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sepublic · 3 days

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The core to Belos’ character is that he’s everything wrong with the United States of America. Why else is he a Puritan, a group of racist settlers who helped found the U.S. and contributed to the genocide of the Native Americans? Why else does he dress up like a Founding Father when not in papal robes, with a ponytail resembling a powdered wig?

Luz thinking he’s a great explorer, only to find out Philip is just an entitled asshole who takes credit from others to make himself look better, is a play on people IRL finding out that people like Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison were assholes who stood on the shoulders of others. It’s a play on white mediocrity and how white guys do the bare minimum and expect to be praised.

Belos is a bigot whose entire motive and goals are based on genocide-level bigotry, and he refuses to unlearn any beliefs; Being a historical Puritan he is 100% racist and misogynistic and unlike Caleb, didn’t take the chance to grow out of it. He wants to believe he’s born special and better than everyone else, and that’s why he buys into white supremacy.

There is an explicit connection between the colonial genocide of Native Americans and Belos’ genocide of witches and demons, down to imposing a Christian misunderstanding of the local religion. He feels entitled to their magic but does none of the work to understand, nor does he cultivate a sustainable relationship with the land the way indigenous people do, hence consuming palismen.

He coined the term Savage Ages, with Savage having racist connotations. His fantasy is the Monster Hunter, the idea that it’s okay to dehumanize anything and even anyone that’s different to kill them. He believes in the Evil Races trope which is of course inherently racist. Belos treats Luz like his White Man’s Burden, a brown child who needs a White Savior to civilize (just as the U.S. kidnapped Native American children to assimilate), and then tries to kill Luz when she doesn’t go along instead of just. Leaving Luz alone or dragging her into the human realm with him anyway.

Belos makes exceptions to his religion when convenient, allowing himself to use magic but then demonizing those who do, just as homophobic Christians and Republicans do. Think of all the anti-gay politicians who are caught being gay; They’re not repressed victims, just hypocrites who think they’re entitled to special treatment. Philip didn’t rat on Caleb for hanging out with a witch for the reasons Pro-Lifers let loved ones have abortions; Caleb was important to him, and he’s not one of the witches Philip planned to murder. And even then he still killed Caleb for ‘crossing a line’!

The Puritans and other groups informed the Alt-Right in the U.S., as well as Evangelicals who rage about how something as innocuous as Pokemon is a Satanic influence (Yes this happened; The Conformatorium doesn’t seem so unrealistic after all, and remember that Dana’s father gave her a copy of Pokémon Red before he died that she latched onto). But like the Televangelist, Belos indulges in material wealth and glory via the glamour of Catholicism, because he’s not even consistent to Puritan values either.

He’s Trump, he’s Elon Musk, he’s Ron DeSantis. He’s the incel/mass shooter who fell down the pipeline, who feels cheated out of the promises of a white supremacist society and takes it out on minorities but not other white guys, because he thinks the system’s idea is fine it just isn’t working as it should, at least he’s better than those guys.

Belos’ reaction to Caleb being with Evelyn was undeniably motivated by racial disgust at his brother for committing miscegenation and making Philip related to a savage in the process, it’s why he never brings it up because of the scandalous shame of it all. He thinks taming a wilderness and murdering its natives makes him a tough man because he’s insecure. He has a sniveling victim complex that can’t comprehend why minorities would dislike him, except that they’re mean. Belos epitomizes the U.S.’s racial and colonial violence, its white supremacy, and its global police narrative that decides the existence of another, independent world is an inherent threat to his own.

The conflict between Philip and Caleb was over racism, and so it’s black and white because racism is always wrong. Making it ‘nuanced’ would take away from the fact that the motives for real life racism are inherently nonsensical and insincere; Caleb wasn’t selfish for living with another culture on its terms, instead of staying in the racism village (The Gravesfield statues corroborate Philip being an adult when he arrived in the Demon Realm, according to the memory portraits; Caleb waited until Philip was an adult before leaving). Philip was not a weird kid, he was adhering to his social norms with games about how anyone different or actually weird should die, and he wanted to do this, he’s a Conformatorium prude like all the rest and let his fear of Evelyn justify and evolve into violence.

Even if he was weird, Belos isn’t telling other people they should fit in for their sake, he’s telling them they should just die (Unlike himself, because he’s ‘special’); It’s what he admits to the Collector in the finale about not bothering teaching them anything, just wiping them out. Belos uses magic only to kill magic and discards it out of disgust when he’s about to leave, but makes an exception for the life of the non-human he’s become.

And the choice for the villain to be a genuine Puritan makes sense, because this is a show about weirdoes, so who’s designating them as such and why? Luz has a conflict with the IRL system since the first scene and Belos symbolizes the system, his Puritan ideology marked the foundation for it and the U.S. Belos killing Caleb is just the cherry on top of his actual motives and what his character was always about, that’s why his death scene isn’t him lamenting about Caleb or how lonely he is, it’s him being racist and demanding special treatment for his race. A racist white man feels no guilt for the witches and demons he murdered, just his white brother and clones; He still keeps killing them too btw.

Deeming someone a lost cause and killing them instead of working to rehabilitate is un-Christian, because Belos is not secretly bound by his religion, he picks and chooses. His guilt is not Catholic, he is the Protestant belief in his own superiority. Belos isn’t just a Nazi, he’s an American racist, he’s the KKK; He’s a condemnation of American Values and Exceptionalism, and lowkey I think that’s part of the reason why Family-Friendly Disney canned TOH, because Belos is a condemnation of a major consumer base. Disney being more progressive than other companies means jackshit because it’s performative and the bar is in hell.

#The Owl House #Emperor Belos #Philip Wittebane #Racism #Colonialism

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taylortruther · 1 year

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"I find conspiratorial thinking always raises a red flag for me. I think it just makes me nervous about how someone operates or where their minds could go about other more important stuff. Also just lack of common sense or logic is a BIG pet peeve of mine" just chiming in with anon to say I think this is a worthwhile/important stance to have, especially in this age of misinformation and actual terrifying shit that comes from radicalized people who've bought into conspiracy theories, and it's why I personally push back against them so hard, even if it's something dumb like k*ylor. Because there's a domino effect where believing one conspiracy tends to lead to others, and even celeb conspiracies that seem superficial or funny can spiral out of control. Then suddenly you're looking at people upholding extremist views. (Hence the way nearly every conspiracy somehow ends up at racism and antisemitism - and the fanbase around k*ylor has literally proven that rule). That line of irrational, murky thinking is such a deal breaker for me that it would cause me to end a friendship/relationship without hesitation and tbh it's a good thing to be aware of.

this is part of the reason i was a debunking blog for so long - it was never about taylor's sexuality, it was the illogical "proof" kaylors came up with that bothered me (which is why i was also moots at the time with gaylors who were doing lyric analysis, not looking for obscure symbols in her music video or coming up with fake babies.)

it is a good line to have imo because there is SO much conspiratorial thinking in our day to day lives now. wellness culture is one that comes to mind. the pipeline of "clean" eating or alt birth control methods -> wellness -> alt-right shit is widespread.

it's one of the big reasons i'm so anti-woo woo. they kinda go hand-in-hand (the woo woo and wellness pipeline.)

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barbiegirldream · 1 year

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you're not being 'intellectually' honest about my what i said. why did you not post it in full? it feels like you're unwilling to actually engage with what i'm saying in an effort to 'win' and are trying to obsfucate that to your followers. i can't think of another reason you wouldn't post my ask and instead argue against a point i didn't make. i'm not trying to win an argument against you - i'm trying to have an honest dialogue with you about something that really worries me and i'm not sure why you're being so shifty about it.

it is not a personal opinion that youtube suffered significant negative press due to the 'alt-right pipeline', their connection to violent events, and their lazy attitude towards restricting that. it is not a personal opinion that they significantly changed their content moderation due to this.

it is not a personal opinion that twitch had been a platform that failed to protect it's minority creators, faced backlash because of that, and took (very small) steps to rectify that, including directly asking queer and bipoc community members to assist in setting community standards that twitch agreed to enforce.

those are facts that you can verify, not personal opinions.

as i said, none of these platforms are moral. that wasn't the argument i presented and you know that. i said that kick lacks even the (immoral) stopgaps that youtube and twitch have - their dependence on advertisers and hence wider societal 'morals'.

again, it's completely disingenuous to say that there's no difference between other platforms and the one that allowed their number one bestest boy to say that all trans people should be killed.

to be completely honest, i'm really disappointed in your inability to even engage with what i'm saying and instead try to present and argue against statements i didn't present. it's cowardly. you can say 'no more kick talk' all you want but it's clear that you're not able to engage in honest discussions about it.

who talks like this you don't know me. why are you disappointed in a tumblr blog. get some anti depressants or back to whatever psych ward you just left. you ever use twitter ? that owner also thinks all trans people should die. you just listed ways in which youtube and twitch failed for years to resist their foundtations of bigotry and then were fixed slightly completely disproving your resistance to kick changing and that the websites are different. get outta here freak

#you wanna debate me you can get in a twitter space with me #otherwise you're just some random ass loser who i can ip block out of my inbox #and you'll have to write your boring ass sonnets about open dialouge to someone else #i only posted this so my mutuals i was laughing at you with could see what I meant about how insane you sounded btw

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sakebytheriver · 2 years

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Okay.

So to be completely candid and honest with you all, I don't really care too much about this particular twitter drama going on about the left and disaffected white men and boys and how better to appeal to them, I think it's petty and kind of dumb and most of the people weighing in on it are the same that attacked that person for cooking for their neighbors, because ultimately this issue is about being neighborly and about how capitalism has separated all of us, including white men, from our sense of community and building good relationships/allyships with the people around us, but you know what, here it is, my two cents

The system is set up in such a way that falling into this alt-right stuff is the default for all human beings, when we talk about how there is systematic racism and patriarchal constructs ingrained into our societal structure we mean that they are so embedded that they have basically become the systems themselves, resisting them is out of the norm, resisting them is supposed to be hard, it takes even people they directly oppress years to dismantle the racist and misogynistic beliefs they've subconsciously absorbed into their own minds and biases, so for white men who seemingly reep all the benefits going against these systems is especially difficult and these alt-right pipelines target them when they're young and they're brains are still squishy and moldable, it's hard to break away from something you learned to believe as a kid, but it's not impossible and anything that can be done to pull them back is something we should do. That's what diversity of tactics is supposed to mean, for the time being we have to work within these systems and so yeah that means pretty much the only way these kids will get deradicalized is by some dumbfuck leftist streamer, I'm real sorry, but the revolution is not going to come to dismantle these systems in the blink of an eye and fix everything, the leftist movement in America and in the world in general is still so small, there's basically no mainstream leftist news channels, but Fox News is considered one of the most reputable sources of information while actively employing scare tactics, openly lying, and even encouraging genocidal ideologies straight into the brains of over half the population of the entire country, the enemy is so much bigger than us, guys, at this point we dont even have one foot to stand on, we have to engage in guerilla warfare here, our methods are not their methods, we do not want to exterminate or punish, we want to rehabilitate and unify

The fact of the matter is the way these systems are set up is meant to look glamorous to white men in particular while they subjugate everyone else, but at the same time they are absolutely debilitating to those same white men and we need to be able to reach those white men/boys and show them how their lives would be better without them and at the same time talk about the way these systems compounded with the late stage capitalism we are living under means that they're lives suck even more, because corporations are taking away all sense of community and ramping up the division between all groups of the working class to make it easier to exploit them, hence the disaffection, and look, let's be real with ourselves here, when one side is telling you that you're the cream of the crop and it's everyone else who is the problem while the other is seemingly blaming you for every problem it's not exactly a surprise that some dumb fuck teenagers fall down an edgy alt-right youtube rabbit hole and grow up into even worse men.

These systems are the way almost everyone has lived for centuries the dismantling of them is going to be hard and it can't be done without unity, to steal someone else's words who was a much better speaker than I am,

"We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism." ~Fred Hampton

We must appeal to every person in the world on the left, a better world must involve everyone, and that includes white men, I'm gonna be real I don't really care to police any leftist in the way they talk about white men as a force for oppression, but I do think sometimes talking directly to them in particular is good too, we need to talk to every single group of people on this god's green earth directly and show them the ways escaping from the systemic oppression inflicted by racism and patriarchy and dismantling capitalism will be a net good for every single human being, including white men, that the feelings of disaffectedness these white men and teenage boys in particular are feeling is coming from these systems and their lives would be better without them, not by becoming a pawn in service of them

It is so easy to reduce white men/boys to The Enemy, but they're not, part of leftist ideology is dismantling the prison/justice system's emphasis on punishment which often boarders on cruel and unusual and has been proven to only make the problem worse and cause more reoffenders rather than letting people reintegrate into society to lead healthy productive lives (of course we need to talk about how to reinvest in our underfunded communities and social service programs to combat the prison system problem but that's a different post), we cannot state to want to build a united and kinder world where we focus on rehabilitative justice while turning our noses up on a group of people who need just that kind of rehabilitation

Are white men's issues the biggest issues the left should be focusing on?

God no.

But that doesn't mean it isn't one of the problems that should be on the list, just because it's not high priority doesn't mean we ignore it completely, the world exists in shades of grey, no issue is ever as black and white as you think it is, allow nuance into your life or we will never reach the perfect leftist utopia you so desparately say you want

#ignore me #long post #politics

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baixueagain · 2 years

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Couldn’t help but notice this reblog in a certain recent “queer is a slur” discourse post.

Beyond being ahistorical, it is significant in its third paragraph, which is almost entirely made up with TERF and alt right dog whistles. For anyone who has even a basic idea of what to look for, this blogger has just outright shown their hand.

Let’s start from the beginning of the text I’ve marked in blue:

“a pedophilia and incest apologist”

This is a very handy tactic especially prevalent in alt-right rhetoric these days. It stigmatises anything it is attached to, in this case the person who coined the term “queer theory.” Topics like pedophilia and incest are extremely taboo and emotionally laden, and attaching them to a subject will cause many people to automatically distance themselves from that term out of a semi-instinctive desire to not associate themselves with such things. Spread this attachment widely enough, and you can push entire groups into abandoning terminology, praxis, and people.

For the record, I’m not sure of the source for this claim. The woman who coined the term “queer theory” was Teresa de Laurentis, and I’ve never seen anything by her which tries to excuse pedophilia or incest. She certainly wrote about the gendered nature of incest, but this was in no way laudatory. This may also be a reference to the work of Gloria Anzaldua, who helped further popularize the term. She spoke frankly and openly about her sexual fantasies, many of them of a taboo nature, because of her firm belief in de-stigmatizing discussions about human sexual behaviour. Not only are such fantasies extremely common, they are in no way apologetics for real life abuse, nor do they predict real life behaviour.

“a straight woman with a fetish for gay men”

We’ve gotten to the transphobic dogwhistle now. This is an accusation frequently used against trans men and nonbinary AFAB people, especially those who pursue relationships with men. With the current surge in transphobic public rhetoric, it has received a new breath of life, and trans mlm are currently facing a slew of accusations of being straight women/girls who have just fetishized gay men to the point that they’re trying to “become” gay men/boys themselves (CW: link leads to transphobic hate site genderhq.org). These accusations are even being used in queer circles--including by trans people--to gatekeep who “gets” to write fiction about mlm. Just a week ago, for example, queer writer Alex Marraccini accused indie trans mlm author Ana Mardoll of fetishizing mlm, claiming that Ana’s “fetishistic” writing isn’t nearly as groundbreaking or liberating as the work of real cis gay men.

I’m not sure who the blogger is referring to here as there’s no real consensus on who first used the term “queer studies.” However, I think they may be referring to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, who was most certainly not a straight woman. She was queer and came out as a trans man, though as far as I know continued to publicly prefer she/her pronouns (hence my own pronoun use here).

“use intentionally over academic language”

Ah, good old anti-intellectualism. If I can’t understand you, you must be using over-academic language just to confuse me on purpose. This dogwhistle not only gives people an excuse to dismiss anything they don’t understand straight away, it pushes the conspiracy theory that we academics are part of an ivory tower conspiracy to Queer Everything for...reasons (see below).

“to obfuscate that their founding texts and members are Marxists”

Aaaand here we are, the full show of the hand. This blogger is either alt-right or well down the pipeline to becoming one. The old chestnut that These Academics We Disagree With are all secret Marxists is one that is, you guessed it, strongly tied into antisemitism and Nazi conspiracies that push the belief that Karl Marx, Marxism, and Marxists are part of a global Jewish conspiracy that seeks to destroy the West.

And of course we have one more “incest and pedophilia” whistle to round things off, just to doubly ensure that people understandably disgusted by those things attach them to queer theorists.

Anyway, once again I beg the good people of Tumblr to please pay close attention to TERF rhetoric, where it comes from, how it’s used, and the other movements that it is tied to. I am not being a paranoid conspiracist when I say that “queer is a slur” discoursers and “pedophilia and incest” scaremongers and their ilk (including anti-kink discoursers) are tied to TERF rhetoric, which is itself allied increasingly with the alt right. They are telling you this for themselves. Listen to them when they tell you who they are.

#queer #queer discourse #discourse #lgbtq #transphobia #terfism #dogwhistles #terf rhetoric

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arrowpusher · 4 years

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Breaking my silence

After a week straight of insomnia keeping myself awake reflecting on current events, I think I need to write something to collect my thoughts.

Yes, I chose Tumblr because I am not brave enough to display my unpopular opinion on Facebook or Twitter where a lot of my friends and family will disagree, and I don’t want to cause any hard feelings. (It’s like whenever I post about Apple, my older cousin who works at Apple always write lengthy replies, and then I do not elaborate on my beliefs with counter-arguments because I respect my cousin too much.) I just value relationships far above than my political viewpoints, so here I hide.

First of all: I support Black Lives Matter. I am saddened by the tragedies. I believe systemic racism urgently needs to be addressed.

However, there are aspects of recent events that make me uncomfortable and conflicted.

1. “It is wrong to condemn the violence and the looting. This takes away from the BLM Movement. Property can be replaced.” I remember my college professor on Cal tuition protests explaining that if you don’t throw a temper tantrum, people won’t listen to you. But so much looting has absolutely nothing to do with protests, it creates mixed images of the cause locally and worldwide, and the extent of destruction makes me lose faith in humanity. I heard about a local privately owned pharmacy not only suffering significant losses; they run a mental health clinic and because long-acting injectables got stolen, patients are unable to receive their treatment. I saw on the news people stealing cars, women walking out of Victoria’s Secret with designer lingerie, teenagers hysterical getting their hands on “free” stuff... tell me how this helps address racism. Businesses are already suffering huge losses in these uncertain times, and people are just getting back on their feet and likely running on a deficit. Even when property can be replaced, what do we gain from the destruction that cannot be accomplished through constructive means? Do people's livelihoods have to be destroyed overnight to make a statement? I saw a video explaining the looting of a low-income neighborhood, that people are profiting off of the pain (and I noticed someone posted this video on social media and got significant backlash for condemning violence.)

2. “Police are bad. Hence, they need to be de-funded.” While systems-wide changes need to be made to eliminate police brutality, I also find myself feeling bad for the the part of the police workforce who actually are kind-hearted individuals who are doing their job to protect society and putting their life on the line while at it. Policemen went from being first responder heroes to national villains overnight. I do not find it acceptable that policemen have lost their lives amidst the chaos of the lootings (like the retired officer checking on his friend’s store... I saw a poster “You killed him because ‘they’ killed someone?” It reminds me all too much of the primitive eye-for-an-eye argument). Also, I have not seen any mention of 2A. Despite all the recent shootings and massacres, relatively little change has happened on gun control. Until then, there is significant risk to both police officers and the general public. I recall reading that the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting was not catastrophic because the police were able to control the situation quite quickly. I don’t expect gun control and crime to dissipate by itself (especially during economic and political instability) and I actually fear for public safety in the future. Who would want to be a policeman if you get so much hate, have limited resources, yet are still forced at times to make split-second decisions that could cause your life. This spirals further into me being annoyed at how little is said about decisions on the military and warfare, which not only consumes so much funding, but directly causes blatant harm and civilian lives. When I have to Google “current wars in 2020″ as a refresher, I begin to question why the same momentum of the anti-police movement in the US is not given to international conflicts with oppression at much greater magnitudes.

3. “Speaking up about other minority issues takes away from the cause.” I don’t know, maybe I have a conflict of interest as a minority living in America... but I really would like to see this blossom into a larger civil rights movement. I did not see as much outcry, as much action, as many donations by individuals and large corporations, when ICE was hunting down and deporting immigrants, when children were separated from families and detained, when the oil pipeline was planned to invade Native American territory, or when all of the tax changes were made under the Trump administration which perpetuates and accentuates socioeconomic inequalities. There was news coverage, but for the most part, we sat on our couches. I also should not have to worry about my parents being the victim of hate crimes when they go on a walk outside. I know we still need to maintain focus (like when I start to think about the inertia in dealing with climate change... but I’m not going to say wildlife matters because then any movement is a moot point if you try to change everything about the world in one go). I think we still can maintain focus and expand the scope: systemic racism and implicit bias apply broadly. Just because an inequality isn’t trending, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and does not deserve attention.

I try to convince myself to try not to lose more sleep over this (hint: it’s been pretty unsuccessful) because at the end of the day, I’m not going to change anything. This is a sad reality I have felt about current events and the workings of social media--constructive discussion is important, yet it gets stifled in the cyberspace and you get personally attacked. I’ve commented on a few posts on Facebook with a relatively moderate viewpoint, and I got replies that essentially made me wonder if I was unknowingly alt-right. (Then, I had the same discussions with co-workers who agreed with me and brought up other valid points, and I felt less like a bad person). I know I contribute to the problem and I have my own implicit biases, but I don’t think my opinions are really as malicious as some Facebook friends of friends have made me feel. My endurance has dwindled and my mental strength has already grown fragile during these difficult times... I think I need to give myself a little more self care than staying up every night thinking I’m racist because I agree 100%, but not 1000%, with the current movement.

Anyways, I don’t care whether or not I get hateful comments on this post. I wrote this largely for myself, so one day as I revisit my previous blog posts, I can see how I used to think about the world, and inspire myself to make change if I’m jaded.

“You, I, and we all have the right to be respected.”

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stefanistarivlah · 5 years

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Research Essay/Investigative Report: McLuhan’s Prophetic Prediction of the Insidious Nature of Memes

Target Audience: Rhetoric professor

Introduction

In this essay, governed by the theories outlined in The Medium is the Message and Media Hot and Cold by Marshall McLuhan, I will be examining the how the current day iteration of the internet, as a medium, has the potential to facilitate ideological radicalization through memes and algorithmically curated content. I will outline the lifecycle of a meme, from its inception in the fringe outskirts of the online sphere on image sharing forums such as 4chan, and delineate how makes its way into the content of mainstream creators, specifically on YouTube. Using the recent Christchurch massacre as a case study, I will be examining the insidious nature of the memes featured in the shooter’s manifesto and the livestream of the massacre, their function as political dog-whistles and how, through algorithm generated recommendations, they function to passively indoctrinate individuals into self-identifying with extremist ideology.

Through McLuhan’s notions of “hot” and “cold” media, I will argue that the internet, as a medium, facilitates the rapid heat transfer of ideology--that is, that it allows otherwise “cool” media from online niches to heat up and permeate into the mainstream spheres of the World Wide Web and be passively consumed by unsuspecting audiences. Through consistent passive consumption, the Overton window of online discourse is shifted within the algorithmically mediated reality that is one’s online activities, potentially indoctrinating users into actively seeking out and participating in the “cool” spheres from which their initially “hot” curated media originated from.

Specifically, I will be examining how the political far-right utilize internet memes as white-supremacist dog-whistles, and how the algorithms that mediate website content based on a user’s past actions essentially curate an ideological echo-chamber, ultimately creating a secondary reality in which a users are consistently pipelined into extremist media territory that can have tragic real-life consequences, such as the Christchurch shooting.

Delineating Online Spheres According to McLuhan’s Notions of “Hot” and “Cold” Media

In his essays, The Medium is the Message and Media Hot and Cold, Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan outlined how the nature of the medium reveals more about its message than the content of the message itself, and that the ways in which people interact with a medium can be either “hot” or “cold”. The aforementioned theories, despite significantly predating the inception of the Internet, are reflected and substantiated through the ways in which online discourse and rhetoric are constructed.

In Media Hot and Cold, Marshall McLuhan categorizes media into two distinct groups under the umbrella terms “hot” and “cold” to denote the amount of participation needed to consume them. To McLuhan, “hot” media is already saturated with data, thus offering limited opportunities for audience participation, while “cold” media is relatively more barren in terms of its content, allowing for active interpretation and participation (McLuhan 39). In other words, cold media offers less information, requiring the audience to contemplate the content and fill the voids in meaning with personal interpretations, while hot media is intended for a more passive manner of consumption.

Although Marshall McLuhan passed away prior to the advent of the internet, McLuhan’s notions of hot and cold media, and the analogies with which he illustrates how they function, maintain their relevance when applied to online media. For instance, McLuhan describes towns as “cool or casually structured” and cities as “hot and intensely filled in” (McLuhan 46), which are sentiments that similarly describe the gathering places of the World Wide Web. Mainstream websites, such as YouTube and Facebook, match McLuhan’s “hot and intensely filled in” description of a city--by algorithmically curating (i.e. “intensely filling in”) viewable content based on a user’s past activity, an endless newsfeed that can be passively scrolled through emerges, requiring little participation on behalf of the user. Meanwhile, niche image sharing forums like 4chan or 8chan that predate Facebook and Youtube, “still foster anonymous communication, [hence] their popularity pales in comparison with [more modern] sites like Facebook that foreground identifying characteristics” (Mitchell iii). In comparison to Facebook and YouTube, the relatively archaic user interfaces of image sharing forums require active participation and a niche set of knowledge to maneuver, akin to McLuhan’s notion of a “cold” medium due to the lack of modern features such as discernable user profiles and algorithmically curated content. Through the juxtaposition of modern social media websites, such as Facebook or YouTube, with the comparably archaic 4chan and 8chan, McLuhan’s notion of the “disruptive impact of a hot technology succeeding a cool one” can be examined (McLuhan 41).

McLuhan claims that a “hot” media “will serve to fragment the tribal structure” established by a “cold” media (McLuhan 41). As it pertains to the internet, the “hot” media spheres of Facebook and Youtube, due to their accessibility, are frequented by a wide range of users that contribute to the information saturation that defines it’s “hotness”. Thus, archaic sites such as 4chan and 8chan are pushed into the fringe spheres of the internet, and subsequently “marks its user as radically different from the mainstream” (Mitchell 111), creating the ideal breeding ground for extremist ideology.

How Online “Cold” Media Utilizes “Hot” Media to Spread Extremist Ideology

Interestingly, McLuhan predicts the insidious consequences that emerge from the “hot” media format of mainstream websites. He claims that, “the content of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium” (McLuhan 20), hence “any medium has the power of imposing its own assumption on the unwary” (McLuhan 28). He argues that this passive approach to processing the oversaturation of information characteristically presented by “hot” media is the fulfilment of an evolutionary function, as “were we to accept fully and directly every shock to our various structures of awareness, we would soon be nervous wrecks”, prophetically describing the average internet browser’s passivity as a state of somnambulism (McLuhan 40).

In his essay titled The Hyperreality of the Alt Right: How Meme Magic Works to Create a Space for Far Right Politics, Dan Prisk describes how an individual fell down the YouTube rabbit-hole of the Alt Right, a recent political movement described as “catchall for an Internet focused white nationalism” (Heikkila par. 4). Initially, the individual in question, who self-identified as a “lifelong liberal” (Prisk 7), was recommended YouTube videos by the website’s algorithm that they described as containing “modes of talking that are presented as innocuous criticism from people claiming to be liberals themselves” (Prisk 7). He likens the passive absorption of ideology through the YouTube algorithm curated consumption of videos to osmosis, claiming that “by spending so much time, even passively, living among the ideas that form the basis of these videos, the [individual in question] comes to pick up a predisposition, tendency, propensity, or inclination towards the mental frameworks that underlie them”, adding “in other words, the [individual in question] developed a habitus from the field of the Alt Right, that came to be applied in their life outside that” (Prisk 7).

Thus, through algorithmically generated content, YouTube has facilitated the indoctrination of extremist ideology, allowing political extremists to take advantage of the “hot” nature of the media and the subsequent somnambulism of the audience. Once a user has been indoctrinated through the “hot” channel of a curated media, such as YouTube’s recommended videos and autoplay feature (which automatically creates a video queue depending on the content of previously watched videos, eliminating the need for active browsing) algorithms also function on a “cool” channel to “deliver search results for those who seek confirmation for racist notions” and, in the case of the aforementioned individual, “connect newcomers to like-minded racists” (Daniels 62).

This begs the question, how can such problematic media be proliferated on mainstream websites? My hypothesis, on which I base my argument, is that users of “cold” media are well aware of the insidious potential of “hot” media as outlined in the previous paragraphs, and utilize the inconspicuous medium of the meme to propagate extremist ideology through mainstream channels of online social media. The recent Christchurch massacre, in a tragic way, exemplifies my aforementioned hypothesis, as the shooter was clearly aware of the YouTube algorithm’s penchant for constructing ideological echo-chambers--hence why, during the livestream of his mass murder, he directed the audience to subscribe to Pewdiepie (Romano par. 4).

A Vox News article describes Pewdiepie, the most subscribed to YouTuber of all time, as someone who “has [had] a history of amplifying white nationalist rhetoric that is both serious and violent” through his online show, aptly titled “Meme Review”, during which he reviews popular online memes to his millions of views on a nearly daily basis (Romano par. 39). However, Vox News’ criticism of Pewdiepie’s perceived influence on the Christchurch shooter’s ideology is misdirected. McLuhan outlines a similar scenario in which he criticized an individual who claimed that “we are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for the sins of those who wield them… the products of modern science are not in themselves good or bad; it is the way they are used that determines their value” (McLuhan 23). McLuhan states that the aforementioned quote fails to bear scrutiny, as it “ignores the nature of the medium, of any and all media, in the true Narcissus style of one hypnotized by the amputation of extension of his own being in a new technical form” (McLuhan 23). Vox News fails to understand the insidious nature of memes, as a medium, and how the “hot” nature of YouTube in tandem with the “cold” origins of memes serve to push the Overton window of acceptable online discourse.

How Memes Facilitate the Online Spread of Extremist Ideology

Richard Dawkins was the first to describe the modern notion of a meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene; he referred to memes as “seemingly insignificant cultural units of transmission that spread from person to person by imitation” (Riemensperger 3). In the online sphere, memes function in a similar manner to Dawkins’ initial definition, but have evolved from being “insignificant cultural units of transmission” into a potentially insidious medium for the proliferation of extremist ideology.

McLuhan was able to predict the conclusion that many modern rhetorical scholars have come to in regards to the persuasive power of the modern notion of the internet meme, namely “how Internet memes, a unique medium that has the capability to easily and seamlessly transfer ideologies between groups… enable subcultures to challenge, and possibly overthrow, hegemonic power structures that maintain the dominance of a mainstream culture” (Pettis ii).

Prisk describes the insidious nature of the modern internet meme, specifically the memes that originated from the deeper, “cold” recesses of the internet, such as 4chan and 8chan, in which far-right ideology pervades, claiming that “all this stuff [memes] is so steeped in irony, this kind of really detached ironic tone, it’s very hard to know what anyone actually means” (Prisk 6). He goes on to describe the ironic nature of inflammatory memes as “a kind of defense mechanism… a way to hide behind multiple layers of irony and make oneself hard to interpret” (Prisk 6). Prisk is essentially outlining how the memes can act as a political dog-whistle to insidiously spread white supremacist ideology--the very same seemingly inconspicuous memes that Pewdiepie may naively present to his audience of millions during one of his Meme Reviews.

McLuhan reflects Prisk’s impression of far-right memes, as he states that “we are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation”, adding that “accelerated media change as a kind of massacre of the innocents” (McLuhan 29). For those uninitiated with the rhetoric of the far-right, the memes that originated from such online communities may just appear to be “insignificant cultural units of transmission”, as they “do not occur at the level of [explicit] opinions or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance” (McLuhan 31).

Just as McLuhan describes a medium as an “extension of ourselves” (McLuhan 19), Gavin Brown describes memes as a “product of the culture that people live in” (Brown 190) in his essay Web Culture: Using Memes to Spread and Manipulate Ideas on a Massive Scale. Just as a medium serves to propagate a message, Brown defines memes as “units of information that are transferred from one person to another” that “can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain” (Brown 190). He adds that, “the more a meme is shared, the longer it can survive and promote its messages or cultural values to viewers” (Brown 188).

As McLuhan notes, “the medium is the message because it is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (McLuhan 20). Thus, to maximize the scale of exposure of a meme, one must ensure that it is transferred through a “hot” form of media that is saturated with users. Hence why the Christchurch shooter live streamed his murders on Facebook, and wrote a 74 page manifesto nearly exclusively made up of internet memes (Romano 3), which Vox News described as “akin to what’s known as “shitposting” [a popular form of internet meme]— intentionally throwing out red-meat content to readers to distract them or draw them deeper into the same online pits where he himself was radicalized” (Coaston 9).

Conclusion

The Christchurch shooter is essentially reflection McLuhan’s notion that media “must be reduced to a very cool state before it can be learned or assimilated” (McLuhan, 40), and that “the disruptive impact of a hot technology succeeding a cool one… will serve to fragment a tribal structure” while cool media functions to “retribalize” (McLuhan 41). By indoctrinating an audience through white-supremist dog whistles disguised as memes, and making reference to popular “hot” media icons such as Pewdiepie, the Christchurch shooter aimed to seduce users of “hot” mainstream media to “cold” fringe spheres of the internet as a means by which to “retribalize” them into self-identifying with racist ideology. Through cyclical heat transfer of ideology, the Christchurch shooter attempted to perpetuate “cold” messages through a “hot medium”, in an attempt to insidiously indoctrinate user into participating in the proliferation of racist ideology.

Works Cited

Brown, Gavin. “Web Culture: Using Memes to Spread and Manipulate Ideas on a Massive Scale.”, CommonKnowledge, 2013, https://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=inter13

Coaston, Jane. “The New Zealand shooter’s manifesto shows how white nationalist rhetoric spreads.” Vox News, 2019, https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/3/15/18267163/new-zealand-shooting-christchurch-white-nationalism-racism-language

Daniels, Jessie. “the algorithmic rise of the “alt-right”.”, SagePub, 2017, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504218766547

Pettis, Ben. “PEPE THE FROG: A Case Study of the Internet Meme and its Potential Subversive Power to Challenge Cultural Hegemonies.” (Spring 2018). (PDF).

Prisk, Dan. “The Hyperreality of the Alt Right: How Meme Magic Works to Create a space for far right politics”. (26th March 2017). (PDF).

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Medium is the Message". Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. The MIT Press; REV edition (Oct. 24 1994). (PDF).

McLuhan, Marshall. "Media Hot and Cold". Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. The MIT Press; REV edition (Oct. 24 1994). (PDF).

Romano, Aja. “How the Christchurch shooter used memes to spread hate.” Vox News, 2019, https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/3/16/18266930/christchurch-shooter-manifesto-memes-subscribe-to-pewdiepie

Riemensperger, Kory. “Pepe's Power: Internet Memes, Constitutive Rhetoric, and Political Communities.”, ProQuest, 2018, https://search.proquest.com/openview/48e276b0d2813ccd209fa7361d46f9b8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y

Heikkila, Niko. “Online Antagonism of the Alt-Right in the 2016 Election.”, OpenEdition, 2017, https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/12140

Mitchell, Liam. “A Phenomenological Study of Social Media: Boredom and Interest on Facebook, Reddit, and 4chan.”, Dspace, 2012, http://dspace.library.uvic.ca/bitstream/handle/1828/4045/Mitchell_Liam_PhD_2012.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

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a2zsarkarijobs · 4 years

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Daily Current Affairs Quiz - 11th August 2020

Daily Current Affairs Quiz – 11th August 2020

Daily Current Affairs Quiz – 11.08.2020

Here is the Current Affairs Quiz of 11th August 2020. Topic Highlights: SURAKHSYA, Pipeline Dashboard, COVID-19 Vaccine, Peru, Mauritania. As we all know that the General Awareness constitutes a major part of any competitive examination and hence it needs your undivided attention. Generally, the questions asked in the competitive exams are generally…

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#Current Affairs #Current Affairs Quiz #Daily Current Affairs

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stefanfreitag · 6 years

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Using AWS CDK for code pipeline setup

Before continuing with the setup of a build pipeline on AWS I would like to shift the focus to reproducibility and (more) automation. Doing all the steps for setting up a CodePipeline and a CodeCommit repository via AWS CLI or AWS console seems to be good for a quick start, but does not feel the right approach. Hence I will give AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit) a try.

Installing the AWS CDK

The…

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welldresseddadblog · 6 years

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If you’ve followed the previous two Yorkshire-based posts, you’ll know that HebTroCo is the Hebden Bridge trouser guys and I found myself there by their invitation on a drizzly Monday in March. This is the third in a series of articles about the background and makers of the HebTroCo products.

I was recently given the opportunity to spend a week in Yorkshire. Yorkshire, described by many as “God’s own country”, home of the best pork pies in the world, the deepest dales and highest peaks, the most rugged and silent of man, where the industrial revolution kicked off, the ancestral home of many an influential 80’s bands and also the setting of a remarkable number of gritty crime series on TV. It’s probably not unfair to summarise it as a county of contrasts, right? I’ve been there too many times to count before, but actually only to Sheffield though, and always taking the same route there, over Snake Pass, the twisty route over the Pennines between Manchester and Sheffield. And hence, to Sheffield, I went first.

Setting out the next morning, I entered “Hebden Bridge” into the phone, requested the fastest route and set off. Not long after I left the congested roads of Sheffield and stepped back in time. Or so it felt. I’m not sure exactly where I drove, but I did not see another human or moving vehicle for about 45 minutes. I did see lots of lovely nature, stone buildings, drystone walls, mist and woodlands though. And the narrow road went up and down, winding it’s way towards Hebden Bridge, just as it said on the box. It was a really wonderful experience, and a rarity in a modern Britain that to be honest is pretty much choked by cars, be they inching their way forward in congested traffic, or parked up on either side of narrow roads.

The typical Yorkshire street where the main character in “Happy Valley” lives.

Now Hebden Bridge is a place of notoriety. On the one hand, it’s where the popular crime drama “Happy Valley” is set, and the title is a misnomer, it’s anything but a happy valley, in fact, it portrays as one of the bleak modern-day British towns rife with drugs, crime and poverty. On the other hand, it’s also known as maybe the UK town most tolerant and inclusive of the LGBT community and is a small haven of gender fluidity. Either way, you’d probably be wondering what my purpose of heading there was, given that until now I have shown little interest in either twocking or exploring by gender boundaries.

The interesting buildings on the industrial estate outside Hebden Bridge.

I arrived at the specified time at a small industrial estate outside Hebden Bridge and was immediately struck by how unusual it was. Industrial estates are usually where hideous buildings of high volume to cost ratio are hidden away near the main road, but here the buildings were notably different. Long, low and numerous, and according to the informational board, home to a very diverse selection of businesses, from accounting to craft beer to catering to trousers. Indeed, I had arrived at my destination, HebTroCo, proud makers of British trousers. And more.

The story of HebTroCo is unusual. Winding back time to the start though, it all began in the pub. And after spending some time with the lads, I realise that if their life was set as a sitcom, the main set would be the pub. It’s where the grand ideas are thrashed out. Like the original one, which was the result of a conversation that started out with a question of “We both need jobs, what can we do?”. Given that Brant was a bicycle designer and Ed a mountain bike guide, you’d no doubt think that something along the lines of two-wheeled transport would be a natural progression. Oh no, that was not to be.

The name arguably derives from the Hebden Bridge trouser company, inspired by the fact that once upon a time Hebden Bridge was the “trouser town” of the UK, at its height producing a million pairs of trousers a year. And while Brant and Ed had no background at all in making trousers, in fact, local lore has it that least one of them rumoured to be barely out of wearing shorts, they have gone from strength to strength in the two years they’ve been going. Starting out with a tour de force of crowdfunding, where through Kickstarter they managed to sell out the initial offering of 176 pairs of trousers in a remarkable 5 or so hours. Now, this is a quite remarkable feat, as most Kickstarters fail. And those that succeed do so over a period much longer than 5 hours. So there was obviously a vacuum in the market that could only be filled with British made moleskin trousers. If you think about it, that was never going to be obvious.

Found Ed discussing the finer points of locally made heavy duty belts with Steve Bate, MBE, Paralympian and a good bloke.

I’m received by founder Ed (beard and tattoos, according to his business card) and shown around the compact premises. Packed floor to rafters with mainly moleskin trousers, it’s clear that the small business is keeping busy. A little later founder Brant (tall and bald, again according to the informative card) arrives. They’re still just the two founders, Brant and Ed, as full-time staff, though they’ve recently taken on Sean part-time to help with shipping. And this is how many modern businesses work today. Whereas previously they would have set up a workshop, populated it with machinery, painstakingly learnt to sew trousers and when the craft was perfected, taken them to the market. Now though, there is a surplus of capable production capacity around, and if you have ideas there are people who can help you realise them.

While we’re enjoying a mug of tea and a digestive biscuit, one of the primary fuels the business runs on, a guy comes cycling by on a Fatbike to look at a pair of trousers. In a typical Yorkshire way, the conversation quickly gets going, topics weaving in and out, good laughs and such. Turns out he’d just won a cycle race in Rovaniemi, which to me is almost where I spent my teen years, so it has me intrigued. As it turns out, he’s the Paralympian cyclist and gold medal winner, Steve Bate MBE, and as it turns out a really humble and funny guy.

The original HebTroCo development trousers, with authentic marker pen based instructions to modifications made in the pub.

The latest development is the merino wool field jacket, based on a 60’s British army jacket and remade now by the original maker in Blackburn.

Donated by a local, an original vintage pair of corduroy breeches made in “Trouser Town”. Rumour has it this may be the next HebTroCo model. Fingers crossed.

The “Trouser Town” of old was almost all gone through, just a single factory left that could make trousers. So this was where things would happen. The factory could make 176 pairs in a week, hence the toe in the water Kickstarter campaign was for a weeks production. Once the water was found to be suitable, more models and fabrics have come into the pipeline. Heavy duty corduroys, canvas, an interesting blend of linen and cotton, in tapered and straight fits, and even shorts (for sale all year round). The number and diversity of trouser variations have meant that a second factory had to be involved, as the aforementioned capacity was rapidly exceeded.

The boys still enjoyed sitting in the pub though, and the business expansion and product development meetings go something like this:

Ed: “You know Thomas? He makes belts with amazing brass buckles”

Brant: “We should do a belt!”

Ed: “Thomas, can you make us a belt?”

Thomas: “Yeah”

Brant and Ed: “Sorted!”

Various stages of evolution of the HebTroCo locally made leather and copper buckled belt. The double-prong is the latest.

And so the range also expanded to include some jackets, including a new merino wool version of a 60’s British army field jacket. Because it was begging to be done. Then boots were included, as the last British heavy work boot factory was nearby. And more recently to include a Sheffield made pocket knife with a Damascus steel blade. If you can see a pattern in this, you’re doing well, as there are really only three factors: Can it be made locally, from local components, and is it cool? Which is a pretty sound business strategy is you have a decent grasp of what is “cool”. And therein lies some of the advantage of being a small, flexible company: Unless you’re trying to take over the world, you really only need to find enough customers for what you produce. There is a lot to be said for that.

I got to join a business meeting in the de facto board room of the company, clearly identified by using their own beer mats as a guerilla marketing tool.

Looking at the beer taps, it becomes obvious that there is a certain hipster flavour to the offerings. Yes, I did taste a sip and yes, it tasted roughly as you’d expect.

How can you not fall in love with a place that runs the perfect retro music night? Sign me up!

There is a lot to be said for being a company that in reality is more about marketing than producing as well. Observing how many other companies and people are involved in the HebTroCo enterprise, it’s clear that their success is shared far beyond the lads and their immediate family. Obviously, the landlord at the pub has been doing well, but there are also a couple of mills that have been busy making fabric, a couple of garment factories that have had a fair amount of work come their way, not to mention William Lennon spending roughly half their capacity making Hebden boots and so it goes. Even the local post office har perked up, as now there are daily loads of packages to be sent off, delivered by the lads on their electric cargo bikes.

The best fish & chips in Hebden Bridge, the fastest to re-open after flooding, and stil with the original interior, Crown Traditional Fish & Chips.

Fish, chips and mushy peas. A British classic.

Right over the road, upstairs at the Chinese takeaway, is where Nico had a flat. Reality less glamourous than the lore?

And Hebden? It was great. I had very quick tour of the “Happy Valley” landmarks and I didn’t get mugged. The people all looked happy, the range of shops was great, it was tidy and clean. We had chips in a wonderful cafe fitted in a superb retro style (the legacy of putting off redecorating), which happened to be across the road from where Nico of Velvet Underground had a flat at some point. We even had a pint in the pub, and would you believe it? New ideas were born. And it didn’t flood while I was there either, although this happens every few years, as the town is built on a floodplain, which surely must haunt whoever decided to found the town right there. In all, it reminds me more than a little of Portlandia.

A sneaky selfie down a Hebden Street with the lads striding off, full of fresh ideas. What a grand day out!

Heading back to Sheffield after an eventful day, I even got to see the Wainhouse folly in Halifax. What a sight! Usually I miss all the good stuff, as I tend to be driving, but in this case, traffic congestion allowed me to revel in this piece of structural one-up-manship. Brilliant, would love to go back on a sunny day and climb to the top.

To read more about bearded Ed, bald Brant and their selection of trousers, boots, belts and pocket knives, visit their website at HebTro.Co. In my two previous posts about the Yorkshire trip, I wrote about:

The Wiliam Lennon heavy boot factory in Stoney Middleton and their boots for HebTroCo

Michael Mays knife workshop in Sheffield and the Damascus steel Barlow knives for HebTroCo

In the next and final instalment, I visit a fabric mill in Leeds and a garment factory in Blackburn. Oh, and meet Iain Trickett for lunch and eat a pie that isn’t a pie.

And in case you were wondering:

The long low buildings? They’re actually what’s left from the business empire of a local man based on the clever idea of selling chickens and henhouses to families all over Britain. Boxes of chickens and assemble-your-own henhouses were shipped all over the country, so families could have their own supply of fresh eggs. A hugely successful business, until the advent of supermarkets and their reliable supply of eggs. Read more about this here.

Adventures in Yorkshire - Visiting HebTroCo in Hebden Bridge #hebtroco #hebdenbridge #yorkshire #trousertown #happyvalley #moleskin #savethemole #boots #trousers #menswear #blog #blogger #mensfashion #visityorkshire #sheffield If you've followed the previous two Yorkshire-based posts, you'll know that HebTroCo is the Hebden Bridge trouser guys and I found myself there by their invitation on a drizzly Monday in March.

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rebeccahpedersen · 8 years

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Does “Curb Appeal” Exist For Condos?

TorontoRealtyBlog

We talk a lot about “curb appeal” for houses, namely how they look from the outside, hence “if you were standing on the curb.”

A client of mine recently told me, “I couldn’t care less what my house looks like on the outside, so long as it’s everything I want on the inside.”

Last week, a different client told me she wouldn’t be offering on a house because, “I just can’t get over the lack of curb appeal.”

To each, their own. But what about when it comes to condos? Do you care what the actual building looks like?

Ask ten buyers how they feel about curb appeal, and I think you’ll get ten different answers.

If I had to guess, however, how many out of ten feel that it’s important, I’d say more than half.

Despite the exact opposing views of the two clients that I detailed in the intro above, I’d say that maybe 7/10 buyers would find curb appeal to be important.

I’ve seen it be the deal-breaker on many occasions, but I’ve also seen it not matter in the slightest.

I think you want to like the look of where you live, but it’s a question of how much.

I work in real estate, so it would be hard to say that I “don’t care” what my home looks like from the outside. That’s like the who works at Bay-Bloor Radio saying he doesn’t care what make and model of TV and speakers he has in his living room.

Personally, I put curb appeal really high on my list of evaluation criteria.

I love red-brick homes. I love the two white pillars out front. Add some black shutters, maybe a cedar shake roof, and I’m drawn in.

But I also like the Victorian look.

And Edwardian.

I suppose you could say I like houses that are attractive, and built in a notable style.

The client I mentioned in the intro was checking out a house a few weeks ago in Wychwood, which they ended up bidding on.

One of them asked me, “What don’t you like about this house? What are we missing here? What are we giving up?”

Basically, this house checked all their boxes, and then some. It’s rare to find a house that has everything you want, plus some improvements or features that you hadn’t considered. So when all was said and done, my client was basically saying, “This seems to good to be true. Tell me something bad about it.”

I couldn’t really think of anything, but eventually I said, “I suppose I don’t like the ugly grey brick-tiles they’ve glued to front of the house. I would imagine there was red brick under there at one point.”

My client completely brushed that comment aside and said, “Oh I don’t care about that. What else?”

Honestly, I drew a blank! And on a personal level, I didn’t think the home had as much curb appeal as it could have, but as I said – to each, their own. He said he couldn’t care less what it looked like on the outside, so long as it had everything he wanted on the inside.

I think that view might be in the minority, but let me know if you agree.

And then let’s segue into today’s topic – this idea of “curb appeal” for condominiums.

It’s a different idea altogether.

You own your home; you simply live in your condominium building.

Yes, you own your unit. But there’s no exterior; there’s no curb appeal!

Right?

A blog reader recently emailed me the artist’s rendering for a new condominium in Manhattan known as “U-Tower.” Take a look:

She told me, “I’d love to live there!”

I asked her, “What are the units like?” And she simply said, “I don’t care – the building looks so cool!”

This got me thinking: would you live in a building because of how the OUTSIDE looks?

I think that’s a cool looking building, for sure.

How practical is it? I don’t know.

But what are the floor plans like? What are the prices in comparison to neighbouring buildings? Aren’t these the things that matter?

Or maybe the same theory behind the “curb appeal” for houses, translates to condominiums as well.

Take 168 King Street East, for example.

In the mid-to-late 2000’s, before a slew of new condos in the St. Lawrence Market area (Vu, Post House, Berczy, The Modern, East Lofts just to name a few) were built, King George Square at 168 King Street was the “crown jewel” of the neighbourhood.

It was a red-brick building, with a black iron gate out front:

This was by far the most “charming” condo in the St. Lawrence Market area.

And for a long time, it was the most popular, most sought after, and most expensive.

The only reason it hasn’t remained tops on the list is because there are more buildings in the area, and newer buildings, which is what most condo buyers want. But in this building’s heyday, the “curb appeal” was part of what made it such a big draw.

So fast-forward a little, and tell me if, in the past few years, the “curb appeal” or the architecture of Toronto condos has made them successful.

What about L-Tower?

Remember the first time you saw this rendering:

I’ll be honest – I thought it was cool.

I didn’t like the pricing, the size of the building, and thus the potential for problems, in addition to the slew of issues I have with the way pre-construction condos are sold, but that’s old news.

The project sold well, and it went forward as just about every pre-construction condo does in this market.

But what was the result?

If you follow real estate gossip, you know that the crane atop the building remained there for about two years after it stopped being used. Everybody in the city wondered, “What’s wrong with this place?”

The lobby took literally years to finish.

And personally, I don’t care for the floor plans, and the micro-appliances.

I have never sold a unit in the building, and the chances that I do, are slim.

This has nothing to do with “curb appeal,” however.

I think the curb appeal helped sell the project in pre-construction, as people bought from the artist’s rendering. But in the market today isn’t great.

The National Post wrote an article about all the ongoing problems back in 2015, check it out HERE.

And just for fun, here’s how the building looked when it was almost finished, crane and all:

What do you think about the “Marilyn Monroe Towers” in Mississauga?

Surely you’ve seen these towers from afar, as you’re driving along the QEW, or even flying into Pearson Airport!

Would you buy into the building because it has curb appeal?

Do you even think it has curb appeal?

Or does it just look weird to you?

Better question – does it look like Marilyn Monroe’s curves?

How about now?

Okay, how about now:

What about Emerald City in North York?

Did this project have curb appeal when the renderings were released?

I guess every condo has curb appeal, when we see the artist’s renderings.

In the renderings, the sky is always PURPLE!

Who wouldn’t love to live in a world with a purple sky! The future is here!

The renderings also always seem to show no other buildings, or signs of life (other than trees, and people carrying coffee and walking dogs), and make the buildings look majestic.

So what do you think of the real Emerald City now:

Geez, I dunno.

Just another condo, I think.

I guess what I’m trying to figure out is – how many of you out there, reading this, either in the market for a condo, or having bought, would put “curb appeal” for a condo in your Top-Five criteria?

Top-Ten?

Maybe curb appeal doesn’t matter as much, but rather the construction of the building itself does?

I’ve heard some people say they don’t want to buy in these glass-and-steel buildings, because they worry about how the glass will hold up in the long-term, and/or because of the falling glass saga that started back in 2011.

Either way, I’d like to hear your thoughts.

And along the lines of “curb appeal,” check out Business Insider’s “25 Most Beautiful Buildings According To Architects”, which is a fun read as well.

The post Does “Curb Appeal” Exist For Condos? appeared first on Toronto Real Estate Property Sales & Investments | Toronto Realty Blog by David Fleming.

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profitable-tips-for-you · 8 years

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How to Extend Service Life of Corroded Pipes

Introduction

If put unattended, inordinate outer and inner erosion, corrosion, disintegration, scraped spot, marks and breaks can all conceivably prompt catastrophes. These pipeline deformities when unattended can bring about costly and conceivably fatal results to resource proprietors and machineries administrators. Hence, these pipeline imperfections are obliged to suitable repairs or…

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