based in Charleston, South Carolina. Arthur Ravenel Jr. is a staple here. We’ve named a bridge after him that gathers 25,000 people every year in April to run or walk on the Ravenel Bridge. Is there any way to use my last name as leverage?”

That’s a really good question. Yeah. I would think Press Releases would probably be a great way to kind of piggyback off of that name recognition because that’s essentially … It’s a brand, right? Ravenel is a brand, right? If you can use that … There’s a strategy called newsjacking. Look into that, Quentin. Look in the newsjacking. In fact, you could just do a Google search for newsjacking and find plenty of resources, Amazon books, whatever that can teach you the strategy of newsjacking that I think would be perfect for that, for what you’re saying here because you have the same last name-, excuse me, as a brand that’s well-known in that area. I would use that newsjacking strategy as a way to get some press and some media. It’s almost like click bait but in a proper way, in an ethical way.

Again, I don’t do a lot of that stuff, I just haven’t had the opportunity to, but I’m familiar with that strategy. That’s something that I think you could implement here.

Marco, do you have any suggestions for that?

Marco: Entity relationship, man. That’s what he’d have to do. Relate his name to the Ravenel Bridge name so that when it comes in the, what they call, the Google auto predict, autosuggest, so when people go looking for the Ravenel Bridge walk, or a Ravenel Bridge run, Ravenel Bridge weekend, all of that stuff, your name comes up in there too. I mean, we’ve done that, right? Social conditioning?

Bradley: Yeah, social engineering.

Marco: Yep.

Bradley: Newsjacking, go check it out. There’s tons of information about it. There’s the book, David Meerman Scott, I think is the pioneer of that or whatever, at least the most well-known, but you can find all kinds of information about this free and paid. Just spend some time researching that newsjacking because it’s something that I think you could implement and get some significant results that way. Okay. By the way, go to mgyb.co to purchase Press Releases and we’ll publish them for you, they’re really, really nicely done. Okay.

Gregg. What’s up, Greg? You and I got a Mastermind call tomorrow, Gregg. Looking forward to it. We got a lot to catch up on.

Urban Towing says, “Does SerpClix work well for traffic to RYS or is there something else you would recommend?” Again, I’m not familiar with SerpClix. If it’s another CT spambot or crowd search, click-through thing-

Marco: It is.

Bradley: -which I imagine it would be. Yeah, I would probably produce some results, I don’t know how much. But I would recommend finding some better methods where you can actually buy or get real targeted traffic from real people that may have a genuine interest in your potential product or service. Guys, paid traffic is a good way to do that kind of stuff.

Marco: I actually went to SerpClix and did the math. It’s 14 cents per click. We can beat that through your method, can’t we, Bradley?

Bradley: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Marco: And this is real people. Real people targeted, remember that. Activity, relevance, trust, authority, that’s what you’re after.

Bradley: Yeah. Guys, we did … for years, Dan Anton had a product called crowdsearch.me. It works like gangbusters for a long time. Click-through spam was an engagement signal … I call it click-through spam. But that’s when somebody does a search on Google for example, keyword search, it could be a brand search, which is called a navigational search.

Guys, you can go to our YouTube channel. You can just go to Google and search crowdsearch.me and you’re gonna find this Semantic Mastery webinars. I’ve done two of them because we did one webinar and I think two years later we did another webinar because it was still working so well. I explained in that webinar, and both of those webinars and great length what click-through spam is and why it works so well.

It was actually a method that I learned way back in 2011 from Ivan Budimir, who was my most influential mentor in the local marketing, digital marketing space. It was Ivan Budimir. He’s no longer in the space, but he was absolutely amazing. I learned so much from that guy. He actually introduced that method to me back in 2011 and showed the Google patent. It’s not the actual official name of the Google patent, but he always called it site weight.

Site weight. In other words, if all things being equal, if there were two sites that were identical, which we know is impossible, pretty much, but theoretically, if two sites were equally authoritative, like they had the same amount of on-page optimization, the same amount of off-page optimization but one site got navigational search queries, which now in the semantic web is incredibly important, what is a navigational search query?

That’s a brand search or a variation of a brand search, like brand plus keyword, or brand a plus phone, like for somebody looking for the phone number of a company, or brand plus location, or brand plus map so that people looking for how to get to that location or get to that company or that store or whatever the case may be. Those are called navigational queries. If all things being equal, there were two identical sites competing brands and one had navigational queries and the other did not, the navigational query site would outrank the other, one hands down, two to one every time. Every time and it was tested over and over and over again. That was because of the site weight algorithm, or filter, or whatever you call that shit. Again, I’m not the patent nerd like Marco. Marco, that’s a term of endearment, by the way.

He introduced that way back in 2011 and the strategy then was to hire microtask workers to set up these little gigs. You would pay microtask workers two or three cents or something like that to go do a particular search, preferably with the brand dimension. Then find the link that you told them to find, click through, and then you would tell them, “Go find copy and paste the third word of the seventh paragraph on that page into the answer box,” and the answer box was their proof that they did the task that you assigned.

The reason why you wouldn’t just tell him to go click the link and copy because you want them to dwell on the page. That dwell time counted as an engagement signal, right? They would land on the page and then they’d have a hunt for that specific word or phrase or whatever it was that you told them to do that would make the answer. That would be the answer that means they solved the task that you gave them to do. That would create the dwell time, potentially scroll, you might ask them to click through to another page, whatever the task might be, click through to the link, then click through to the contact page, and then leave a message or whatever the case may be. You could set it up multiple different ways, but those were engagement signals way back in 2011 guys and it moved the needle like almost overnight.

The problem was as soon as you would stop paying in microtasks workers within just a few days your rank positioning start falling again because it was all about those engagement signals. Guys, again, this was eight years ago. Well, now, we’ve just been talking on this webinar alone about how important engagement signals are. So engagement signals are weighted even more now than they were back then.

Now the engagement signals are weighted more because Google can track and knows its users and the users’ behavior and their history. That’s what I was talking about. If you can get engagement signals from people that are locally and/or topically relevant to the content that you’re having them engage with, then that’s going to be weighted so much more.

What I’m saying is, again on a local level, if you can get people from a local geographic area that have a history for having an interest in that topic or that product or service as well as being local, a handful of clicks from them can produce better results than dozens or hundreds of click from non-relevant and non-non topically and non-geographically relevant clicks. Does that make sense?

So the click-through spam, and that’s what I called it because we were literally spamming click-throughs, isn’t as effective as it is when you can get relevant audience to engage because Google understands its audience, guys. Google knows its audience because everybody’s connected to Google all the time, right? So it knows what their history is and what their interests are and where they’re located and all that kind of stuff.

So that’s what I’m getting at. As far as the click-through spam stuff, for a long time it was working really well. Dan Anton’s, I think the best bot that came out, which was crowdsearch.me and for I think three, four years, I mean, I used it heavily. I was getting 50,000 credits per month and I was using every bit of them. It worked like gangbusters. But over time, it slowly started to stop working as well. I know that service is still out there. There are potential uses for it but it’s not something that I would do to direct to money site anymore. There are better alternatives now in my opinion, which is what we we’ve been talking about. We did some training about that in the Mastermind a few weeks ago.

It was a good question though. I was worried we’re not gonna have enough to talk about today, man, and look, we’re almost up. It’s awesome. Let’s see. “Think of how stupid the average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that.” That should actually be how stupid the median person is, right? It’s awesome. Thanks, Greg.

Okay. Grant says, “It might be easier to just close/delete designed junk email accounts ThAn unsubscribe endlessly.” Yeah. I know what you’re saying, Grant, but this is an email account that I’ve had for, God, 15 years, so it’s not something I wanna get rid of. But, yeah, I know what you mean.

By the way, I did all the heavy lifting. Now it’s just a daily maintenance thing. If I see an email come in, if that’s from something that was unsolicited, I open it, unsubscribe, and then as soon as the unsubscribe is successful, I go back and hit the spam button. Again, most days now guys, I might only get one or two spam emails. There are some days where I’ll get five or six or whatever, but almost every day now it’s just a bare minimum. So it’s manageable now. It just took a little bit of time.

Also, there’s a service called unroll.me. Guys, go check it out. Go to unroll.me, especially any of you suffering from shiny object syndrome. Type in your email and it’ll take a few minutes to run and it’ll come back and show you how many lists you’re subscribe to, and tell me it doesn’t take your breath away. It’s like, holy shit, how did I get subscribed … It’s just over the years, you accumulate, you get added to so many subscription lists either voluntarily or involuntarily, a combination of both really.

If you go to unroll.me, it’s amazing. It’ll just take your breath away when you see how many email lists you’re on, and you can start to systematically unsubscribe. Okay.

Chris: You’re the nightmare of every email marketer.

Bradley: Yeah. Well, now, I am, yeah. But trust me, a lot of email marketers made a lot of money from me too. All right. Let’s see, Walt says, “Not an affiliate link.” Okay. This is the quick, probably the quick … There you go, Grow Your Business With Cold Emails, Jeremy Chatelaine. That’s correct. He’s got an accent or whatever. It’s awesome, guys. Really short book. Look at that, it used to be cheaper, but 10 bucks, buy it, guys, it’s worth it. 100% worth it, buy it, and read it. It’s a great book for anybody’s doing prospecting. Guys, hands down, that has been the best strategy for me that I’ve ever found. Okay.

I’ll keep moving. Grow Your Business With Cold Emails: Everything You Need to Know. Go, perfect. Thanks, guys. I appreciate that.

Daniel, awesome. “Guys, I’m not whining about the GMB question, and I do have faith in SM.” Bryan, I think he took offense to which you said, Marco. Just looking to start implementing building out the local strategy and certainly anxious to get moving.” I totally get it, Bryan. I totally get it.

Marco: Yeah, so do we. I didn’t expect or intend again to offend. I just come across that way. I was just explaining that it just takes time. We try to get as quickly as possible. We know all you guys were anxious, but there’s only so much we could do when the beast keeps changing shit around.

Bradley: Correct. Yeah. That’s one of the issues, guys. Again, we all have to keep changing our methods to get these things done verified and such. I don’t even know what they’re doing to do it. I don’t care. Bryan, I’m just like you. I placed my orders too. I’m not kidding. Guys, I placed my orders just like you do now. I do have a little bit of pull sometimes, most of my orders are in queue still now because they’re not critical. But sometimes, for clients, for example, that have requested maps expansion, then I pull some strings to get them pushed forward a little bit. So that’s one of the benefits I guess of the CEO.

But for the most part, guys, I’m in queue just like you guys. It’s not you guys aren’t waiting because I’m getting all mine done. Trust me. I’m waiting too. Awesome. Unroll.me, You’re welcome, Grant

All right, guys. We gotta wrap it up. “Marco, you didn’t drop an F-bomb on me so I was unsure about the love.” It was Bryan again.

Chris: It’s coming.

Bradley: Marco, you got to say fuck just to make everybody happy once.

Marco: Yeah. Let me just close this off with this: fuck Google.

Bradley: All right, there you go. ‘Nuff said. All right everybody. Thanks for being here. Mastermind webinar tomorrow, don’t forget. If you did not check out the Syndication Academy update webinar from last week, do it, guys. Super, super powerful stuff. I showed you how to use RSS feeds there with geo-tagging.

By the way, I’m doing a lot of testing with I have it … No, I must already closed it down. No, there it is, RankFeedr. I’ve got it open. I’m not gonna show my projects. But Lisa Allen’s RankFeedr, guys. I know the coupon has expired now. She actually extended it because of the Syndication Academy update webinar that I did last week. I talked about it in there. Although the method that I showed was how to use Feedburner feeds to create local geotag feeds and they’re super powerful too, not as powerful as the RankFeedr feeds though because RankFeedr you can splice together and create static or sticky items and you can add the geotag and not just a specific geo coordinate but you can add what’s called a geo box, which is like a service area business. Super powerful stuff, guys.

I’ve been testing really hard for the last week now with the RankFeedr stuff and I’m seeing good results. Again, I know the coupon that she gave is expired, but it’s still totally worth it. It’s super inexpensive guys for the elite subscription, which I think allows you to create eleven hundred RankFeedr feeds.

Guys, it’s a set and forget. You set up a RankFeedr feed one time and you let it go. It just runs for as long as you keep your subscription active and you don’t have to do anything else. It will help to create co-citation geographic and topical relevancy on autopilot, guys. I’m telling you and for the elite service the elite subscription level, which again I think is 1,100 feeds, it’s $47 a month. It’s a no-brainer.

So if you haven’t already picked it up, guys, go watch the Syndication Academy update webinar, and go pick up the RankFeedr subscription service, which is how you create those things. I’m only telling you guys, we don’t pimp other people’s products unless we truly believe in them and I’m endorsing this because it’s such a good product and you can go to our website SemanticMastery.com I think it’s RSS-authority-sniper-3 I think. You could find the webinar replay and go through that process, if you want to watch the webinar where she talks about it.

But honestly, you don’t even need to watch the webinar, just go pick up the damn service because it’s really powerful. All right. With that, we’re gonna close it out. See you all next week. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Marco. Thanks, Chris.

Marco: Bye everybody.

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