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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years ago

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Survey #413

“i figured it out: the bigger the river, the bigger the drought”

When was the last time you felt like “getting into someone’s pants”? Years ago. What is your favorite energy drink, if you have a favorite at all? I don't enjoy energy drinks. Would you have kids with the last person you kissed? Neither of us want kids, so obviously no. Do you know someone who threatens to kill themselves? No. Would you ever completely dye your hair the color green? Noooo, that would look so awful on me. Have you ever been in a long-distance relationship before? Yep. What is your favorite food to eat around Christmas? Chocolate-covered peanuts. I have warm memories tied to snacking on those at a lights show one year. Do the people in your town speak like rednecks? Oh yeah. When was the last time you cried happy tears? I couldn't possibly tell you. How liberal are you? Considerably, but I'm not incredibly far into the spectrum, but I become more liberal as time goes on, I've found. Would you mind living near large predatory animals? Not really. So long as they're not coming into my house or anything. Have you ever experienced altitude sickness? No. Just ears popping. What’s your biggest priority right now? Reach a mental state where I can handle a job. If you’ve stayed overnight in a hospital, how did you entertain yourself? A loooot of reading... Are your hands unsteady? Very. I have bad tremors in my hands. Do you listen to a lot of mainstream music? Not at all. Do you think you’re pretty? No. Have you ever added someone you don’t know on Facebook? It's funny, the one instance where that's happened was with Jason, because I mistook him for a Jason I actually knew of and wanted to be friends with. I have friends on there I haven't met in person, I say I "know" them. Do you have dirty pictures in your phone? No. Have you ever looked up porn on the internet? No; I just don't get the appeal. Would you ever shoot someone right in the face? In a case of self-defense where I was clearly trying to be killed, that's right where I would aim. But otherwise, of course I wouldn't. Have you ever sold drugs? No. I'd prefer to stay outta jail. Did you ever try cutting yourself? Yes, and it does nothing but make the situation worse. Who’s the last guy you texted? My dad. Who do you know that wears the most make up? Probably my friend Summer, but I mean, she is a cosmetologist. Do any of your friends have kids? Lots do. Have you ever been tied up? No. How many times have you been cussed out? One. Are you anyone’s first love? I think. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? No. Do you have more than one personality? No. Do you prefer gory horror films or the psychological ones? Psychological. Do you have a favorite YouTuber or do you not watch much YouTube? I survive off of YouTube, and Markiplier is *obviously* my favorite. Are you a good dancer? Even when I WAS a dancer, I don't think I was great, except in clogging. If you could find one long-lost friend of the past, who would it be? Megan. Was your sixth grade teacher a man or a woman? I had multiple instructors for different subjects. Have you ever had any teeth pulled? No. Do you wash your hair or your body first when taking a shower? Hair. Have you ever been to a nursing home? Yes. Have you ever lived in a house that has been broken into? No, but the Bloods gang tried to while my sister and her best friend were home alone in my childhood home. Thank the fucking Lord they couldn't manage. They just left a flag at our doorstep. If I remember the timeline correctly, that was the final straw for us moving. Is there someone in your life you don’t want in it? No. How many different people of the opposite sex have you cried over? Just one, in the romantic sense. I've cried over my dad when he left us too, though. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? Sara. Has anyone ever told you they were in love with you? Yes. Pretending to “never get the text” from someone who annoys you. Is that you? I've done it before, but I really don't get texts from anyone who annoys me. If your ex came up to you and asked you to take them back, what would you say? I know I say I shouldn't be in a relationship right now, but I know I still would with one, and if it was Jason, he'd have a LOT of proving himself to do before I take him back. Do you prefer boys to shave down there? I prefer men to do whatever the hell they want with their own bodies to feel comfortable and at home in it. How much does your mother know about your sex life (or lack thereof)? Not a lot, because I find the subject extremely uncomfortable to talk about. She knows my "idk if I'm *actually* a virgin" crisis I had, because I was so upset with not knowing and wanted her opinion, but that's just about it. Do you enjoy watching cooking shows? I mean I don't hate them, but I don't really watch TV. Do you worry about gaining weight? I'm terrified of the idea I might keep gaining weight. Have you ever seen the movie A Walk to Remember? Cliche or worth watching? Yes, and I think it's a wonderful movie. The book was excellent, too. What’s one event your town has that you don’t like to participate in? I don't participate in any event my town has organized. Are any of your siblings married? What are their spouses' names? There's Josh, Franky, and Nick. Do you like being home alone or does it freak you out? I like it for a while. I eventually get lonely, though. Did you lose friends when you started dating someone? No. Did you leave milk and cookies for Santa when you were little? Yeah. To who did you last give the finger to? Some driver being fucking stupid. Do you talk in your sleep? A lot. Do you have a good relationship with your parents? Yes. Have you ever been a featured member on any website? Yeah, a SH fansite. Do you feel that your previous relationships were a waste of time? Only one was. Do you prefer hot chocolate with or without marshmallows? Without. Which do you like better: Regular cakes or cookie cakes? Regular, for sure. I mean I like cookie cakes, they're just... kinda boring as "cakes." Have you ever been hit by the opposite sex? No. If your significant other cheated on you, would you take them back? Nnnnnope. What was the last song you listened to? A slowed version of "Daddy" by PSY. Shut up. What do you look for most in a friendship? I guess the #1 trait would be... uhhh... supportive, maybe. There's obviously much more to a good friendship than just that, though. If the Internet never existed, what do you think you'd be doing now? Reading. I think I'd be a much more avid reader without the Internet. Have you tried something new at a restaurant lately? No. If your skin could be any color of your choice, which would it be? Ugh, I'd love to have like, porcelain skin that has like no flaws to it. Do you know any German words? A decent amount, seeing as I took four semesters of the language. Vegetables: Better raw or cooked? Uhhh idk. I don't like enough vegetables. What is the cutest animal? Maybe I'm biased, but meerkats. Would you mind dating someone significantly shorter than you? No, and the idea that some people have actual cut-offs for how short their partner can be disgusts me. Who the fuck cares how tall someone is. It's not like they have any say WHATSOEVER in it. Have you ever swam in the Atlantic Ocean? Yes. The Pacific? No. Can you make yourself cry? No. Have you ever held a starfish? I know I haven't held a live one. Have you ever been ghosted before? No. Did you ever play Imvu? No. Did you ever get caught watching porn? No, considering I've never watched it. What's the worst feeling in the world? Heartbreak. Not being good enough to someone whose opinion you deeply cherish. What's the BEST feeling? Love bringing people together, hence why I love things like Pride parades and such. As well as when you accomplish something you've really worked hard for. Do you think weed culture is annoying? Some people can definitely take it too far to where it's like the only thing that matters to them. People who say weed isn't addicting have NOT met the people I know. I'm not against use of marijuana, but goddamn, a drug should not be your entire world. Have you ever stayed in a relationship even though you didn't love that person? No. If I'm not into you, I'm out. Do you ever listen to "lo-fi hip hop" on YouTube? No. What's the worst prank someone has ever done to you? I've never had a real prank pulled on me. What color hair did your first crush have? Brown. What type of shoes do you find the most comfortable? Nice sneakers. I really only wear flip flops, though. Do you know a lot of people who have the same middle name as you? Yes, considering it's ridiculously common. Do you like your middle name? I mean it's pretty, but waaaaay too unoriginal. Would you ever audition for American Idol? Nope. Have you ever visited your state's capitol building? No. Have you ever visited your nation's capitol building? No. Have you ever felt an earthquake? No. Have you made any huge mistakes? Yeah. Do you believe anyone is asexual? Um, yes???? Do you do all the chores yourself? No.

#survey #surveys #random questions #lyrics: ''my name is human'' by highly suspect

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shadyb00ts · 4 years ago

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How 2020 Turned Me Into A Swiftie Again

If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d have not one but two Taylor Swift albums in my year-end favorites list, I would’ve thought you were out of your mind. Then again, stranger things have happened in this hellscape of a year.

I’m really not sure where the first time I heard the phrase “Life is too short to pretend to hate Taylor Swift” was. I have no idea who originated it, but it stuck with me when I started to unpack that about a year ago, during her Lover era. By then, my perception and feelings about Taylor had been very... inconsistent, to say the least. I started out as a full-on stan, then it dwindled from there overtime until I basically became a hater, which then turned into indifference but silent respect. Now, I’m pretty much on the road to becoming a stan again. Revisiting her catalog, analyzing her lyrics, watching interviews, the works.

I wanted to examine what it was that made my opinions about her go through so many steep rises and falls within this entire decade. Part of it was her shift in musical style that I didn’t quite mesh with, but another part was owning up to the internal biases I had when I was younger and how gullible I was in going along with whatever the media or the popular conscious was saying about her and the kind of person she is.

I’m somebody who’s incapable of separating art from the artist. I simply don’t listen to artists when I don’t like them as people or don’t agree with their actions. Examples include but are not limited to Kim Petras, Melanie Martinez, Azealia Banks, Grimes, just to name a few. I have my own personal reasons for just not wanting to engage with any of their music, and if you still want to, that’s none of my business.

At some point in my life, I think Taylor got on that list. Looking back on it now, I find that completely ridiculous, because she never really did anything or acted in a way that warranted that reaction out of me. So I wanted to delve into how that even came about in the first place.

With that said, I want to take a trip down memory lane and go back through her eras, and go through the timeline of my strange relationship with Taylor Swift’s body of work as well as her public persona. Fair warning, it’s gonna be really cheesy and emotional at parts, but it is fully my truth. Thank you in advance if you manage to read the whole thing.

Part 1: The Country Era

It’s 2010 and I’m in eighth grade. I’m in an extremely Muslim country, the only son of an extremely Muslim family that enrolled me in an extremely Muslim school. I’m getting bullied by the boys in my class for being too feminine and being ignored by the girls for being a boy. The last close friend I had from elementary school had just moved away the year prior, and I’d never felt more alone in my life.

I was a closeted gay kid still trying to figure himself out and hating who he was. I escaped to cringey online chat sites like IMVU and catfished as a girl, because at the time I thought the only way to get boys to like me and want to be with me was to pretend to be someone else, someone I actually liked.

When I think back on this era, I mostly remember the girls in my class obsessing over these three albums and singing her songs with each other all the time. I desperately wanted to join them and fangirl with them over her music, though of course they never gave me the time of day. I remember I would memorize so many of her songs and write them all down on a special notebook I kept. When I wasn’t paying attention in classes, that’s what I would do; scribble out a collection of all the songs of hers that I knew by heart.

To me, these three albums represented a certain kind of vivid fantasy. Taylor’s songwriting has obviously grown exponentially over the past decade, but even back then she was always so damn good at storytelling and detail, painting you a very clear picture of a scene and placing you right there. For a miserable, self-hating fourteen-year-old gay boy that was always seeking escapism from a homophobic environment, this was the perfect outlet for me to live out a different kind of life, to play pretend.

I honestly can’t explain what it is about her style of songwriting but she always made me feel like I was genuinely experiencing everything she was talking about. Things like kissing in the rain, riding around in the truck of the boy of my dreams in a tiny one horse town, shedding teardrops on a guitar that I definitely didn’t own, experiencing crushing heartbreak. This was stuff that my sheltered ass couldn’t comprehend.

Taylor perfectly captured that ideal, that small town girl with big dreams and storybook romances. I was in love with her discography at the time, having memorized pretty much the entirety of Fearless because that was my favorite of three. Middle school was hell for me, but her music was definitely something that helped me pull through, because she sent my imagination into overdrive.

This was a time in my life where I didn’t really care yet about an artist’s public image or the media’s portrayal of them, It was purely about the music for me. Of course, when looking at these albums now, there were a few questionable choices she made lyrically, I have to admit. Particularly with songs like “Better Than Revenge” and “Innocent”, both having aged terribly with the former being bafflingly misogynistic and the latter being about Kanye. As of my writing this, Taylor is currently in the process of re-recording her old catalog, and I assume that she would skip these two songs in particular, as well as several others that haven’t exactly aged well.

This era really got me through some tough times and she provided much-needed relief for me within each of these three albums. I’ll always have an attachment to them because of the bittersweet memories they represent.

Part 2: Red

Red I decided to put in its own category, because this was kind of a weird era for Taylor. Even back when I was an ignorant teenager that barely had any critical thinking skills, I felt the dissonance of this album and its Max Martin produced singles. This album represented Taylor dipping her toe into pop music, which she made abundantly clear when she decided to release We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together as the lead single.

I actually remember this moment quite clearly. She premiered the single at some kind of fan event that I believe was streamed live on YouTube, and either I watched it live or I watched the full recording of it later on. At the time I remember feeling it was kind of bizarre to hear Taylor adopt this style of music, because it was so drastically different from her previous work and it took me a while to adjust. Obviously I enjoyed pop music at the time as much as I do now, but I just hadn’t been expecting it to come from Taylor.

Fortunately it was just the three singles that were full pop, and the rest of the album still had her signature DNA and also includes some of her best work. All Too Well, for example, is I think one of the best songs she’s ever made, if not the best. I think if I were introducing Taylor to someone that’s totally unfamiliar with her, that would be my first choice, because it’s a masterwork in songwriting and emotionality.

I do think the thing that irked me the most about this album and era, even to this day, was the lack of cohesion. Of course I figured that she would eventually venture into pop music, but the way in which she did it just felt a bit too jarring to me. Perhaps if the album had a more even distribution of pop songs and country songs, it would’ve been slightly more palatable for me. It’s not even that the three pop songs were bad; they were quite good for their time. Though to be completely honest they’re the songs I barely ever return to any time I listen to Red now. They’re the kind of catchy pop songs where it’s difficult not to get sick of them at a certain point in your life. I’ve grown to really dislike the lead single, and even 22.

Her image was also starting to get much more scrutinized by the media around this time. I think this era probably marked the sharp rise of the “Taylor Swift has too many boyfriends!” argument people loved to throw around. I wish I could say I was smart enough to not buy into that shit at the time, but I wasn’t. While it didn’t bother me, it was something that I wondered about, why she dated and broke up with so many guys at such a young age. It was something that I judged her for. Obviously I didn’t yet understand that it was normal for people her age to date around. Plus it gave her some great material.

By this time, Taylor was making the gradual transition of country sweetheart to pop star, and while Red was kind of a rocky start to that, naturally she managed to pull it off. But not quite flawlessly.

Part 3: The Pop Era

Okay, I have a lot to say about these girls.

I think this era started off strong with 1989. It was a more fully realized version of Taylor’s little pop experiment, and it actually had the cohesion that I needed to be able to fully adapt to this new style she’d cultivated. She wrote yet another one of her best songs with Blank Space, which I like to think was a precursor to Reputation (and dare I say that one song did Reputation’s concept better than that album as a whole?).

However... Shake It Off. I’m sorry, I just hate that song.

WANEGBT, the first single off of Red, isn’t exactly the best song either but it made sense as to why she chose that as the first single. It was to signify her dabbling into pop. Reputation’s first single I also am not the biggest fan of, but again, made perfect sense as an introduction, but I’ll get to that later. Shake It Off, though? For the life of me, I have no idea why this song was the first single. Or to be frank, why it was even on the album at all.

I’m sorry y’all, I just hate it. Everything about it. The verses, the chorus, the appalling rap bridge. She should’ve kept that song in the drafts and released Blank Space as a first single, and that’s a hill I’m willing to die on. Sorry Shake It Off stans, but I’m sure all three of you will get over it. ❤

That said, 1989 had some excellent songs, and I was finally starting to get used to Taylor doing pop. However, my excitement and enthusiasm for her music started to falter due to my weak mind at the time once again getting swayed by the media.

This time, I began to see Taylor as someone that seemed to be very calculated and conniving in the way she curated her image. Something that didn’t sit well with me was the “girl squad” stuff, and how all of the women she surrounded herself with were essentially these supermodels with unattainable beauty standards, and also believing the rumors about how certain famous women were given private requests to join Taylor’s “squad”. And then of course, the Kim and Kanye thing happened. #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trended worldwide, and that was probably my earliest exposure to an instance of a celebrity getting canceled, so I was just happy to join the bandwagon. My opinion of her shifted like that, and it’s crazy to think about it now, how I barely had the capacity to form my own opinions and was easily influenced by everything I heard.

Despite me kind of joining the Taylor hate train, I did like Reputation as a concept. I liked how she disappeared from the public eye and came back being like, “You want me to be the villain? The snake? Fine.” Look What You Made Me Do, as I mentioned before, was the perfect choice for the first single despite the song itself being sonically....not the best. The music video and the line about how the old Taylor couldn’t come to the phone was an iconic moment in pop culture, I have to admit that.

I didn’t listen to the album as a whole until later, though. I was having my own hang-ups about Taylor that I think are silly now, but at the time when I didn’t like an artist I would mostly avoid their work. When I did listen to the album, though, I thought it was... okay. There’s one standout track to me and that is Getaway Car, and it’s the only song from Reputation I can say I fully adore to pieces. The other songs on there I either just like, or I find to be meh at best. (Also I know Ready For It is objectively a bad song but I really enjoy the chorus, don’t @ me, @ god)

A few years later, Lover happened and.... Once again, horrible first single. ME! is a genuinely atrocious song, and I have no idea how esteemed, prolific songwriter Taylor Swift managed to reach a point where she had a song with the phrase “spelling is fun!” in it. I feel the exact same way about this song as I do about Shake It Off. It had no business being in the album whatsoever.

As far as Lover the album goes, this came out around the time where I was kind of feeling indifferent toward Taylor (which is hilarious if you know what the first track on it is). I was much more politically aware and had learned not to put too much faith in white women, and I was focusing on other artists so much that Lover barely even came onto my radar. I listened to it once, thought it was meh, and moved on. I revisited it earlier this year and realized I was a bit too harsh on it the first time around. Sure it was her weakest album overall, but it wasn’t bad by any means. It was perfectly alright, and there were songwriting moments within it that were still quite strong. The title track and also Miss Americana comes to mind as standouts.

She started to become more vocal politically around this time. A lot of people thought it was too little too late, which was a fair point. However to me it made sense that she stayed tight-lipped about politics when she was younger, considering she was operating within the realm of country music. Plus, upon watching her documentary, it was pretty clear she had old white men behind the scenes telling her what she should or shouldn’t say, to make sure she maintained that all-American country girl sweetheart image. Still, I do agree with the people who thought that she should’ve used her platform sooner.

Oh and for the record, I think You Need to Calm Down is a terrible song. The video was cute, and the message behind it is fine, but I just hate it sonically.

At this point my interest in Taylor was probably at an all time low. The era started off strong with 1989, but it progressively got weaker. She just wasn’t really giving me much in terms of lyricism, and her pop productions were starting to blend together to the point where a lot of them were sounding very same-y. Lover to me marked the point of stagnation in her music; it was solid enough, but it just wasn’t going anywhere. We’ve seen Pop Taylor, she was cute for a while, but what else? Where does she go from here?

Well... She went into the woods.

Part 4: The Cottagecore Sisters

When I heard about Taylor dropping a surprise album, I suppose I was intrigued. She is one of the few artists that are successful enough to be able to make a move like that and cause a lot of buzz and excitement. I didn’t think much about it though, because my 2020 at that time was still inundated with SAWAYAMA and Ungodly Hour on repeat. On a whim, though, I decided to listen to it one day, not expecting much out of it.

Earlier when I was talking about her country era, I mentioned that Taylor’s storytelling and her penchant for detailed descriptions were my favorite parts of her writing. Her innate ability to transport me into other worlds, to provide escapism when my life became too much to deal with. I feel like these aspects were missing in the several years that Taylor focused on pop music. There were flashes of it in some of her later work, sure, but very few. She was becoming a huge mega superstar and her songs started to lose that sense of relatability that had been easy for me to latch on too. These things definitely contributed to my loss of interest for her work in general.

And then Folklore managed to bring me back to that place of fantasy I described before, but heightened. Elevated. Evolved. This is why I think that Folklore is Taylor Swift’s magnum opus.

Storytelling is without a doubt her strongest skill as an artist. To be able to construct not just a narrative but an entire world through songs is not something anyone can pull off. Throughout her pop era, there was always that something missing because I knew that she was capable of more. I couldn’t explain it well back then, but despite her penmanship still being commendable during those years, it still felt oddly lackluster. I knew she could do better, but I didn’t have the proof yet.

This is it. Both Folklore and Evermore showcase exactly what I knew she was capable of. This is Taylor Swift at her most creative, at her full power.

I think in a recent interview I watched (though I can’t remember which one), even she herself acknowledged how it would’ve been a disservice to continue strictly writing autobiographical songs, and so she decided to write from the perspectives of multiple different characters while also occasionally inserting herself and her life experiences into these narratives. She essentially created her own folklore and managed to make me invested in characters that don’t even exist.

I have to talk about the love triangle trilogy: cardigan, august and betty. It’s a testament to her songwriting ability that these fictional characters feel like real people. The story of Betty, James and Augusta/Augustine is just so well done to the point where I forget that it’s Taylor Swift singing. When I listen to these songs, I am fully imagining the characters she conjured up.

The song that I find the most profound out of the three, and also happens to be my favorite song on the album, is august. To me, it is the most heartbreaking song out of all of them. I relate so much to that girl who’s hopelessly in love with someone that just doesn’t give a shit about them and is merely using her for a summer fling. And it’s not even like I’ve experienced something similar to this in real life, Taylor just somehow made it relatable with the sheer power of her pen game. It’s even more heartbreaking considering we don’t know what happened to this girl, if she ever managed to find happiness, because in the Long Pond Sessions Taylor mentioned that Betty and James eventually got back together. They got their happy ending, but what happened to Augustine?

I can’t believe she’s got me this deep in my feelings over non-existent teenagers, I swear to god.

Just when I thought Folklore was going to be the end of this new side of her for a while, she releases Evermore in December, its sister album. While I don’t think it’s quite as strong as Folklore, it still delivered immensely in terms of lyricism, productions and vocals. Evermore’s release pretty much solidified the realization that I was basically becoming a Swiftie again, a whole decade later.

I was embarrassed by that thought at first, but honestly now I’m at a point where I don’t think there’s anything to be embarrassed about. Taylor is too skilled of a songwriter for me to consider her a guilty pleasure. I just needed something to help me come to that conclusion, and these two albums did just that. She finally gave to me what I was waiting for.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really stan artists the same way I used to now, which I mentioned previously in my review of Chromatica. I don’t deify them or hold them to an impossible moral standard they could never live up to anymore. I see them as flawed human beings that have the capacity to make great art. So when I say I’m becoming a Swiftie, I’m still fully aware that Taylor Swift is a thirty-one year old rich white woman who is bound to have shortcomings and missteps as a person. In my mind, she hasn’t done anything drastic enough or stupid enough for me to become uncomfortable in listening to her work. I had my own ideas about how she could’ve been fake, conniving, manipulative or whatever else the media was trying to convey about her, but there really is no way of knowing who she truly is as a person.

Celebrities and influencers have the power to curate their image however they want. The relationships they have with us, the audience, are entirely parasocial, so of course we base our judgments of them based on very limited knowledge, or just the surface-level view of what they’re like. I don’t know if Taylor is as down to earth and genuine as she appears to be now, and I honestly don’t need to know. If she does things I disagree with or acts a certain way that deserves criticism, of course I’d still call her out, and depending on the severity of what it was she said or did, it might end up with me not wanting to engage with her work anymore.

But the reality is, as a person, I’ve realized that she is just fine. I was holding on to a certain idea of her in my head where I think at one point I dubbed her “the Anne Hathaway of music”, meaning someone that comes across too perfect to the point where it seems calculated and disingenuous. But honestly, I just don’t feel that way about her anymore. I don’t feel particularly attached to her as a person, either.

But I do feel an attachment to her music. At the end of the day, that’s where I’m standing now when it comes to her. I don’t have any expectations or delusions about her as a human being, and I’m not going to remain devoted to her if she does something dumb, but I believe that she is an insanely gifted artist who has written so many songs that genuinely speak to me and make me feel intensely. She lost me for a while, but now I’m right back in it.

So yeah, like I said in the beginning of the post, life’s too short to pretend to hate Taylor Swift. I’d rather just pretend to live in a mystical small town as a sad gay witch. And I’m at peace with that.

#taylor swift #taylor swift eras #folklore #evermore #swifties

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vuisburning · 8 years ago

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Aw@imvu is a biased slut!!!!!!!!!!!! She showed me a picture of her pussy!!!! and that shit was wide, loose, and dry! if u put ur dick in aw's hole, it would scrape off the bit of foreskin u have bc its like concrete. aw is disgusting. shes also extremely racist, shes called me the n word several times on call and chat. i have the screenshots to prove it! (will post those later) do not befriend this ugly old bitch!

#aw

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wikimakemoney · 5 years ago

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How this pandemic will disrupt your growth team

30-second summary:

One of the best practices to emerge in the last two decades has been the emergence of “growth teams” inside the world’s fastest growing companies.

These teams mandate to run as many experiments as possible to test, learn, and come up with new and improved ideas to continuously acquire new customers and engage existing ones.

Companies are not going to win in the new COVID-19 world if they’re dependent on old-school manual processes and bloated teams.

As more growth teams open up to fully embrace AI, they need to figure out how to find the optimal balance between humans and machines, so they can co-exist together to create a dream team for driving growth.

The future growth team would comprise of essentially a mix of automated intelligent machines that track, measure, and scale growth on customer acquisition campaigns across the entire customer journey.

Companies that use AI to accelerate the rate of learning will emerge stronger than their peers — so now is no time to sit on the sidelines.

Since the earliest days of the commercial Internet and the rapid growth in availability of smartphones, companies have been on a mission to seek opportunity by disrupting the status quo.

One of the best practices to emerge in the last two decades has been the emergence of “growth teams” inside the world’s fastest growing companies.

These teams mandate to run as many experiments as possible to test, learn, and come up with new and improved ideas to continuously acquire new customers and engage existing ones.

Every growth team is racing to discover approaches to marketing that will give them the competitive edge to driving growth and hitting their success metrics.

These days, that means growth teams are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to help them innovate in ways that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

The only choice now is how quickly businesses will embrace AI at this point in time, or face being left behind if they stay frozen in the current pandemic instead of taking this opportunity to up level their existing tools and approaches to unlock cost-effective growth strategies.

Their time to experiment is now.

Automation is the key to growth during the pandemic

The future of Customer Acquisition 3.0 rests on the shoulders of intelligent machines orchestrating complex campaigns across and among key marketing platforms—dynamically allocating budgets, pruning creatives, surfacing insights, and taking actions autonomously.

These machines hold the potential to drive great performance with a far more efficient, hands-off management approach powered by the unparalleled mathematical fidelity that is otherwise undercut by a dependence on a toxic mix of spreadsheets, human biases, and “gut instincts”.

Companies are not going to win in the new COVID-19 world if they’re dependent on old-school manual processes and bloated teams. The end goal for any growth team is to ensure they successfully scale growth better, faster, and more cost effectively.

Control your levers, focus on creative and strategy, and turn over the fiddly bits to machines. You’ll get data driven results far beyond manual capabilities and much faster than you think.

You’ll create a more responsive framework for growth that can stand headwinds like COVID-19 and lead your company to even greater heights when market dynamics have improved.

Key challenge for growth teams to find the optimum human-machine balance

It’s always better for any team or business to be proactive in disrupting themselves before someone else disrupts them into a footnote — a casualty of once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic.

The focus should be on automating tasks — not jobs — to make lean teams more productive than ever before.

There are huge positive implications for getting laggards to implement AI as the foundation of their growth strategy.

With more companies working to keep the wheels of commerce grinding along, we’ll keep more people employed, and we’ll get the economy on track faster than we might otherwise, if left to our own biases and instincts.

A mix of automated intelligent machines is the way forward

AI isn’t just one specific technology, and adoption can be a daunting task. The future growth team would comprise of essentially a mix of automated intelligent machines that track, measure, and scale growth on customer acquisition campaigns across the entire customer journey.

These tools are excellent for analyzing large data sets, automating systems and workflows, running A/B tests, and optimizing audiences for paid ads.

As a growth marketer, much of what you once did manually can now be done by using a combination of AI and automation. The growth team has always been responsible to acquire, retain, and monetize as many customers as possible while spending the least amount of money.

This isn’t going to change in the future, but the way to go about executing the customer acquisition strategies to achieve those goals will.

AI saves time and money, by being better at executing complex campaigns, uncovering data insights, and getting performance results faster with less human manpower.

Companies that use AI to accelerate the rate of learning will emerge stronger than their peers — so now is no time to sit on the sidelines.

Lomit Patel is the Vice President of Growth at IMVU. Prior to IMVU, Lomit managed growth at early-stage startups including Roku (IPO), TrustedID (acquired by Equifax), Texture (acquired. by Apple) and EarthLink. Lomit is a public speaker, author, advisor, and recognized as a Mobile Hero by Liftoff. Lomit’s new book Lean AI, which is part of Eric Ries’ best-selling “The Lean Startup” series, is now available at Amazon.

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source http://wikimakemoney.com/2020/05/28/how-this-pandemic-will-disrupt-your-growth-team/

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