#but trying to rephrase that for end of semester feedback is like.....

[sgiandubh]

Five minutes of Instagram fame

The Brazilian fan is back with more attention-grabbing content, one week after she had thousands of eyes on her London shenanigans. Which I am not going to discuss, simply because I do believe there is no need to give the anecdote more space than it deserves. Enough is enough, and the apparent collective loss of all sense of measure is a sure sign that pause is needed, in that department.

What I am going to discuss, however, is the chutzpah of a 23 year old Nobody, who just wishes to keep those five minutes of fame rolling on and on and on.

Yesterday, she felt compelled to publish another batch of Instagram stories, in which she delivers her Toxic Shipping 101 lecture:

In the process, she basically just rephrases the main Anti Bible arguments, calls thousands of people 'insane', quotes two influential shipper blogs (slàinte mhath, @bat-cat-reader!) that didn't even come close to what I wrote about her, brings on board her mother and grandmother just to explain how upset she was about 'older American women picking up on her'. And ends with a rather pathetic plea for all of us, shippers, to 'seek immediate medical attention'. Same unnerving sotaque Paulista (São Paulo accent), with a posh and very fake tinge of British English. Same incoherent, amateur and immature discourse, endlessly seeking to bring attention to herself, mildly trying to victimize herself. Blah, blah.

I would have given her grace, were it not for this particular argument, in response to a X user asking a rather uncomfortable question, as she definitely has the constitutional right to do:

'OH God, not her again 23 yr old Brazilian trying to be a reporter in London, complete fail. but in BIG OL LONDON, 'JUST HAPPENED' TO Spot Sam, how dumb do you think we all are?'

Answer is the real dumb part of the story, if you ask me, especially coming from a very young woman: 'Forbidden to be a journalist and meet a celebrity in the street. Forbidden to go for a walk as a journalist, paging all my colleagues, ok? I had no clue I could be as scheming as they say I am.'

Ok, buttercup: it is my honest understanding that you want to be taken seriously and treated as a professional, right? Did I miss something, here?

Right. As the daughter of a journalist and a former Government expert in media policies (specifically dealing with media content broadcasting), I am going to do exactly this and honestly ask you, Mrs. Silva:

Do you consider, in all good faith, that you acted like a professional journalist, in this very circumstance?

Do you consider to have kept your impartiality and have you at least checked all the relevant facts and POVs, before slandering all those people on your social media account? Or did you content yourself to report the hearsay shared with you by other bloggers, and just conveniently quoted four random bloggers and commenters?

Have you the slightest idea that one of the commenters who reached out to you on Instagram, questioning your version of the facts, is not even a shipper (and actually, very violently far from being one)?

During the week separating your first post and this reaction to people's feedback, have you or have you not respected your due diligence obligation to contact and engage with the people you so easily treat as a bit less than the scum of the Earth?

Did you or did you not ask for permission to quote their published content on your social media account, especially in a polemic context?

Unlike you, I have diligently perused both your website and your Linked In account. Maybe it is time to tell all those people you have insulted the truth about who you are, professionally, at this very moment:

Marketing student, 3rd semester.

Let me count: 3 internships (correct me if I am wrong), in various junior positions for 1 local media outlet, 1 international corporation and 1 website, 4 different jobs - or should I say 'stints' (3 with your current employer, 1 as a freelancer for a local media outlet).

Still learning. There is absolutely nothing bad about it. But you have still a LONG way to go until you could pretend to be a real voice. And there is nothing in what you posted that could grab my professional attention and make me hire you. Quite the contrary and, believe it or not, I am awfully sorry to say so.

My three free and totally unsolicited pieces of advice:

Always check your facts, always get in touch with the people you plan to write about. In fact, your anger and ego got the best of your professional self and you lost a great opportunity for a paper you could have even titled ' Viagem na Shipperlândia' (A Trip to Shipperland). I would have read that. But you haven't. You preferred to act just like all the other 23 year old girls and make a belly-button story about yourself.

Never bring your family forward in questionable contexts. You expose people who have nothing to do with the irrelevant insanity of a fandom war, to which you contributed your own, perhaps involuntary, dose of chaos and unnecessary drama.

Never lie on your Linked In resume. Potential employers might and will read it. Never write things like:

.. when you also fail to accurately describe your former job position, denoting poor spelling:

Especially when words are your craft, bread and butter. The devil is always in the details:

As I mentioned in a previous post, you could have been my daughter. I have been that 23 year old girl myself, desperate to list every single internship and tempted to inflate language proficiency, in the hope it would land me the job of my dreams. And I have learned the hard way that being a true professional is cancelling your ego.

You'll learn. Until then, stop bitching on things you have no idea about and act like an adult, not an attention hungry teenager. This comes from a place of tough love: sometimes, the most effective life lessons are given by complete strangers.

[abbyccpsarts]

Process Journal

Link to my Learning Agreement

2.10.20

This week I organized all of the Polaroids I’ve taken thus far into mini books to help organize and protect the film. I’m still working on finalizing the list of “bucket list” items I want to complete, as well as what the journal entry prompts will be. Besides the pretty big gap in research that I have with this, my project doesn’t feel “substantial” enough right now, if that makes any sense.

Some of the photos below!

(above is from the museum I went to, below is from my trip to Israel!)

Additionally, I did a critical response workshop with fellow Arts Scholar Adriana Alonzo:

Critical Response Process-w/ Adriana Alonzo

Statements of Meaning:

- Likes how this project has an air of “fulfillment”

- “Fun” premise; Makes it real life, not a HW assignment

Artist as the Questioner:

Research angle: the mental health benefits of traveling, journaling; Research the individual aspects of your project

- Logging mental health over a long period of time

-follow up research on the ones I enjoyed

Neutral Questions

- How many “experiences” do you plan having; do you know

Goal between 10-12; subsections within each “header”; don’t have final list

- How are you going to set up website?

Current plan is to have a gallery, but also direct links to each experience; A more clean cut design than the original scrapbook

- Any research on website?

Probably gonna have a page about that; be the home screen? (maybe not)

Permissioned Opinions

- Do you like the experiences I’ve brought up?

“It’s cute! I think the mix you have is good; always people to relate, like you want”

2.12.20

I had my advisor conference today with Heather and she gave me some really great advice on avenues I can go down for the research end of things. One thing Heather said that is really sticking with me is what she said about making this an experiment of sorts—I’m not just going to complete these bucket list experiences, but having a common theme/experiment throughout that will help me connect them. What if this experiment was prose related? I wanted to add in a writing element other than journaling originally so this could be my opportunity to do that.

I’ve also decided to use Wix for the final web format. It’s easy to use but also has the opportunity for “advanced tinkering,” as I like to say.

2.17.20

I’ve had a breakthrough today—I was hanging out with my writer friend and I remembered a while back she was talking about how one of her english classes had them do an assignment where they had to “people watch” for thirty minutes once a week and write down some of the conversations they overheard. My friend used this to help better her dialogue in her writing. I’ve decided to emulate this but take it a step further: I’m going to go to places I’ve always wanted to go to, but I’m going to people watch at these places—write down snippets of conversation I might overhear, etc—and then choose a subject/person to write a short story about. This allows me to not only experience new things, but try and put myself in a new mindset, context, by writing in these places about someone/something else. Because there’s a new, more time-consuming and creative-consuming element to this capstone, I think it’s wise that I aim for 5-6 total pieces/experiences instead of the originally intended 10-12. 

2.19.20

I had my first look presentation today and overall I’ve gotten some really good feedback from everyone. I still need to thoroughly go through the flashcards I got from everyone, but so far everyone seems to like the direction it's going, even giving some great suggestions for what format the stories should be in (flash fiction maybe? Or even dabble in poetry as well) and how I could narratively tie all the stories together. Below is the google document I used to succinctly point out the differences and similarities between this “new” capstone and the old one.

A Collection of Stories Inspired by People (or Wizard) Watching

SIMILAR ELEMENTS

Still In a web format

Still involves me going out and trying new things; simply asks me to be more engaged with my surroundings and other people there

Still involves reflection/journaling on my part

Still involves a photographic complement

DIFFERENT ELEMENTS

New narrative element- I’m writing a short story about a person experiencing the space I’m in;

Possibly contrasting and/or complementing that story to my own personal emotions tied to that space

Story is going to be the main focus, while my own thoughts are going to be secondary

RESEARCH

Fairly new idea, so I’m working on curating a new list of sources, but I’m going to primarily focus on researching the benefits of people watching, actively being creative in a new space (seeing how that affects my writing process), etc

2.21.20

Today I started messing with Wix a bit. I’m definitely jumping ahead on my schedule and ignoring what I should really be doing (research!!) but I’m giving myself some breathing room to get my thoughts and such accumulated to this new idea. I don’t want to share any pictures of my website bare bones until 

2.24.20

My goal for this week (on top of research) was to compile a rough list of the places I want to go for writing this story. A lot of the preliminary reserach I’ve done on writing/being creative in a new space suggests having a “control;” this means, in regards to this particular project, that I need to write in a space I’m familiar with and see how that differs from writing in a completely new space. Then there’s also the question of how I’ll write at the beginning when I’m first introduced to the new space, and then how’ll write once I get slightly more acclimated to the space. Regardless, here are my ideas for where to people watch/write as of today:

(1) Starbucks route 1 [serves as my control for this “experiment”]

(2) Bookstore/Restaurant (I’m visiting one next Thursday for a comedy show)

(3) “Somewhere” in NYC (visiting w/ scholars—write during free time?)

(4) Center of a campus (not UMD— maybe Towson? over Spring Break?)

I don’t want a totally “complete” list yet, as I want opportunities to present themselves as I go along, but I still think it’s good to have a basic list of things to do. I think the first thing that I’ll end up doing is either the Starbucks one (my control) or the bookstore/restaurant since I’m attending a comedy event at one next Thursday.

3.1.20

I haven’t really made much headway in research, writing, or anything to be honest. I had a pretty busy weekend—worked most of Friday and all of Saturday— and now I’m starting to get a little bit nervous. I’m switching up my weekly plan a bit and having this week be primarily research and working on my annotated bibliography. Then maybe I’ll have a good idea of how I want to go about people watching for the comedy show this Thursday. 

3.4.20

Last week we had arts scholars alumni join us for our weekly discussions. While I was expecting a plethora of great advice from each of them, It was also great to hear about how they each struggled, and that changing your mind is okay. 

3.10.20

Tonight we heard that school is going to be closed down for the next month or so because of the current worldwide health situation (it might be a pandemic. we don’t know yet). As much as I hate to admit it I’m more annoyed than anything, but I understand how paramount safety and health is over any frustrations I might have. I know we’ll adjust accordingly. I hadn’t really thought about how this was going to affect my capstone until now. Hopefully I’ll still be able to travel to new places. Everything’s pretty hectic right now so we’ll see what the next few weeks bring.

3.25.20

Creativity; Time Management Chosen Technique: Incubation. While I’ve utilized “taking a break” while I’m working, (going to take a walk, etc) I’ve never really considered it in the context of “this is my time to let my thoughts marinate.” I really enjoyed reframing my mindset while taking incubation breaks and found that it allowed me to not only work longer, but more effectively.

3.31.20

It’s been an interesting month to say the least. I’m going to have to change my capstone quite a bit in light of the rest of the semester being online and not being able to travel to write my pieces. I’m really not quite sure what I’m going to do, but we’ll see. I have nothing to show at this time. I have my research but I haven’t dived into writing because I’m unsure of what direction to go in. Perhaps after I talk with Heather I’ll have some more direction.

4.5.20

Curation Rapid Prototyping Exercise: essentially, my sketching revolved around the various menu tabs I want for my website.

- An Artist’s Statement/Process page (BTS)

- Research page

- A central page for someone to visit that organizes all of the pieces onto one “table of contents” that links to each pieces individual page

- An individual page for each piece

- A contact page?

Second Advisor Meeting: 4/9/20

I met with my arts advisor (Heather!) over ZOOM today and thank god because I can salvage this capstone. I honestly with I’d reached out to her sooner. We’ve found a way to salvage my research and redirect/reword it to fit the current situation. I’ll be writing about rooms in my house that I’ve changed emotions for. It plays into my research on the Differential Susceptibility Hypothesis (our susceptibility of change due to environmental factors) and change itself. I want these pieces to encapsulate a clear before and after, and how that may have negatively or positively affected me.

Second Look Presentation: 4/17/20

Going into the second look presentations I felt more grounded in what I wanted to write about and the literary mediums I was going to write about. However I still feel like I’m lacking focus. Heather’s feedback on my central question really had me think about how I can clarify and specify the focus and the audience of my capstone. I’ve decided to rephrase my central question as: What’s new? It proposes that something has changed, but it allows me the flexibility to offer different answers with each prose. I intend to add some context to this question on my Wix page (perhaps in the process section?). 

4.21.20

For my show and tell I’d like to share a screenshot of the brainstorming process of my pieces right now, alongside a few little rough excerpts. I’ve also thought of doing a mini photo shoot to provide visuals for each of these pieces if I have time.