#i have seen a disproportionate amount of posts making fun of her in the last week and it’s just wild to me how ppl dont make the connection

[birdpal]

hey did you know if you constantly post about how bad taylor swift is and how much you dislike her music / think she’s basic / swifties are so annoying / etc etc etc you are actually also obsessed with taylor swift?

[iridescentides]

🔥 + any hot takes/thoughts/unpopular opinions about Glee, A:tLA, and Umbrella Academy bc you reblog a lot of them and I love those shows

AH thank you so so much for sending this! i will try to limit myself bc i have a lot of opinions okay

Glee

i could go on and on about glee bc there are 12 billion things to say (and the show is super long). but i think my most controversial opinions are:

i dont ship finchel or klaine. at all.

i can explain. i have a love/hate (but mostly hate) relationship with rachel as a character. sometimes i feel bad for her bc its clear shes struggling and insecure and shes a flawed female character which we need to appreciate. BUT she is just so unbearably annoying, selfish, and awful to everyone around her, and season 5 was the point where i finally made a decision. i dont like her. similarly, i hate finn bc he is overglorified by the other characters on the show, without any actions supporting it. they all say that finn is their leader, that hes the nicest guy ever, and praise him like a hero when in reality, he calls people slurs, outs them in the hallway, cheats on his girlfriends, and just overall acts like a douche towards anyone he doesnt immediately understand or relate to or wanna fuck. they all SAY hes amazing, but his actions just do not support that at all, and thats bad writing imo. i think because those characters are awful, their relationship is a colossal mess, and i think if i had to choose a definitive least favorite point for them, it would be when finn beat brody up for dating rachel. like what did the show want us to appreciate about that??? thats not romantic at all!!! thats disgusting and a sign that finn needs help. physically threatening people who date your exes? who does that??? and we’re supposed to think its cute bc he says “my future wife.” mhm. sure.

i hate klaine bc while i love kurt, i think blaine is awful to him. blaine relies heavily on having a sense of power over kurt, and this is even openly explored in one of the later episodes, but not resolved well imo. from the moment they met and got together, blaine was using his power and standing as head of the warblers to subtly make kurt feel lesser. he liked feeling like he held some sort of power in the relationship. then, when he goes to new york and gains weight and thinks of himself as less attractive, he gets angry and jealous of kurt bc he wants to be the “hot” one in the relationship, and always considered himself as such. if you are comparing yourself to your partner in that way, please break up with them and learn how to feel complete by yourself. blaines insecurities repeatedly fucked up their relationship, and i never have and never will ship them. the fact that they last minute decided to get married, ignoring their glaring issues with living together and teamwork in general, due to social pressure to crash brittanas wedding was absolutely ridiculous and a bullshit wrap up to their story.

A:TLA

okay so i know everyone is having fun rn joking about how “zukka nation has risen” but i honestly dont see it and never will. i dont get where the fandom has just decided this year to prioritize a ship that gets no real exposure, no buildup, and basically a two episode arc in terms of trust and teamwork. i recently saw a post talking about how theres not much fan content for mai/ty lee, who have an actual solid friendship (and ty lee literally risked her life to save mai), but theres tons of fans pushing zukka and acting like its THE ship we should all be shipping, showing the general bias fandoms have for mlm over wlw. something to think about. ive been zutara trash since i was 11 years old, so needless to say, i would pick them over zukka any day.

piggybacking off of the weird superiority complex people have for shipping zukka, i have always been annoyed by sokka stans in general? just to be clear, i love sokka, and i dont think there is anything wrong with loving him! but i HATE how people who consider sokka their favorite character act like theyre special for that? people are always crying that hes “underappreciated” and that hes so much smarter and more capable than anyone else. and i personally have not seen a single person criticize sokka, when ive seen at least small bits of hate thrown at each character. my point here is, loving sokka is a super popular opinion to have, and literally everyone loves sokka! so when people act like theyre the only one who truly appreciates sokka it really bugs me bc like. it truly doesnt make you special. everyone has a different favorite atla character but i pretty much only see sokka stans with this odd superiority complex, acting like theyre so rare for loving a super loveable character.

TUA

idk if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but the show would be unwatchable without klaus. hes pretty much everyones favorite character, we all see ourselves in him and we root for him and we laugh at him, and while i agree with the sentiment that he gets a disproportionate amount of attention for how ultimately irrelevant he is to the plot, i literally would not care about tua at all without him.

on the flipside of that, i want to love allison so badly, but she gets no time or attention or development at all. her main traits are inc*st and missing her child. she gets nothing beyond that, and we dont know as much about her as the rest of the siblings. it hurts my heart to see the only woman of color in the family being treated so obviously like a side character in an ensemble cast. im really hoping we see more of her in s2.

thank you so much for sending these!!! i obviously love these shows a lot, im just picky about these things.

Send Me a 🔥+ a Topic, and I’ll Tell You My Honest Opinion About It!

[profoundlyxbonded]

12 signs a storyteller is building romantic and sexual chemistry

Dean/Cas FOR SURE hits 9/12 of these and arguably 11. DESTIEL IS REAL.

LOONG POST AND THE FANDOM EXAMPLES AREN’T SPN , BUT IT’S WORTH THE TIME.

THE BOLDED SPN EXAMPLES ARE MINE.

When it comes to possible romances in popular work, fans and storytellers do a lot of finger-pointing. People have varied tastes and can view the same interaction differently, causing fights over whether the romantic or sexual chemistry in a story was intentional. These feuds are particularly likely in cases where storytellers may be taunting queer audiences.

However, the question of whether chemistry was inserted by the storyteller isn’t as subjective as you might think. Storytellers use the same tactics over and over again when developing a romance. Let’s go over twelve of the most common. You can use them to analyze your favorite stories or to build chemistry yourself. To make things simpler, I use the term “peer” to indicate people who are similar in age and aren’t closely related. In other words, they qualify for a non-platonic relationship.

Let’s start with signals that could be platonic if used in isolation and count down to ones that are almost never platonic.

12. Banter & Teasing

Multiple episodes during seasons 4 and 5. Bickering and acting as if married after that.

When the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy came out, fans felt the chemistry between a pair of people that Peter Jackson probably didn’t expect: Legolas and Gimli. However, Jackson should have seen it coming. These contrasting characters start as natural adversaries, and once they’re on the same team, that transforms into competitive banter. This makes for fun and endearing scenes between them.

Even though banter can be platonic, there’s a very blurry line between banter and flirtation. That means interactions between peers that are familiar and yet have that teasing edge are particularly effective at building sexual and romantic chemistry.

If banter is all there is between the characters, the storyteller may not be creating that chemistry on purpose. However, in popular stories where everyone knows that fans want those characters to hook up, storytellers who include teasing are at least willing to encourage it. For instance, Merlin and Arthur on BBC’s Merlin are also known for their banter, and since it’s obvious that the show’s writers were cultivating chemistry, it’s very likely that banter was part of their strategy.

11. Staring & Close Eye Contact

Multiple episodes ARE YOU F- ING KIDDING ME??

In the Star Trek: Next Generation episode The Big Goodbye, Dr. Crusher dresses up in a 1940s outfit to join Picard’s Dixon Hill game on the holodeck. When Picard sees her there, he first stops, stares, and then has a close face-to-face conversation. The scene even has cheesy romantic music.

While that example is over the top, storytellers can do this with a lot more subtlety if they want to. Visual storytellers typically have a character conversation in almost every scene, and it’s easy to nudge characters closer together or have them stare a little longer. However, some shows like Star Trek are also in the habit of making their actors talk really close together all the time. That makes the line between what is romantic and what is platonic really blurry.

Building chemistry via staring isn’t limited to visual works. In narrated works, description is used to focus the camera and show what the viewpoint character is paying attention to. The choice to describe the eyes of a peer, assuming they aren’t supernatural looking, creates romantic chemistry. Using a disproportionate amount of description on a peer, especially if that description makes them sound attractive, will also be interpreted as non-platonic. While narration can also describe how close characters are together, it won’t have the same subtlety as it would in a visual story.

10. Domestic Activities

(”Co-parenting”Jack/ being two of his three four dads.)

In season seven of The 100, viewers discover that Octavia spent ten years stranded with her former enemy, Diyoza. They took shelter in an abandoned home, and since Diyoza was already pregnant, they ended up raising her child together. For many years, Octavia tries to leave and go back to her brother, but Diyoza tells her that she shouldn’t abandon her family. Diyoza finally sabotages Octavia’s efforts to leave, but Octavia quickly forgives her. That sure sounds like a love story.

While characters don’t have to be romantic to be roommates, making peers into roommates is likely to get fans invested in a hookup. This is partly because living together is associated with romantic partnerships, but it also means that the characters are around each other a lot. The more they are together, the more opportunities they have to build chemistry.

Aside from that, simply seeing characters handle (or refuse to handle) domestic tasks like cooking, doing dishes, or house cleaning builds romantic chemistry between them. This goes double if the characters raise a kid together.

9. Bonds of Magic or Destiny

Multiple episodes ARE YOU F- ING KIDDING ME??

In BBC’s Merlin, a wise dragon tells the titular Merlin that it’s his destiny to protect Arthur so that Arthur can bring about a new golden age. The dragon refers to them as two sides of a coin, and it emphasizes more than once that their fates are intertwined. Because he wants to stay close to Arthur, Merlin spends the entire show hiding his magic and working as a lowly manservant.

Our culture has countless stories about characters thrust into roles that make them essential to both the world and each other. These characters might be magically linked together, perhaps even hearing each other’s thoughts. The bond might be one of prophecy, with the characters needing each other to save the world. Or their society might make a big deal out of the two interdependent roles the characters play. For instance, in Gideon the Ninth, lots of time is spent describing how important a necromancer and their cavalier are to each other. Often, characters with these special bonds will gain abilities that can only be used when they’re together.

Storytellers have used this trope so many times in their romances that it carries a strong romantic connotation. While the trope can also be used for platonic relationships, a storyteller doing that may need to explicitly state that the relationship is platonic.

8. Voicing How Much They Care

Multiple episodes ARE YOU F- ING KIDDING ME??

In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the students Albus and Scorpius form a close relationship that is forbidden by Harry himself. This relationship is of central importance to the play, and it includes a conversation where Albus tells Scorpius “you make me stronger” and Scorpius responds “I didn’t much like my life without you in it either.” This sounds like a conversation from a romance novel with the direct “I love you” lines conveniently clipped out.

Friends and siblings in popular stories don’t spend much time talking about how they are friends and siblings. Most platonic relationships in stories are also not as emotionally intense, and they come across as less needy and codependent than romantic ones.

As we get more deep and meaningful platonic relationships in popular stories, these conversations may be less associated with romance in the future. Even so, having peers spend time discussing their relationship or what they mean to each other definitely builds romantic chemistry. And since we can’t credit most popular storytellers with caring about meaningful platonic relationships, conversations like this one between Albus and Scorpius are a strong sign that the storyteller is creating romantic chemistry on purpose.

Storytellers who are covertly building romantic chemistry are particularly fond of using the word “love” in ambiguous ways. They know interested audiences will interpret this as “in love,” while others will interpret it as platonic love.

7. Activities Associated With Dating

Multiple episodes - meals together

The Good Omens miniseries added original scenes for the fan-favorite demon and angel pair, Crowley and Aziraphale. The series shows them meet for the first time, go through ups and downs together, and as a secondary concern, deal with the events of the actual plot. They’re shown drinking wine at a fancy restaurant together more than once. When things look bad, Crowley practically begs Aziraphale to run away with him. After Aziraphale’s shop burns down, Crowley invites Aziraphale to come home with him. Aziraphale often appears scandalized by Crowley’s advances, which only makes those scenes more suggestive.

While two friends could have a candlelit dinner together, storytellers don’t depict characters having candlelit dinners for the purpose of developing a platonic relationship. That’s why in a story, just having two peers eat at a restaurant by themselves implies a romance in progress. Other dating-associated activities might include watching the sunset together or dressing up to attend a fancy event together.

This category also includes any outing referred to with the word “date” – even if it is a “friend date.” Your friend date in real life might not be romantic, but storytellers choose that word for a reason.

6. Absent Clothing ?

(09x06)  There’s Cas’ discarded vest and unbuttoned shirt during the scene in the car outside Nora’s.

In The Last Jedi, director Rian Johnson decided to develop a romance between Rey and Kylo by giving them a magical bond in the form of long-distance telepathy. But Johnson must have decided the obviously romantic implication of this connection was too subtle, so Kylo also happens to be shirtless in one of these scenes.

Fictional clothing doesn’t just evaporate in storyland. If a character is bathing, is in their underwear, is missing their shirt, or even just has buttons undone, the storyteller has chosen to create sexual tension. This isn’t always to develop sexual chemistry specifically between two characters. In visual media, it might be to give the audience some eye candy. But if one peer’s shirt goes missing when the other appears, that’s a big sign.

Perhaps the most common method of doing this is putting characters in the same room when one of them is changing. Injuries are another common excuse for clothing removal and close contact. A remarkable number of characters have trouble applying their own bandages; somehow, they always need first aid from an attractive peer.

5. Flirtation & Flattery

Multiple episodes - (5x22) Dean outright flirting with Cas before saying yes to Archangelic possession and just Dean’s body language in other episodes.

X-Files was notorious for taunting viewers with a possible romance between its two leads, something that started right with the pilot. One of the many tactics used to build up a possible romance was for Mulder to inappropriately hit on Scully while they were working. In one scene where they are undercover as a married couple who just moved into the neighborhood, he tells a neighbor that he and Scully spooned like kittens all night. Generally, Mulder’s advances are disguised as jokes, and when he’s too serious to be joking, Scully treats his comments as if they were jokes.

It’s obvious that when one character hits on another, they have sexual or romantic interest. The only question is whether that interest is being used to develop romantic or sexual chemistry. Many stories have a scene where a minor male character hits on a female protagonist only for her to turn him down, and it’s supposed to be funny. Since most women do not find this funny, these scenes aren’t as common as they once were. Occasionally, a male antagonist will make threatening advances. That’s even worse.

However, it’s different when a relatable protagonist is initiating the flirtation. Even if the subject of their affections isn’t interested, being turned down will create sympathy. The scene may still be written as though it’s funny, but then it’s humble or self-deprecating humor. Failed flirtation establishes that the protagonist is looking for romance, creating the expectation that they will hook up with someone. If they’ve tried to flirt with a recurring character, it’s almost certainly a romantic setup.

4. Emphasis on Hugs and Physical Contact

Multiple episodes  ARE YOU F- ING KIDDING ME??

Many fans of the show Teen Wolf wanted Stiles and Derek to hook up. Stiles is the fan-favorite character, Derek is really hot, and the two have some great banter scenes. Unfortunately, the writers of the show wouldn’t create a romance between them, but at the end of the show’s long run, they decided to give these fans something to remember. How did they do that? With the bridal carry. Even though the scene was written to be humorous, this specific hold has incredibly romantic connotations.

While the bridal carry is pretty blatant, storytellers will use all kinds of physical contact between peers to create romantic and sexual chemistry. One of the most common is hugging. Yes, friends hug, but visual stories don’t include extended shots of friends hugging. Narrated works don’t spend a whole paragraph describing the way friends hug. If a hug between peers is rendered in artistic loving detail instead of as a casual and brief aside, that was intentional chemistry-building.

Other blatant signs of non-platonic physical contact include showing whether their hands are close enough to touch, making one character fall on top of another (classic), hair tucking, and, for storytellers with no shame whatsoever, mouth-to-mouth such as CPR or “water transfer.”

3. Blushing

In Netflix’s She-Ra, the characters Bow and Glimmer start off as best friends and hook up in the final season. In depicting this transition, She-Ra gives us a beautiful reversal, in which this straight romance is much more subtle than the central queer hookup. Because they were already friends, some viewers might miss that Bow and Glimmer end the show as a couple. However, close observation of one scene in particular leaves no room for doubt. In it, Glimmer praises Bow’s music, and they both blush.

Blushing is a little odd because it doesn’t appear in live action for practical reasons. But in animated, illustrated, or narrated works, storytellers use blushing to communicate that a character is experiencing non-platonic feelings. While it occasionally indicates general embarrassment, context almost always makes it clear which is which. If the character blushes after dropping all their books in the middle of class, it’s embarrassment. If they blush after speaking to or staring at a peer, it’s romance.

Since blushing is involuntary, it’s particularly useful when characters aren’t willing to show their feelings. This means it often gets used as early buildup to a romance or to create chemistry between characters who will never admit their feelings at all.

2. Jealousy ?

OPEN TO INTERPRETATION BUT - (4X10) Cas’ reaction to Dean and Anna.

In Gideon the Ninth, Harrow is a necromancer and Gideon is her cavalier. However, at the beginning they’re almost enemies. When they’re summoned to an abandoned castle to train for a great honor, Harrow goes off on her own. This leaves Gideon to socialize with the other nobles present – in particular, the lovely and kind Dulcinea. As Gideon and Harrow begin to make up, Harrow increasingly voices her displeasure with this association, finally forbidding Gideon to see Dulcinea. While Harrow insists it’s because Dulcinea is dangerous, Gideon accuses Harrow of being jealous.

In stories, jealousy is an obvious sign of romantic feelings. That’s simply because while the vast majority of romances in popular stories are monogamous, friendships are never exclusive. Someone who wants to be a friend doesn’t have much reason to get jealous. Factor in conscious choices by storytellers, and platonic jealousy is rare indeed.

Characters rarely admit to being jealous, so storytellers who want to clarify usually have another character say it. Even if it looks like that character could be wrong, the storyteller wouldn’t have used the word “jealous” unless they wanted their audience to think about it. The romantic chemistry that comes with this is intentional.

Unlike other items on this list, I don’t recommend using this one yourself for romantic buildup. Like other negative emotions, occasional jealousy is natural. However, it’s not a sign of a healthy relationship, and it’s associated with domestic abuse. When storytellers use it in romances, they are encouraging everyone to think of jealousy as romantic. That can have deadly consequences.

1. Onlookers Assume They’re Dating

Multiple episodes - Meg, Balthazar, and others making joking (or very serious) comments about their relationship.

In the BBC Sherlock episode A Study in Pink, Watson and Sherlock have dinner together at an Italian restaurant. For those who’ve been paying attention so far, that’s a dating-associated activity. The waiter is an old associate of Sherlock, and he casually refers to Watson as Sherlock’s “date.”

I cannot count the number of times I have seen this used as early buildup in straight romances. The likely couple goes out together – often to a restaurant but not always – and some stranger assumes they’re a couple. Embarrassed, they hurriedly correct the stranger. Several episodes later, they’re admitting their feelings for one another. In BBC Sherlock, this trick from the old romantic playbook was clearly not enough for the show writers. Following this is a conversation where Sherlock concludes that Watson is interested in dating him. He says he’s flattered, but he’s “married to his work.”

The denial of the characters doesn’t cancel out the intentional romantic chemistry. If the storyteller didn’t want the audience to think about the pair hooking up, they wouldn’t do this song-and-dance in the first place. In fact, if the denial is enthusiastic, it just indicates these comments about being a couple are hitting close to home.

For all the other signs I’ve listed here, I can at least conceive of a situation in which a plot would call for something similar between people intended as platonic. These little snippets of dialogue have no such cover. They are irrelevant to the plot at hand, inserted entirely for the character moment they create. They are the furthest thing from organic, especially with a same-gender pairing. The storytellers can claim they’re jokes (homophobic ones), but they have many jokes at their disposal that do not build romantic chemistry. They chose a joke that would.

When these romantic or sexual signals are used on same-gender pairings, it may fly under the radar for audiences with a heteronormative gaze. However, these signals don’t end up in the story by accident. That goes double if this is a big-budget story in a visual medium, where the story has been written, animated, or filmed, and finally edited under supervision. Remember: it’s a storyteller’s job to shape the response that audiences have to their story. They may not be perfect, but they still know what they’re doing.

[kingofthewilderwest]

Hello, Haddock! Now that Voltron (sadly) ended, how would you rank the seasons? Also, could you tell how many times you've rewatched them?

Hey there, friend! WAY happy to chat Voltron and all its seasons!

Unlike most fandom culture, I’m not a chronic rewatcher, and the default assumption is that I’ve only seen any show once. It’s rare for me to see shows more than once, honestly, even ones I love. I certainly will be watching VLD more times, but because of my normal watching habits, I’ve seen a large portion of the show only once. I’ve seen S1 probably about 5 times, S2 thrice, S3-4 twice, and S5+ once. I’ve seen “The Last Stand” from S7 twice.

These are rankings based somewhat upon my emotional attachments and not simply objective elements like narrative structure! XD I already know my preferences are going to be different than lots of people in the VLD fandom, haha. These rankings are also based on memory, which is pretty strong admittedly for VLD, but it leaves room to change with a rewatch.

EIGHTH PLACE: VLD Season 8

Let’s be clear: I don’t dislike Season 8 and there’s much I enjoy. Give it up for S8 love!!! Standout episodes to me include “Launch Date,” “The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” and “Day Forty-Seven.” The women going shopping together and Pidge dressing as 1980s Darrell Stoker made my life. Not to mention… it was fun spending time with the MFEs; they didn’t take a disproportionate amount of time, but gave us good moments to make us love them. I’m thankful for the S8 ending giving us both a sense of wrap-up for the plot conflicts, but also looking forward to what our Paladins will do to rejuvenate the galaxy. There’s much I’m thankful for with S8.

That said, S8 isn’t my jam as much as other seasons. I’m not much of a shipper and I wasn’t into the Allurance, nor did I get pulled into the magic-heavy plot conflict with Haggar and her Alteans. And while S7 does give great screen time to Allura, it felt a little less like an ensemble cast and more like a spotlight on her. Enemies’ minds changed too fast for me to feel realistic, and the magic-wonky plot didn’t feel as gripping and intense as S7. It’s the reason I’m placing S8 here: from my own preferences, I attached with other seasons more.

SEVENTH PLACE: VLD Season 5

For whatever reason, S5 didn’t make as much of an impression on me as other seasons. I wasn’t as invested in concepts like “Kral Zera” and “White Lion.” Given as S5 is an odd numbered season in the middle portion of Voltron, it has an innate disadvantage: it’s written in all but name as the first half of a season, which means story arc ending payoffs wouldn’t happen until S6. I also feel like S5 is where plot writing is at one of its most tangled or muddied, given as there’s lots being juggled and introduced conflict-wise and lore-wise and universe-wise and character-wise.

However, S5 - like all seasons - gives us cool stuff. We got Matt (one of my favorite characters) participating in an adventure, lots of Lotor screentime, and a callout to 1980s DOTU that I never thought they’d be able to turn into a good episode (“White Lion”). And!!! We get to meet!!! KROLIA!!!

SIXTH PLACE: VLD Season 3

I have particularly fond attachment to S3. This is the season where I started getting actively involved in Voltron fandom discourse, giving my own take on Project Kuron theories. This is the season that gave us the first glimpse of the Classic Voltron formation - Keith in Black, Lance in Red, Pidge in Green, Allura in Blue, Hunk in Yellow. I felt a thrill go through me as Keith, for the first time, said “Form Voltron!” Also… Lance really stepping up to show his leadership potential??? So good. And this is the season where we meet Lotor, another long-anticipated character… and oh my goodness is his character introduction gold. So there’s lots of stuff I hold strong affinity for in S3.

The reason I have to rank Season 3 back here is because it’s more about the Paladins floundering around than anything else. It’s meant to create a new sense of chaos and instability… their leader Shiro is gone, and now there are new unexpected threats like Lotor to handle. However, at the same time, since half of the season is just the Paladins floundering around not knowing how to work together, it makes me less attached to particular episodes. None of the episodes are favorites or standouts to me on their own. There’s lots of cool moments throughout S3, but I think the only episode I notably emotionally attach to is “The Journey.” But still? Good season!

FIFTH PLACE: VLD Season 1

I can’t believe I have this amazing season all the way back here. I want it to be higher, except that I do have to rank other seasons above this one. 

Season 1 is what gets everything started. It sets the stage for what Voltron’s all about, teaching us about lions and robeasts and Zarkon and the Galaxy Garrison and all that good stuff from 1980s nostalgia… all the while creating a new vibe and energy to the franchise. In retrospect, S1 feels much calmer and less high-stakes than the rest of the series (especially post S2). However, it’s a solid season with good episodes that never feel less solid and good. We get great Hunk material with him finding conviction; great Shiro and Pidge moments as they share different worries over the abduction; hilarious Keith and Lance clashes; lots and lots and lots of good things. It’s a very solid season, especially once we launch off Arus.

FOURTH PLACE: VLD Season 6

If you want to know how tight my season rankings are to each other, S6 was almost listed second place.

I attach to specific episodes in particular for S6. I love the visuals in “Razor’s Edge.” I died howling with laughter in “Monsters & Mana.” I fell into so many emotional feels regarding Keith and Shiro in “The Black Paladins.” We get one of the all-time best emotional, action-oriented episodes of VLD… and one of the most amazing, hysterical filler episodes in S6. Despite being seven episodes long, S6 is an incredible ride and adventure start to end. It’s hard to believe so much occurred in that amount of time!

There’s hoards of great stuff in this season. We get the Kuron arc resolved, with lots of emotional content between Keith and Shiro. We get the Lotor arc resolved, learning whether or not he can be trusted, with great Lotor and Allura time. We get Keith returning to the Paladins. We get the introduction of Romelle, which all DOTU lovers have been waiting for forever.

THIRD PLACE: VLD Season 4

I have to put VLD S4 here because of its emotional power. There are damned AMAZING moments this season, alongside some of my favorite episodes and moments of all time. I know I and some of the other fans aren’t huge on “The Voltron Show!” But fuck it, guys, S4 gave us “Reunion” and “A New Defender”!!!

Matt is a delight this season, from his first meeting of Allura, to his tour around the Castle of Lions with Pidge, to his technological connections with his sister and Hunk, to his participation in the Rebels’ fighting forces. We also get some of the funniest moments for me in Voltron, between learning how to milk Kaltenecker and seeing HOW Pidge finally managed to rig up the video game system.

Then there’s the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. “Reunion” is the single most emotional episode in all of Voltron for me. Even though I’d seen screencaps of Matt prior to watching S4, I felt as shocked and heartbroken as Pidge to come to his gravestone. There’s so much POWER to this gravestone scene; it’s one of the moments that resonates with me the most even after I’ve finished the whole show. It might even be my Number One FAVORITE moment in the entire show. It’s not my place to analyze that scene here, but DAMN. 

Furthermore, the climax with the battle of Naxzela was INTENSE, with Keith almost sacrificing himself getting me screaming. That was such a great battle and climactic moment in VLD. This was a great culminating moment, in which the series has officially built up from a small team to a universe-wide conflict.

We get standout moments with Keith being badass with the blades, Matt taking initiative, Pidge seeking out her family, Allura helping Voltron flee the gravity field, Kuron becoming increasingly more suspicious. VLD S4 ramps everything up from the emotions to the excitement, resulting in an awesome and intense six episodes.

SECOND PLACE: VLD Season 7

It’s really hard for me to put this as second place instead of first place. I originally had it in first place. I want it to be first place. I LOVE the second half of S7 so much. This is, possibly, my favorite season from an emotional standpoint because wow.

It’s all-around outstanding. S7 showed us how far the Paladins have come as heroes; they operate with great teamwork, skill, and professionalism that is oh-so-cool to see on screen. They’re still the characters we love and cherish, but they’ve grown SO MUCH since their first days on Voltron. This is fully-fledged heroes doing fully-fledged battles and it’s GREAT.

S7 gives us standout moments to so many characters, including Hunk, Shiro, Sam, Colleen, Veronica, and Keith. We even get some good adventure time with Romelle! And as far as character interactions are concerned, we get touching moments between Keith and Lance, Keith and Hunk, and so many other combinations.

The story raises the stakes to higher levels than ever before, with an emotional and exciting conquest of Earth. There’s nothing more horrible and high-stakes to audiences than a homefront war. We feel extreme pain for Hunk with fears for his family, and Shiro for the loss of Adam. We feel the great sense of danger and desperation starting with “The Last Stand.” We feel the drama of a long and extended climax fighting for Earth’s freedom, including moments where the Paladins control the Lions outside their body (so cool), Shiro commands the ATLAS (SO cool), and the ATLAS also transforms into a fighting robot (SO FREAKING COOL!). This has some of the most exciting, badass stuff of Voltron ever. I love it.

Highlight episodes for me are “The Last Stand” (two episodes without the Paladins about Earth fighting for its freedom? this was fucking amazing), “Trial By Fire,” and “Lions’ Pride.” Essentially - all of the second half of the season.

FIRST PLACE: Season 2

Season 2 is probably THE MOST solid season in all of VLD. 

Almost every episode is good, memorable, fun, lovable, enjoyable, classic. It highlights the full ensemble cast. It creates an EXTREMELY exciting, exhilarating, fun climax. It is a strong narrative season, cleanly and proudly finishing the first 26 episode long arc for VLD. This season shows VLD at its best. Since it consistently delivers, there’s nowhere else S2 belongs except the top.

We get great Shiro time, what with his arc spent learning to trust Black… leading to him being a badass unlocking the Lion’s wings and taking Zarkon’s bayard. We get great Pidge time, whether it’s her freaking out over video games or drawing deeper into the beauty of the world - technology and biology both. We get great Keith time, with him fighting for answers in the Blade of Marmora and infiltrating Zarkon’s base in an extremely dangerous mission. We get great Hunk time, between unlocking his Lion’s claws and taking initiative in the Weblum adventure. We get great Lance moments, where he shows us he truly can be a sharpshooter for the team. We get great Allura moments, especially in how she fought against Haggar in the finale. This season rocks it for EVERY Paladin.

Not only does every individual Paladin get good spotlighting, but S2 also rocks it with character interactions. How Allura handles Keith being Galra is a memorable moment of character development for both of them. How Hunk and Keith interact in “The Belly of the Weblum” is a delight. How Shiro loses his cool with Slav is hysterical. I can never complain to Lance and Hunk combinations, like in “The Depths.” And of course every episode focused on Keith and Shiro gives us good feels.

Standout episodes for S2 include “The Ark of Taujeer” (THE COLORS), “The Blade of Marmora,” “Blackout,” “Space Mall.” I cannot believe I watched an episode where the character dressed as space pirates and rode on a flying cow to escape a mall cop. That happened. It’s a delight. And S2 kept rocking it with the humor, down to Pidge creating all her Paladin buddies out of space junk and imitating them. But S2 also gives us some of the most memorable moments of VLD storytelling, what with “The Blade of Marmora.” That episode is a staple for many reasons. Not to mention… all of S2 works together cohesively for the long-term arc structure.

And then there’s the climax. So well-done. So exciting. So immersive. So intense. So cool. So badass. Great colors, great flow, great plot, great everything start to end. I was in a THRILL at the end of S2 because this climax was so unbelievably fun. In retrospect it’s got competition with S7, and S7 probably takes the cake now… but fuck it, S2′s end will always be awesome.

Every single season in VLD gives me something to be excited about. There are things to love each step of the journey. I’m thankful for every episode from S1 to S8. 

What a ride this journey has been.

[orbemnews]

How to Keep Internet Trolls Out of Remote Workplaces Gustavo Razzetti, who gets hired by companies to improve their work cultures, has noticed a change since the pandemic began last year: more political brawls, more managers losing control of their employees, a curious mix of hyper-engagement and lack of empathy. “Employees are turning their cameras off, hiding behind avatars, becoming disrespectful,” said Mr. Razzetti, whose consultancy is called Fearless Culture. “They’re being aggressive among each other.” Office conversation at some companies is starting to look as unruly as conversation on the internet. That’s because office conversation now is internet conversation. Many companies have been working online for nearly a year, with plans to continue well into 2021. And just as people are bolder behind keyboards on Twitter, they are bolder behind keyboards on workplace messaging platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack — with all the good and all the bad, but with a lot more legal liability. Work culture experts say there are steps companies can take before the lawyers get involved. These are among them: closely monitoring large chat groups, listening to complaints, reminding employees they are on the job and not bantering with friends, and being aware that a move to a virtual work force can expose new issues like age discrimination. At a lot of American companies, this is the first time colleagues have had to come to terms with working and socializing almost entirely online. There is likely no going back: Nearly half of the U.S. labor force is working from home full time, according to the Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom. And 67 percent of companies expect working from home to be permanent or long lasting, according to a study by S&P Global, which provides financial analysis. “At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone patted themselves on their back, like: ‘Oh, look, productivity has not fallen. We’ve transitioned to digital. We’ve done things we were seeking to do — streamline processes, move things online, decentralize decision making.’ But they were forgetting about culture,” said Jennifer Howard-Grenville, a professor in organization studies at the University of Cambridge. “Now the reality of that has hit.” When message boards, chat rooms and Facebook become work tools, off-color humor is more common. Aggressive political discussions that would be out of place among cubicles now seem fine. The hierarchy of physical space disappears when everyone is a username: Confronting senior management does not require a walk and a knock on the door, and confronting colleagues does not require sitting next to them the rest of the day. “I’ve seen bullying by text in the various kinds of internal instant messenger platforms, and we’ve seen an uptick in those kinds of complaints coming our way,” said John Marshall, an employment and civil rights lawyer in Columbus, Ohio. Harassment from colleagues in internal messaging platforms is not new, he added, but now there is more of it. These new work tools were designed to look and feel like message boards and social media. Workers notice that and adopt similar behaviors, researchers say. The performative nature of Slack, where colleagues fuel discussions in vast chat rooms by adding emojis, for example, means frenzies grow and are hard to contain once they start. “Employees ask themselves, ‘Well, what do I know that’s similar to Slack?’” said Mark D. Agars, a California State University professor who studies organizational psychology. “It’s a Reddit board. So we draw on those norms. And those norms are very different than professional norms.” Some employers have had a strict response to political online chatter. The chief executive of the cryptocurrency company Coinbase — whose workers have complained of disparate pay for women and minorities — recently told employees to stick to work issues in online chats or find another job. Some of them took him up on the offer. But work culture experts say there is a middle ground. So money saved in office space is being spent on hiring corporate therapists like Mr. Razzetti. He has a protocol for emergency work-chat situations. First, he shuts down the problematic Slack channel. Then he breaks the team up for an intervention. Colleagues are asked to reflect alone. Next, they can meet with another colleague one on one to share their feelings, then in groups of four. Finally those small groups can begin to reintegrate into a fresh Slack channel. Business & Economy Updated  Jan. 22, 2021, 7:23 p.m. ET Some of the professors and consultants recommend simple solutions: taking turns to talk or post in meetings, requiring silent time to read something together during a video meeting before discussing, and giving workers 90 seconds to vent about politics before beginning a politics-free workday. “We have people fighting like teenagers online at work,” Mr. Razzetti said. “This can be a very serious thing.” So the recommendation from professionals is, basically, to treat all of us as if we were teenagers who had been fighting online. As with anything that involves workplace communication — particularly workplace conversation in text form — there are legal liabilities. There is a big legal difference between a troll with an opinion who is an internet stranger and a troll with an opinion who can contribute to your performance review. People could sue if they believe they are being harassed. Anyone with an eye toward preventing legal liability knows: Text is dangerous. The fact that workplace discussion now happens in online chats is a nightmare for legal teams. “You need to be sure you’re not writing — documenting — anything that’s going to wildly offend people,” said Leslie Caputo, whose title is people scientist at Humu, which makes workplace culture software. “For the millennials, the first age to grow up with I.M., we’re so used to having our predominant interactions this way, it can be hard to remember that this is a workplace with different rules.” Lawyers are starting to see more complaints. Some of the risk involves how casually people interact on the platforms, which are built to encourage casual interaction. “We’re seeing more lackadaisical conduct in general and treating co-workers like they’re your online friends,” said Danielle E. Sweets, a personal-injury lawyer in Los Angeles. But friendly banter to some can be evidence for litigation to others. “Now if someone’s experiencing a hostile work environment, it’s going to be written out,” said Christina Cheung, a partner with Allred, Maroko & Goldberg who focuses on harassment cases. An employment-discrimination law firm recently published this blog post offering its skills: “If you’ve suffered discrimination or harassment in a virtual meeting, don’t wait … reach out to an experienced New Jersey workplace discrimination attorney today to discuss your legal options,” Phillips & Associates wrote. A lot has been written about the gender divide in working from home, how mothers have a disproportionate amount of home-schooling labor put on their laps. But working from home is making another divide starker: the generational divide. Older employees often feel less comfortable with the sort of constant digital chatter that is normal for younger workers. “For them, it feels so stark to not be in a room with people. They might not be as quick to jump in on Slack,” Ms. Caputo of Humu said. “How will this impact performance reviews? There could be serious ageism that comes from all of this.” An example: A worker is struggling to navigate new software or accidentally stays muted, and the boss makes a “boomer” joke. There are, of course, benefits to these changes. Ms. Caputo has connected with colleagues in new ways. Her daughter has severe food allergies, and now there is a Humu chat room for people coping with the same issues. A member of senior leadership joined. They are all bonding. The norms of internet conversation rely on a unique mix of anonymity, lack of self awareness, a sense of protection and humor. Behind an avatar and a username, we can be more blunt or cruel, careless and brave and charming. Online communication lends a sense of distance and safety and — easily overlooked in the hand-wringing over virtual workplace culture — fun. It also empowers employees who may not be as willing to speak up in physical settings. Sammy Courtright, a co-founder and the chief brand officer of Ten Spot, a company that builds tools for healthy workplace engagement, likens workplace behavior now to online dating. Meeting someone at a bar and striking up a conversation requires a level of empathy and nuance that is not always required when meeting someone on Tinder. “It’s empowering in certain ways — people can say what they want to say,” Ms. Courtright said. “Perhaps their persona is more direct online. They can be who they want to be.” Source link #Internet #Remote #trolls #Workplaces

[unifiedsocialblog]

Social Media Lessons from a Silicon Valley Veteran

LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media networks in the world—experiencing a 1,000 percent growth rate in just over 10 years and boasting over 530 million users.

At the helm of this powerful social network’s marketing department is chief marketing officer (CMO) Shannon Brayton. Brayton has over two decades of experience working for some of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive tech companies, including Yahoo!, eBay, and now LinkedIn.

In this episode of the Hootcast podcast, our CEO Ryan Holmes chats with Brayton about lessons learned from her time in the tech industry, along with social media tips for business professionals.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Brayton’s leadership tips from years of industry experience

What you should and shouldn’t do on LinkedIn

How to be authentic on social media

Press play to hear the show in its entirety, or if you don’t have a set of earbuds handy, read the transcription of our conversation below.

Q&A with LinkedIn’s CMO Shannon Brayton

You’ve been working for a long time in Silicon Valley and spent most of your career in PR and comms. In 2015 you took the role as the CMO of LinkedIn, previously working as their communications executive. What has it been like moving from communications into marketing?

It has been fun and challenging. The fun part is really the fact that I’ve learned more in the last two years than I have in the previous 10. It’s been the most condensed version of marketing that you could ever imagine and I have absolutely loved that, even when it’s been really hard.

And I say challenging because I had essentially done just corporate communications for 20 years, so I had a bit of a bias against marketing because as your listeners probably know, comms and marketing bump into each other quite often and for me to get rid of those biases and then learn more about the team. It was definitely challenging but highly interesting, and at the end of it, and it’s been two and a half years, it’s been incredibly rewarding at the same time.

It’s a really interesting era that we live in when you think about the breadth of an executive role. You need to have all of these arrows in your quiver and right now we’re seeing a lot of different perspectives being demanded by leaders. How are you helping CEO Jeff navigate the communication needs that he has?

Part of the reason Jeff wanted me to take the role was because he was one of the first CEOs that I’m aware of that really saw that convergence of comms and marketing, and decided to put it under one leader at the company. Comms was creating a lot of content that was essentially bumping into the same type of content that the marketing team was creating.

I think Jeff realized early on that those narratives and the way that you tell your company story and your brand, it’s essentially the same thing, and we’ve actually gotten quite a bit of synergy by having it all roll up to one leader. And it is true how many arrows in the quiver, as you said, you have to have. My current team is 500 people and I have everything from pricing, everything in-between, and then social impact.

I think that’s one of the hard things about being a marketer these days is you really need to understand a little bit about a hundred different things.

I absolutely see that. You mentioned Jeff briefly and I think he’s been known as a very authentic leader. You recently wrote a really interesting article about how you won’t hire someone until you’ve had lunch with them, are there any tips you can share with people on how you can have authentic interactions on LinkedIn?

One piece of advice that Jeff will give to CEOs that ask him about how to approach social is to make sure that no one on your staff is responsible for writing your stuff, and that’s sometimes hard for CEOs to hear because they think, “Oh my gosh, how am I possibly going to find the time to do this.” Jeff does all of his own social media himself. I think you can really sniff it out when CEOs or executives in general aren’t being authentic or are having somebody write their stuff for them.

And so that’s my number one tip is to do it yourself. It’s amazing what it can do for both recruiting and retention of your own employees.

What are some best practices on how people can remain professional and authentic on social? Any personal strategies that have really helped you in your career?

On the professional side, you need to think about the guardrails between Facebook and Instagram versus LinkedIn. We really do encourage people to make sure that the content they’re posting remains professional on LinkedIn. So, things that are political in nature or pictures of your baby don’t belong unless you’ve got a way to dovetail it back to your professional life.

I see a lot of people who will make that mistake and post something that’s highly personal and not as professional and people will respond in the comments and say things like, “This is not Facebook” or, “This doesn’t belong here.” And so I really encourage people to think about their social media life in two very distinct ways. LinkedIn is the place where you talk about work and your profession and your industry, and Facebook is the place you talk about your kids and your Halloween decorating.

It’s really important that you kind of draw that invisible guardrail in your mind when you go to join social media because people expect a certain thing on LinkedIn and they expect a certain thing on Facebook.

I recently did, as you know, a LinkedIn social leadership course, and I always give my six tips on social leadership and comms for leaders. And picking your channel is always one of the top things that I tell people. I absolutely agree that baby pictures aren’t really the right thing for the LinkedIn channel unless you tie that back to a great business comms piece around what having children taught you about being a better leader or something like that.

I’ve seen moms post pictures of their kids upon returning from maternity leave and talk about what their maternity leave was like and what it was like returning to a job. I think that’s inherently appropriate on something like LinkedIn. But just sharing a picture of your cute baby in their Halloween outfit is not something we encourage because people don’t expect to see those types of things on LinkedIn.

And as the online world has become more political and you’re seeing more and more unfortunate chatter on places like Facebook and Twitter, I think we sort of disproportionately benefited because people think of LinkedIn more like a respite from political discourse.

In an article of yours you talked about reverse mentoring as being essential in your onboarding from PR to marketing at LinkedIn. I love the concept of reverse mentoring. Can you explain to our listeners what reverse mentoring is and how it helped you better understand LinkedIn and excel in your role?

I had done comms for 20 years and one day we announced that I’m going to take the CMO job on an interim basis. About 50 different decisions came to me within the next two days and I had zero idea what anyone was talking about. I also didn’t know any of the names of the people in the marketing world.

So essentially, I picked up around 12 different topics that I was the most clueless on, and that list could have gone on even longer by the way, Ryan. But we picked the top 12 and we found the people in the organization who could tell me a story about their topic.

So topics like demand gen, search engine marketing, content marketing, etc. and we picked cross-functional people to come in tell me what they work on, how I could get smarter about it, and what was working with it and what was not.

It was so incredibly helpful, one because it expanded my knowledge in a very short amount of time. We kept it to one-hour sessions and so incredibly helpful to have people share what’s on their minds. And then I got to know a lot more people, and not just the people that were going to report to me. So it broadened my knowledge of the team in a really material way.

I love the concept of reverse mentoring and I think that that’s such a testament to the power of it, to be able to get you ramped up to be the CMO of one of the most popular and well-known social and business brands.

I have a lot of leaders that ask me about how they can get onto social media and do better on social media and do better in comms, and my recommendation to them is always to go and find the super stars in their organization that understand social really well.

The domain expertise is there and you just need to tap into it, and for some leaders it’s a little humbling and it puts them out of their comfort zone. Did anything stand out to you from those reverse mentoring sessions?

So you hit the nail on the head in terms of it being a humbling experience. You do have to bring a level of humility to it because I’ve told a few peers about it and they all looked at me agog that I would actually invite more junior people to come in and explain something to me that I had a bunch of ostensibly dumb questions about. And so there is a humility piece that really kicks in, but it really went miles for me because I think people appreciated that I was willing to admit what I didn’t know.

I also did a product marketing manager reverse mentoring session, so I brought PMMs from a variety of different groups and when I walked into the room I introduced myself and noticed that a few of them were introducing themselves to each other. So these were people inside the same company, inside the same organization in similar roles and had never met each other.

So it was really fun for me to connect those dots and what’s come out of that is that we now do a regular PMM roundtable where they all get together on a regular basis. We’re now building curriculum that’s very specific for them, and had I not done that in a cross-functional way I wouldn’t have realized that they didn’t know each other and realized the need. And so a lot of ancillary benefits came out of the reverse mentoring in addition to trying to get me a little bit smarter about each of those areas.

I really liked what you said about asking the dumb question as a leader. When you’re in a big roundtable meeting and the big boss is there and somebody says some buzzword acronym, it’s really intimidating to put up your hand and say, ‘Hey, I don’t understand what this acronym means, can we explain that.’

So I always try to ask the dumb question as the leader to set the table that it’s okay to ask the dumb questions. I’ll often do it for the benefit of everybody so we’re all on the same page.

I totally agree, and I think putting yourself out there to ask the dumb question, like you said, it opens the room up to more questions and for people to feel more comfortable with the unknown.

I think one of the other reverse mentoring things that’s been really interesting is trying to stay up to speed on technology. So I did a reverse mentoring session related to Snapchat because, you know, I’m a little bit out of Snapchat’s demographic and I wanted to know more about it, both from a marketing platform standpoint and when my eight-year-old ends up on it I’ll know what she’s doing.

So I’ve been trying to stay up to speed on the new cool technologies through reverse mentoring too, and that allows me to ask a whole bunch of dumb questions which is really fun because it’ll make me eventually a better executive, marketer and parent longer term.

Well Shannon, it’s been really great having you. I’m wrapping up right now and I want to ask you the question of the day: what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your career?

And it really was the worst piece of advice because bringing your whole self to work allows people around you to do the same. ou want to be the same person you are at home that you are at the office to the extent that it’s appropriate and professional.

My kids are part of me, and so it is something that I feel really comfortable talking about at work and it allows other people with kids to have conversations with me about it too. So worst piece of advice, don’t talk about your kids at work and best advice was bring your whole self to work because you’re going to be a much happier more authentic leader.

I think whoever gave you the bring your whole self was very wise in their advice. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today, Shannon, it’s been wonderful having you on.

Listen to the Full Episode

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[bizmediaweb]

Social Media Lessons from a Silicon Valley Veteran

LinkedIn is one of the biggest social media networks in the world—experiencing a 1,000 percent growth rate in just over 10 years and boasting over 530 million users.

At the helm of this powerful social network’s marketing department is chief marketing officer (CMO) Shannon Brayton. Brayton has over two decades of experience working for some of Silicon Valley’s most disruptive tech companies, including Yahoo!, eBay, and now LinkedIn.

In this episode of the Hootcast podcast, our CEO Ryan Holmes chats with Brayton about lessons learned from her time in the tech industry, along with social media tips for business professionals.

In this episode you’ll learn:

Brayton’s leadership tips from years of industry experience

What you should and shouldn’t do on LinkedIn

How to be authentic on social media

Press play to hear the show in its entirety, or if you don’t have a set of earbuds handy, read the transcription of our conversation below.

Q&A with LinkedIn’s CMO Shannon Brayton

You’ve been working for a long time in Silicon Valley and spent most of your career in PR and comms. In 2015 you took the role as the CMO of LinkedIn, previously working as their communications executive. What has it been like moving from communications into marketing?

It has been fun and challenging. The fun part is really the fact that I’ve learned more in the last two years than I have in the previous 10. It’s been the most condensed version of marketing that you could ever imagine and I have absolutely loved that, even when it’s been really hard.

And I say challenging because I had essentially done just corporate communications for 20 years, so I had a bit of a bias against marketing because as your listeners probably know, comms and marketing bump into each other quite often and for me to get rid of those biases and then learn more about the team. It was definitely challenging but highly interesting, and at the end of it, and it’s been two and a half years, it’s been incredibly rewarding at the same time.

It’s a really interesting era that we live in when you think about the breadth of an executive role. You need to have all of these arrows in your quiver and right now we’re seeing a lot of different perspectives being demanded by leaders. How are you helping CEO Jeff navigate the communication needs that he has?

Part of the reason Jeff wanted me to take the role was because he was one of the first CEOs that I’m aware of that really saw that convergence of comms and marketing, and decided to put it under one leader at the company. Comms was creating a lot of content that was essentially bumping into the same type of content that the marketing team was creating.

I think Jeff realized early on that those narratives and the way that you tell your company story and your brand, it’s essentially the same thing, and we’ve actually gotten quite a bit of synergy by having it all roll up to one leader. And it is true how many arrows in the quiver, as you said, you have to have. My current team is 500 people and I have everything from pricing, everything in-between, and then social impact.

I think that’s one of the hard things about being a marketer these days is you really need to understand a little bit about a hundred different things.

I absolutely see that. You mentioned Jeff briefly and I think he’s been known as a very authentic leader. You recently wrote a really interesting article about how you won’t hire someone until you’ve had lunch with them, are there any tips you can share with people on how you can have authentic interactions on LinkedIn?

One piece of advice that Jeff will give to CEOs that ask him about how to approach social is to make sure that no one on your staff is responsible for writing your stuff, and that’s sometimes hard for CEOs to hear because they think, “Oh my gosh, how am I possibly going to find the time to do this.” Jeff does all of his own social media himself. I think you can really sniff it out when CEOs or executives in general aren’t being authentic or are having somebody write their stuff for them.

And so that’s my number one tip is to do it yourself. It’s amazing what it can do for both recruiting and retention of your own employees.

What are some best practices on how people can remain professional and authentic on social? Any personal strategies that have really helped you in your career?

On the professional side, you need to think about the guardrails between Facebook and Instagram versus LinkedIn. We really do encourage people to make sure that the content they’re posting remains professional on LinkedIn. So, things that are political in nature or pictures of your baby don’t belong unless you’ve got a way to dovetail it back to your professional life.

I see a lot of people who will make that mistake and post something that’s highly personal and not as professional and people will respond in the comments and say things like, “This is not Facebook” or, “This doesn’t belong here.” And so I really encourage people to think about their social media life in two very distinct ways. LinkedIn is the place where you talk about work and your profession and your industry, and Facebook is the place you talk about your kids and your Halloween decorating.

It’s really important that you kind of draw that invisible guardrail in your mind when you go to join social media because people expect a certain thing on LinkedIn and they expect a certain thing on Facebook.

I recently did, as you know, a LinkedIn social leadership course, and I always give my six tips on social leadership and comms for leaders. And picking your channel is always one of the top things that I tell people. I absolutely agree that baby pictures aren’t really the right thing for the LinkedIn channel unless you tie that back to a great business comms piece around what having children taught you about being a better leader or something like that.

I’ve seen moms post pictures of their kids upon returning from maternity leave and talk about what their maternity leave was like and what it was like returning to a job. I think that’s inherently appropriate on something like LinkedIn. But just sharing a picture of your cute baby in their Halloween outfit is not something we encourage because people don’t expect to see those types of things on LinkedIn.

And as the online world has become more political and you’re seeing more and more unfortunate chatter on places like Facebook and Twitter, I think we sort of disproportionately benefited because people think of LinkedIn more like a respite from political discourse.

In an article of yours you talked about reverse mentoring as being essential in your onboarding from PR to marketing at LinkedIn. I love the concept of reverse mentoring. Can you explain to our listeners what reverse mentoring is and how it helped you better understand LinkedIn and excel in your role?

I had done comms for 20 years and one day we announced that I’m going to take the CMO job on an interim basis. About 50 different decisions came to me within the next two days and I had zero idea what anyone was talking about. I also didn’t know any of the names of the people in the marketing world.

So essentially, I picked up around 12 different topics that I was the most clueless on, and that list could have gone on even longer by the way, Ryan. But we picked the top 12 and we found the people in the organization who could tell me a story about their topic.

So topics like demand gen, search engine marketing, content marketing, etc. and we picked cross-functional people to come in tell me what they work on, how I could get smarter about it, and what was working with it and what was not.

It was so incredibly helpful, one because it expanded my knowledge in a very short amount of time. We kept it to one-hour sessions and so incredibly helpful to have people share what’s on their minds. And then I got to know a lot more people, and not just the people that were going to report to me. So it broadened my knowledge of the team in a really material way.

I love the concept of reverse mentoring and I think that that’s such a testament to the power of it, to be able to get you ramped up to be the CMO of one of the most popular and well-known social and business brands.

I have a lot of leaders that ask me about how they can get onto social media and do better on social media and do better in comms, and my recommendation to them is always to go and find the super stars in their organization that understand social really well.

The domain expertise is there and you just need to tap into it, and for some leaders it’s a little humbling and it puts them out of their comfort zone. Did anything stand out to you from those reverse mentoring sessions?

So you hit the nail on the head in terms of it being a humbling experience. You do have to bring a level of humility to it because I’ve told a few peers about it and they all looked at me agog that I would actually invite more junior people to come in and explain something to me that I had a bunch of ostensibly dumb questions about. And so there is a humility piece that really kicks in, but it really went miles for me because I think people appreciated that I was willing to admit what I didn’t know.

I also did a product marketing manager reverse mentoring session, so I brought PMMs from a variety of different groups and when I walked into the room I introduced myself and noticed that a few of them were introducing themselves to each other. So these were people inside the same company, inside the same organization in similar roles and had never met each other.

So it was really fun for me to connect those dots and what’s come out of that is that we now do a regular PMM roundtable where they all get together on a regular basis. We’re now building curriculum that’s very specific for them, and had I not done that in a cross-functional way I wouldn’t have realized that they didn’t know each other and realized the need. And so a lot of ancillary benefits came out of the reverse mentoring in addition to trying to get me a little bit smarter about each of those areas.

I really liked what you said about asking the dumb question as a leader. When you’re in a big roundtable meeting and the big boss is there and somebody says some buzzword acronym, it’s really intimidating to put up your hand and say, ‘Hey, I don’t understand what this acronym means, can we explain that.’

So I always try to ask the dumb question as the leader to set the table that it’s okay to ask the dumb questions. I’ll often do it for the benefit of everybody so we’re all on the same page.

I totally agree, and I think putting yourself out there to ask the dumb question, like you said, it opens the room up to more questions and for people to feel more comfortable with the unknown.

I think one of the other reverse mentoring things that’s been really interesting is trying to stay up to speed on technology. So I did a reverse mentoring session related to Snapchat because, you know, I’m a little bit out of Snapchat’s demographic and I wanted to know more about it, both from a marketing platform standpoint and when my eight-year-old ends up on it I’ll know what she’s doing.

So I’ve been trying to stay up to speed on the new cool technologies through reverse mentoring too, and that allows me to ask a whole bunch of dumb questions which is really fun because it’ll make me eventually a better executive, marketer and parent longer term.

Well Shannon, it’s been really great having you. I’m wrapping up right now and I want to ask you the question of the day: what is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received in your career?

And it really was the worst piece of advice because bringing your whole self to work allows people around you to do the same. ou want to be the same person you are at home that you are at the office to the extent that it’s appropriate and professional.

My kids are part of me, and so it is something that I feel really comfortable talking about at work and it allows other people with kids to have conversations with me about it too. So worst piece of advice, don’t talk about your kids at work and best advice was bring your whole self to work because you’re going to be a much happier more authentic leader.

I think whoever gave you the bring your whole self was very wise in their advice. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today, Shannon, it’s been wonderful having you on.

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