#like I just had music autoplay on right?

[indiiglow]

Oh my god this video might just singlehandedly plunge me straight back into RDR2

[elexuscal]

So just over a year ago, I made a resolution to myself to get better at Fitness, since I was getting older and i knew if i didn't, the Consequences would begin to manifest. One problem? Historically i have always hated working out.

i knew there were two main reasons why: 1. lingering trauma from the usual Fat/Neurodivergent Kid Mistreated In PE Class Experience 2. oh my god it's so so so boring i would rather do anything more entertaining.

So. I'm not an expert, and i'm definitely not a professional fitness instructor, BUT i have genuinely come to not just tolerate but actually enjoy exercise this past year. So if these are any problems you personally have contended with, these strategies May Help.

One: Remove Barriers

a lot of flavours of neurodivergence struggle with switching between tasks and executive function generally, especially towards something you don't find fun. So first you gotta identify any barriers keeping you from exercising, and removing or mitigating them.

For me, a hurdle i recognised is that if I could not easily access the equipment, I was unlikely to use it. honestly if i couldn't see it i would probably forget it was there. So my first order of business was making a Work Out Zone. I unrolled my yoga mat and gave it a near-permanent place in my room. my weights came out of the closet and placed on a low shelf where i could easily access them, as did my resistance band. now they were always Right there.

I also realised something I detested was the general feeling of sweaty clothes, and in particular, having to change out of them. So Gross. so i started scheduling my work outs for in the the morning after breakfast or right before my nightly showers, aka: when I am changing in and out of my PJs. I'll do my routine (mostly) naked and not have to contend with the extra steps and laundry that sweaty clothes bring.

two: secondary entertainment

like i said: i found exercise very boring. and while i've gotten better over the past year, and can find it meditative, i still prefer having something else to catch my attention.

i used to like to put on video essays. but then i realised i was so often pausing my work outs because the particular video ended, or the pace got slow, or the topic turned to something dark and depressing out of nowhere and killed the vibe, so then i had to stop to find something else--

No. You need something that will keep you in the zone, and won't knock you out of it. I didn't used to listen to music much, but this year i took advantage of a Spotify subscription my sister gifted me (😔) and started just putting on upbeat rock, hip-hop, and pop mixes. it doesn't need to be my favouirte music ever it just needs to Keep Going.

i do find the loud, rhythmic music is really good for keeping my pace up, but if music doesn't do it for you, you might find audiobooks or autoplaying favourite old tv shows/sitcoms might scratch that itch.

Three: Find Other Motivators

Or, "if you can't make your own motivation, store bought is fine"

Gameification is really good here. You might be someone who'll benefit from a pedometer or step-counter app. I have a friend who swears by the Switch Ring-Fit, and I've also heard of folks who use games like Just Dance, Zombies, Run! and Beat Saber to rely on the sweet sweet endorphins generated by hitting a high score.

(BUT: do beware the dark side of gameification, which is the risk of demotivation if you don't hit your goals. For example, after doing GREAT on exceeding my step goal for a month, I got hit with COVID. For about a week and a half I was barely moving beyond the kitchen and back. My step counts plummeted, there was no way to edit the record out, and that made it harder to get back into the groove. Be mindful relying too much on gameification!)

Even outside of literal games, there are ways to scratch this itch. I used secondary objectives as a way to encourage me to keep up with my daily walks. Walking my roommate's dog when he was working long days is an obvious one, but we don't always have a furry friend at our disposal. Then I would rely on mini-challenges like, "pick up 10 cool rocks to paint", "fill this bag with wood for the fireplace", "take 10 pretty pictures", or "get to the corner store to get more milk".

And of course, consider team sports! Many folks I've talked to feel having set training/play times with a team that relies on them crucial to keep them on track!

Four: Don't Measure Success By Weight Loss

I know. I know. Easier said than done. It does not help that like 80% of workout resources online are going to mention this. but above all else, you must resist the beast. (and while not as dicey, measuring success by visible muscle gain can fall into a similar trap).

The biggest benefits to exercise are invisible. it improves cardiovascular health, brain function, tissue regeneration, immune system function, lung capacity, energy levels, literally our whole body. no matter what external changes your body does or doesn't go through, you're still going to be benefitting from exercise, and you do not want to get demotivated chasing unrealistic/irrelevant goals.

Instead, to track your progress, focus on questions like these:

How is exercise impacting my mood? Do I feel less stressed or anxious?

Am I sleeping better?

Is my balance improving?

Is my stamina increasing?

Am I becoming more flexible?

Can I lift/carry heavier weights?

Is my breath control improving?

Over the last year, I've seen marked improvements in all of these. My joints don't hurt as much; it's easier for me to to get up and move; I don't get winded as easily; I generally feel more relaxed and cheerful. Those are all amazing outcomes, and I hope that everyone on their own fitness journey can find the same joy there as I have.

[briarrolfe]

Recently, I was sent a job listing. It called for a graphic designer "to produce direct response static & video ads for various social media channels, such as Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube." So, even though it was asking for a graphic designer, it wasn't a graphic design job—it was an advertising/social media/videography job. The career I've dedicated eight years of my life to is the bit the ad referred to as 'static'.

Ever since, I've been thinking about this idea that video is the future, and also I have been (not coincidentally) extremely depressed. Not to be all "you kids and your phones," but...

In advertising, your consumer's attention is money. Video is THE most attention-demanding form of advertising and therefore the most bang for your buck. It's why Facebook fudged their own stats for the effectiveness of pivoting to video so aggressively in the first place. If your consumer is reading something—a magazine, a poster, a book, something on their phone—then they're still listening, and if something else demands their attention, they'll just look up. If they're listening—to somebody talking, to music, to a podcast—then their eyes and hands are free to do whatever they like. They can look at the world around them, which involves many forms of competing visual advertising.

Video is a media form that doesn't stop. It keeps talking when your consumer looks up, and then keeps moving to grab their visual attention again. The best method for advertising is one that a consumer has to exert energy to not pay attention to.

(—This is why I hate video so much as somebody with ADHD. When my dopamine and blood sugar are low, focusing past someone playing TikTok audio is hard enough for me that it hurts. I've never had the same problem with radio or with like... idk, billboards. And TV is kind of bad, but at least it makes predictable sounds, whereas every person who films a TikTok with sudden screams or yelling in it is, in my opinion, going to hell.)

This is why the UI for platforms like TikTok and Instagram have autoplay, algorithms that disappear things you've seen so quickly, no scrub bars, and don't have skip or pause buttons. Your consumer has to keep their phone in hand to keep swiping or scrolling to properly engage. If that consumer can't stop a video or go back, then the platform can train them not to look up until the video is over. Anxiety that a user will lose their place or not be able to keep up with what is happening is part of what keeps them from looking away.

This is also a reason to be suspicious of why so many tech companies are obsessed with VR in general. A phone that people have to hold and look at and listen to is pretty good, right? But they can ultimately still put it down when an ad plays. It would be way better if we could put the advertising somewhere that tracks and follows their eye movements so that they literally can't look away.

We all know that text is still a better, faster, and more information-dense delivery system. Sometimes I see people mourning the pivot to video because it's a worse way to consume information. They're right! It is! But social media platforms have NO INTEREST in providing their users with like, actual reliable information. If they did, then social media companies would have no interest in AI.

(—This is also why they have no interest in fighting misinformation on their services. People who get radicalised are very engaged platform users. And the people who radicalise them come with massive budgets for ad spend.)

All social media platforms want is to get consumers hooked on their content so that they'll continue to deliver ad revenue. Video is the best way of achieving that. That's why we're all pivoting to algorithms and video. That's why Tumblr Live exists and Snapchat miraculously has not died.

Anyway. I chose to become a graphic designer.

[akookminsupporter]

Hi Rosie! I rewatched GCF Tokyo just bec the travel show teasers and articles have mentioned it, and no matter how many times I watch it, it leaves a smile on my face at the end. Especially now, after we have a bit more background about the trip in the BTS Beyond the Story.

When you understand the sequence of events leading to that: Jimin's birthday, Jungkook's Twitter posts during said birthday, his "It's not over yet.", proceeding to plan the Tokyo trip and paying for everything, including the rights to the Troye sivan song as background music, the amount of hours spent on editing the video.

And then, YT just autoplayed all the succeeding GCFs after. No matter how much people deny it, Jimin literally stands out from those GCFs, especially Saipan and Osaka. It leaves you feeling whimsical and nostalgic; somehow, you can feel the emotions bleeding through. And that's what Jungkook said in an interview, right? That unlike pictures that can have different interpretations, videos are much more straightforward; you know what the person behind the camera wants you to get.

PS

To everyone who's excited for the travel show, who's been gushing about the minute-long teasers and trailers, you can control your experience; don't let jikookphobics/haters/tkkrs ruin it for you! Don't microanalyze like these folks do.

They're already changing their narratives, bec Tae might be coming in as a guest in the Jeju eps, but so what? Focus on the members, not these people. I know it's hard, especially now that a lot more have been side-eyeing Tae, but yeah, just let it be. Like for every negativity you see from them, just spread Jikook clips, their giggles, their fun adventures! They're chaotic and hilarious!

I feel so privileged that we get to see a glimpse of their dynamics like this!

And let's not forget that they made the trip because they were going through a difficult time and used it as a way to escape from all that. Although the agency and the other members had reservations about it, they still decided to travel to Tokyo. And yes! Listen to Anon! Ignore the haters. Their opinions DO NOT MATTER because we are seeing a different reality and that is what matters.

Ignore, block, and enjoy the upcoming JikookFest.

[psshaw]

The more time I spend on Spotify, the more it pushes me away from the outer edges of the platform and toward the mushy middle. This is where everyone is serviced the same songs simply because that is what’s popular. In 2018, while the app’s algorithmic autoplay feature was on, I was served the Pavement song “Harness Your Hopes", a wordy and melodic—and by all accounts obscure—B-side from the beloved indie band. The song has over 100 million streams, more than twice as much as their actual college rock hit from the ’90s, “Cut Your Hair", the one Pavement song your average Gen X’er might actually recognize. How did this happen? In 2020, Stereogum investigated the mystery but came up empty-handed from a technological perspective, though the answer seems obvious to me: Whereas many Pavement songs are oblique, rangy, and noisy, “Harness Your Hopes” is among the most pleasant and inoffensive songs in the band’s catalog. It is now, in the altered reality of Spotify, the quintessential Pavement song. When frontman Stephen Malkmus was asked about this anomaly, he sounded blithely defeated: “At this point we take what we can get, even in a debased form. Because what’s left?” The whole “Harness Your Hopes” situation is in part a result of what’s called “cumulative advantage.” It’s the idea that if something—a song, a person, an idea—happens to be slightly more popular than something else at just the right point, it will tend to become more popular still. (On the other hand, something that does not catch on will usually recede in popularity, regardless of quality.) This is the metric of how most social recommendation algorithms work—on Facebook, the more “likes” an article has, the better odds a user will read it. But when this is applied to what songs are sent to which people, Spotify can engineer its own market of popularity as well as what song defines a band. Popular songs on Spotify are popular within the app because they are what most people are listening to. So from both a behavioral psychology and business perspective, it makes sense for Spotify to assume that you want to listen to what other people are listening to. The chances of the average listener staying on the app longer are much higher if Spotify curates songs that have had a similar effect on people whose taste matches theirs.

[solarwynd]

https://www.tumblr.com/solarwynd/753644440437080064/releasing-the-same-day-as-a-bp-members-new-single?source=share

Can't lie, armys are kinda useless right now. They love the idea of members continuously releasing but they don't have any fucks to give in actuality after week 1 even if they're competing with other fandoms especially now that they're all enlisted and we have such limited promo. The only hope one has is that Jimin has a great track record of making songs armys vibe to - they will not usually stream beyond a day unless they actually like it. If they end up loving the album though, that could fuel their competitive spirit.

Also to the anon that's worried about opps linking up, tbh it's not easy work to spend money or stream music even for fans. I doubt these people are doing anything extra for someone they don't even care about just because it harms Jimin. All they love doing is running their mouth on twitter and that's probably the extent of it. For skz, their endless variants are the only threat and for Lisa, the autoplay and playlisting she'll get. Unless they get some truly viral moment, based on history it seems unlikely we'll have to worry about them long term.

If skz decide to go the let's pollute the earth path and release a lot of versions, then a bb200 #1 will unfortunately be difficult. I can only hope BB might suddenly apply their anti-kpop bias with some handy filtering. They haven't so far but hope springs eternal (for me).

Also regarding 2 versions versus 3 - extra tools are handy and I desperately need Hybe to do their job but I'll always appreciate if an artist, when he has to choose between artistic sensibility and charts goes for the former. At least I know Jimin will never embarrass me as a fan with some transparent cash grab album or some empty music. Long term I think it's more valuable to build that kind of relationship with your audience and have that kind of reputation.

Lastly while I'm really hoping for some great debut numbers, the real lynchpin of Faces success was twofold - it's artistic merit that's acknowledged by almost all and it's lasting power. While Jimin is responsible for the former, I hope that longevity is our goal for Muse as well. The way Face and LC pulls streams more than a year after release with it's (comparatively) limited covers and remixes is actually amazing.

More than anything I'm excited to see what Jimins planned for his sophomore attempt. Will his pre-release be something experimental (for him) like last time? What kind of sound will he be going for? Can he live upto my frankly massive expectations built up after face? Are we all dead on about the 70s theming and how might that influence the tracks? Ahhh it's hard to wait for answers. New music in 10 days. That's crazy 😭

Very much agreed on pretty much all of this.

I’ve been thinking it to myself that armys have silently been waiting on some quality music from somebody, somewhere, to drop. They’re still churning out hit tweets about Like Crazy till this day. You’d be hard pressed to see an army wax on about prior releases the way they have about LC. You wouldn’t have even though Hobi dropped anything this year the way they don’t mention it. I have faith in my man that he’ll deliver, I do. Even if it doesn’t exceed Like Crazy I still believe it’ll be a good song.

Like I remember the estimates for FACE when they came out were like 105k-110k and we managed to bring it up to 164k by the end of tracking week when our competition at the time was Morgan Wallen and we had an almost 100k gap to bridge. I know we still didn’t beat him (atp it was an after thought cause Jimin got #1 on hot100 with LC 😭) but the work everybody put in back then? On level with a BTS comeback and although it was stressful it was still fun.

The #JIMINJIMIN and #MUSE hashtags on twitter have been trending for nearly 2 days now with 2M and 1.5M respectively, the interest is absolutely there. I also want longevity with MUSE cause to think LC will still be charting by the time the pre release come around is amazing. I don’t want MUSE to fall off quickly and I want it to be impactful just like FACE was.

If we could get more digital album versions (cause that’s really what it’s gonna take), I think we have a shot We’ll just have to see what MUSE’s estimates puts it at to gauge the effort we have to expend. I’m still first and for most here to enjoy the music cause I’ve been begging for it forever I don’t want charts to take up too much space. I think Jimin’s gonna be pulling from the people who inspires him in sound potentially. So not necessarily 70s but MJ, (and he’d actually do that man justice unlike the sorry attempts Hybe pulled last year 🥴) Neyo etc . and just genre hopping in general. But considering those two do a lot of RNB and pop, I’m really excited for it.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 10/17/2023

started explaining why this one is a little lighter than last week's gallery wall behemoth bc of a uhhhh kind of dire week, personally and professionally speaking, but then realized when fic authors do that in front of chapters i don't actually care or require an excuse from them, im just delighted to have a new chapter.

listening

this is a deeply cheesy little folk song but the lyrics "man you name it and if we ain’t got it: we’ll get it" gave me a sensible chuckle.

now for a moment to expound upon houston: they truly have imported every possible food service establishment. the two chains i miss most from jersey, jersey mikes submarine sandwiches and 7-11 gas stations, are both here. i get that this is the fifth largest metro area in the US or whatever but both of these companies are SO niche. absolutely bonkers. spotify.

i think this started autoplaying after a playlist inspired by f/allout: new v/egas came on??

-

reading

i originally had a very mean-spirited graf about the utility of a pool in northwestern massachusetts and the kind of person who can comfortably lose $31k, but it is genuinely awful that there are no rules around zelle. that money goes into a black fucking hole and there's no way to get it back, which is not the case for any other kind of recognized money except cryptocurrency

Did we confront Gary Kruglitz [the pool contractor]? Yes we did. We marched right into his office and grilled him hard until he defeated us with a simple and probing question: What's a zelle? It defied belief, we quickly realized, that a man who had been trapped in technological amber since the Nixon era was running a cyberscam designed to come between us and our money out of an AOL account.

-

watching

Van Helsing (2004, dir. Sommers). this movie is horrible. this movie is terrific. i don't have anything to say about this movie bc i was distracted by equal opportunity tits and asses the entire time. the time of the “Kate Beckinsale in a corset” movie genre is long over but GOD. watched with my sister bc it's leaving tubi soon

playing

one week i will have the energy to try New Thing but until i do it’s genshin. there's a poetry event that has terribly boring minigames, but the story quest has finally tied a bow on a piece of folkore we came across in the very first release so that was fun!

wrapping up some stuff in sumeru bc im running out of map pins, this game has done one of the things i hate most: progress-locking one extremely long and tedious collectible hunt (the music gates) behind another extremely long and tedious collectible hunt (the robots locked in the vines). the next time i see one of those little fucking budget koroks i am going to drop kick it into the sun. what the fuck is the circumference of teyvat anyway. it feels like we have explored so little of this planet's surface

i have graphics turned down pretty low bc of performance issues on my elderly laptop and this is still such a remarkably pretty game. look at this big estuary leading off into the distance

-

making

i wildly overextended myself this week, partially bc im trying to take advantage of this brief post-covid heightened immunity. lot of dinners. lot of late nights. on top of that BOTH of my siblings were in town for unrelated professional reasons this week :) no overlap so we did not have a nice fambly dinner :( but did have pretty okay separate dinners :) if they could learn to fucking communicate their trave plans and the number of peope that will be showing up at my home that would also be pretty okay >:(

one of the party games i played this week asked the question “what could you give a 40-minute PowerPoint presentation on” and i started saying facts about the downfall of the penn central railroad and they very nicely let me continue saying facts about the downfall of the penn central railroad, the largest bankruptcy in US history until ENRON, until the round timer went off.

i have some thoughts about Train Guys and how it's very easy to fall into being a Train Guy, bc there's a very easy template to follow, and there's a lot of Train Guy content, and have i been doing this bc i actually like trains, or bc it's easy to listen to Well There's Your Problem on repeat bc it's familiar and comforting, or do i just really really really fucking hate flying?

who could possibly say.

mackintosh update: allowed herself to be scooped up by my brother (who she met at christmas and loves) but did NOT allow herself to be pet by the strangers in his company. did hang out in the middle of the floor observing tho. a regular little extroverted socialite!

[destinyc1020]

The radio show that the guy allegedly assaulted by Elordi posted an interview with the guy. He was harassing Jacob asking him to fill a Tupperware container with his semen-containing bathwater. He said that the people around Jacob were the ones that "assaulted" him by erasing the video. Sorry to the ones that want to believe that Elordi is the most violent man ever but it seems he was not the perpetrator of the assault and he was actually sexually harassed in the incident

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/239-the-kyle-jackie-o-show-27242949/?cmp=ios_share&sc=ios_social_share&pr=false&autoplay=true

WOw.... Thanks Anon. I listened to this guy Josh explain what happened.

I think that we got two different impressions of what happened based on the account by Josh. Obviously, we're only getting ONE side of the story, but umm... Idk girl... It's still not a good look. 👀 

Idk... Maybe you can listen to the interview again and see what you think, but I got the impression that this Josh guy was filling in for a guy who also works at the radio show who was supposed to go up to Jacob and do a joke regarding bath water and asking him if he would put his bath water in a Tupperware for Jackie O (who's also on the show and a huge fan of him). JE was initially friendly to the guy until he brought up the bath water thing, and then kindly asked the guy to stop filming.

It seems like according to Josh, after he stopped filming, something in JE snapped and he got in his face, backed him into a wall, PUSHED him, and grabbed him by the throat. 🥴

Sounds like he and his friends also cornered and surrounded the radio personality as well.

I mean, I think the joke didn't land well, and the guy Josh seemed like he was nice and was not going to use the footage, but he felt afraid and intimidated.... I mean, JE is a HUGE guy standing at 6'5 at least... So I don't blame him.

I'm not saying what that radio guy did was RIGHT (it wasn't, and can be seen as sexual harassment tbh), but at the same time, JE getting in that guy's face after he stopped recording as he asked, and pushing him into a wall and grabbing him by the throat is definitely a BAD look. 🥴

The way the guy is describing it, it doesn't sound like he was heckling him or trying to get a rise out of JE. He said that he was a fan of his actually. They were trying to get something for their show. The guy Josh even mentioned that JE has had talk show hosts joking with him about the bathwater scene in "Saltburn" without any problem, so I guess he felt that JE was okay with it?

He even leaned into the joke on Fallon....

FF to 5:44

Idk...it sounded like he said JE just "flipped" or "switched" all of a sudden.

Imo they were BOTH in the wrong.....

Now JE's fans are giving Josh death threats...chiiiiiillllle.....🤦🏾‍♀️

But yea, I need to hear more about this story, and hear JE's side on this, cuz right now it just seems like they were both at fault. But imo a joke doesn't warrant you to shove someone into a wall and choke them.

[eyeslikewatercoolers]

WIP Wednesday-Cooking Channel AU

Alternatively called ‘Daya and Willow (figuratively) roast Bosco’s lack of cooking skills’

“What do you want me to bring to the Deja’s dinner party?” Bosco asked as she looked at the text invite on her phone.

“Some nice napkins would be good,” Daya responded, not looking up from her laptop.

“Maybe some extra Tupperware too,” Willow added from the recliner, looking through the Netflix menu.

“I meant as in food.” Bosco said with a sigh, “I can’t just show up to a potluck with decorative napkins and call it a day.”

Her two roommates looked over to her spot on the couch, “It’s better than giving our friends food poisoning.” Willow said.

“I’ve never given anyone food poisoning, thank you very much.”

“Only because Kerri realized that the chicken you made was still raw and nobody wanted salmonella,” Daya said as she closed her laptop. “My sister said that Jo-Ann’s has some seasonal napkins on sale this week, maybe bring some fake flowers too,” she said with a smirk.

“You two are hilarious,” Bosco sarcastically said, sitting up hoping to be taken more seriously. “I’m not that bad at cooking.”

“We barely trust you alone with the toaster, and the microwave is still questionable,” Willow said, settling on an old thriller movie.

Bosco thought for a moment, watching the beginning of the movie absent-mindedly. It’s not that she always hated cooking, she just never needed to learn how to do it. Her parents taught her sister, Irene, how to cook but she was never interested in joining.

As she watched the killer in the movie take its first victim, a realization hit her.

It’s never too late to learn, and the internet was right there at her fingertips.

After the movie was over, Bosco snuck off to her room and told her roommates that she was going to bed early. “I have an early shift tomorrow, and I need sleep.” Luckily Daya and Willow didn’t ask any questions and told her goodnight.

Pulling out the laptop she rarely used and settling herself on the bed, Bosco stared at the Google homepage. She wasn’t sure where to start for her search, maybe cookbooks? Or watch the Food Network? She had no idea how other people taught themselves how to cook.

A couple of hours into reading some unhelpful articles of easy beginner recipes and advertisements for meal delivery kits, Bosco’s eyes grew tired and she needed a break.

The living room was dark again as Bosco entered the kitchen for a quick snack before trying to tackle Google again. Settling on a couple of pieces of cold pizza and La Croix, she made her way back to her bedroom but bumped into a taller body in the hall.

“Shit, sorry.” Daya was holding her phone horizontally and pulled out one of her Air Pods with her free hand, “I was watching this YouTube video and didn’t hear you come out.” she explained but got Bosco’s attention.

“Wait, YouTube?” she asked. It was somewhere she usually used to listen to true crime videos as background noise, but maybe it could help her now.

“Yeah, I found this guy that does these video essays that are like five hours long about-” Bosco stopped paying attention to her roommate’s long explanation as she quickly said that she needed to get something done.

Searching through the recommended channels, Bosco narrowed down the different videos that popped up as she ate.

Some of the people in the videos talked too much and didn’t show much about cooking. Others were recreating food from different movies and TV shows and made it look too complicated.

Growing tired of clicking through all the videos and trying out different channels, Bosco let the videos play on autoplay as she lay down and pulled the computer on her chest.

Her eyes grew more and more heavy, and just as she was considering going to sleep, her thoughts were burst by peppy instrumental music, followed by two meows before the actual video played.

A young blonde woman appeared on screen in a clean, but small kitchen. She had baby pink utensils and pans displayed behind her as she spoke to the camera.

‘Hi everyone, and welcome back to my kitchen! My name is Jasmine, and today we are going to make some lemon chicken with orzo pasta. We’re going to be making my usual creamy sauce to go with this. But if you need a refresher on anything, you can find my Basically the Basics series in a playlist on my channel.”

Learning the basics was probably a better place to start. Bosco paused the video and clicked on the channel, and there was a pink banner that said Jasmine’s Kitchen in bubbly font with two drawn cats. Jasmine’s profile picture was her in an apron with printed cats, posing with a mixing bowl and smiling.

Bosco found this girl in the video cute, so she wouldn’t mind learning from a pretty girl on how to cook.

[n1ghtcrwler]

Hi, I was reading your reblog on the social media post and I was wondering how you define things?

Like I agree that the messaging apps aren't really social media, but like instagram has a lot of social features (like stories for instance)? What makes youtube a video hosting platform but not tiktok? Why can't tumblr be both a blogging platform and a social media site?

If i'm not imposing too much im curious how you see things!

You may not know this, so I should warn you that I am not great at writing brief answers. I'll try to include a workable tl;dr at the end.

It is important to understand that the internet today is a specific iteration of what the internet can be, but not the first (and hopefully not the last). There has been social media for a very long time--hell, my first social media account was on a site called Bolt that I and other teens were on in the late 90s and early 2000s--but it is a specific hallmark of this form of the web. The categories I assigned sites like YouTube and Tumblr are vestiges of a previous form.

At the heart of social media is the social aspect; that is, a social media site does not have social features, its very design is to become a society online. In the age of forums, this was distinct not because it enabled people to interact or to share things they created, but because you were encouraged to share yourself. Back then, we had a collection of different sites for different aspects of interaction. You went to a forum to talk about a specific interest, you shared your art on a hosting platform, you made posts about your personal life on a blog, you played games and read comics and found text stories on dedicated pages. But in real life, you would do all of this and more while sitting around in a living room. Social media is, by definition, an attempt to become an online living room. To be the place where all the socializing would happen, where you were supposed to be yourself instead of a character or a username or a faceless visitor. But being a one-stop internet doesn't work if people just pop in for a specific thing and then go to a forum and a webcomic and an AIM chat, so not only do they seek to have all of that on their own platform, but they seek to keep you there long enough that you rely on it to get all those things.

YouTube was not designed to be a place full of vlogs, it was a place to share clips from tv shows and music videos and informational videos, and it is still best at that. The video essay finds its home there because it was made for that purpose. User accounts are just channels, not a place where people are expected to really drop all their masks. The video suggestions are just suggestions, and it was only recently they started giving you the option to autoplay the next suggested video. You follow a channel, and it really makes very little difference to your experience of the site aside from the other videos it suggests. None of the social aspects are native to YouTube, and most of what they've incorporated don't really sit right with the feel of the site. TikTok, on the other hand, came out of the gate trying to be everything to everyone, expecting you to be yourself for public consumption, drawing you in with an endless scroll that promised everything you want from the internet in one place. On YouTube, the videos are hosted for wide engagement with very little depth; on TikTok, you are personally the hook that will keep people from looking for other aspects of the internet elsewhere.

So, look around Tumblr, and what do you see? People make posts about things that interest them, and they share each other's posts, and they may even engage with one another enough to build a friendship. But you aren't required to verify your identity, or limit yourself to one blog or account. They've tried rolling out things like chat, but it doesn't seem to have really caught on in a big way. In fact, most of the time when they try to integrate something from a social media site, the userbase pushes back because it doesn't fit the design of the site or our use of it! The draw of the site is the blogs, and the communal aspects are more related to shared interests (like forums were) than actual, personal connection. The social aspect is an afterthought, a side effect of having a bunch of social creatures in a shared space. We are screaming into the void and occasionally getting a response, not sitting on a couch together.

And that's the difference. A site like tumblr allows you to develop communities, if you want to, while you happen to be doing whatever you came to do; a social media site intends to be a singular community. Do people try to use other sites like they're social media? Sure, but that's more to do with them being used to social media as the default than the actual design of the site. And sites that try to make money off social aspects, without having the one-stop online society model at their core, tend to feel wrong. Essentially, once you've really used other sites as they are designed and experienced things that aren't social media, you get a sort of feel for what does and doesn't belong under that umbrella. At their core, sites like Pinterest are fundamentally different from sites like Facebook, not because they are used differently, but because one fills a niche in the ecosystem while the other attempts to become an ecosystem.

TL;DR: Social Media is a specific business model built around being a singular online society, not a use case.

Thanks for asking!

[tobi-smp]

are the gorillaz those guys with the animated music videos that have lore n stuff ??

context: [Link]

yeah they are !! I've been aware of them basically since I've had an internet connection, even if I wasn't always are of it, though I've been putting off getting Into them for basically as long specifically because I Did know there was a story but didn't know how to get into it

I watched a video essay on it the other day, and Specifically on the fact that their most ambitious story telling venture nearly killed the entire band. or more accurately Did kill it until the band reformed with sort of a soft reboot. the video is Really good, you can watch it here uwu [Link]

everything about it scratched the Sorting part of my brain, the nearly lost media the websites preserved through 15 year old youtube videos and walk throughs, the ambitious plotline left hanging by canon and yet never forgotten, the Everything

so ! I've started a project, that ended up turning into Two In One

first I wanted to collect All gorillaz media and put it roughly in order. all the music, all of the shorts, all of the commercials, specials, live appearances, books, interviews, podcasts, radio dramas, Etc Etc Etc that I could physically find on youtube into One Playlist. so if someone asks "how do find out more about gorillaz" it's all there baby

my Second task, which came to me as I was sorting and came across some True masterpieces from the fandom (such as three and half hours of a fandub audio book with in character voice acting, or finishing the animation for scrapped music videos that existed in the form of canon animatics).

and that's seeing how far I could get into crafting a cohesive and satisfying narrative for "plastic beach" (the aforementioned storyline that almost killed the series but fucked big time), Including An Ending, while still keeping it roughly in line with canon. and it turns out the answer to that is Pretty Damn Far.

I'm still working on that Huge Massive playlist, which is understandable since I started three days ago. (though it can be found here for anyone that wants to poke through it while it's under renovations [Link])

But I decided to make Another playlist that's Just all of the songs and all of the shorts for phases 1-3 in one place. Because it's less intimidating for new fans (that don't hyperfix instantly like me jfkladsjklfads), for Binging Purposes (which you wanna just let all the videos autoplay without having to skip around a 5 episode pirate drama), And because it's Finished jklfdasjklfads

so ! If you wanna watch all of the first half of gorillas, including a Finished Plastic Beach, Click here [Link]

I'll probably make another playlist like that for phase 4-present once I finish the main playlist ! I like the idea of keeping them separate both because it just feels right with the sort of soft reboot that happened between them, And so that I can justify shoving the recent songs that Do reference the plastic beach story line into phase 1-3 playlist without having to break the continuity of the 4-7 playlist, Like This

I'm Almost Certainly gonna make another, Shorter, announcement once all of the playlists are Done. but ! I'm happy to get the chance to do it now too fjksldaljkfsad

@sunlitmcgee

[normal-internet-user]

*COMES CRASHING IN, SWIVELS HEAD TO AND FRO WILDLY, SPOTS YOU, respectfully GRABS AND SHAKES YOU A LA CAN OF SODAPOP* Normie, my dearest, I don't know what I've managed to do but all I know, is like many of my brainchildrens, I must share them with you.

⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

// (🫐🩵 a playlist inspired by our own little blue star :: 

Pompeii – Bastille

I Wouldn’t Mind – He Is We

Car’s Outside – James Arthur

Once Upon A December – Christy Altomare

Hero – Cash Cash ft. Christina Perri 

Sparks – Coldplay [bro, scenario?

- reader experiencing a bout of survivor’s guilt, chest utterly gaping with hurt and emptiness and loss; head in hands, glossy eyes, looking to gaze up at their bedroom ceiling or the stars if they’re outside …

(“My heart is yours / It's you that I hold on to / That's what I do / And I know I was wrong / But I won't let you down / Oh yeah, I will, yeah, I will, yes, I will / I said, oh / I cry, oh) the lyrics resonate so bad I'm bawling—]

brb bro crying i want to wrap reader + casey (bc techs, this all works for him too :’DD <//3) up in a blanket burrito n’ protect them from every and any harmful thing)

Atlantis – Seafret (og + slowed/reverb, both work)

SNAP – Rosa Linn (♪ Snappin’ one, two, where are you? You’re still in my heart. ♪)

A Thousand Years – Christina Perri

Dos Oruguitas – Sebastián Yatra 

Home / Gone, Gone, Gone – Phillip Phillips

Happier Than Ever – Billie Eilish [the opening verse is such a contrast to the rest of the song, it gave me vibey vibes y'know?]

Pluto Projector – Rex Orange County

Here With Me – d4vd

somewhere only we know (slowed/reverb) – ghostly echoes, creamy, and 11:11 music group

Goodbye to a World – Porter Robinson [some of the edits they have under this song are absolute gut-wrenching but it fits so so well-]

I MEAN???

// Thank you / I'll say goodbye soon :: now / Though it's the end of the world, Don't blame yourself now / And if it's true / I will surround you / And give life to a world / That's our own.

[need i say more ahsdhd]

One More Song – Vivo 

[OK BUT THIS WAS SUNG AFTER ANDRÉS PASSED PEACEFULLY IN HIS SLEEP RIGHT?? BUT THE LYRICS AND PARALLEL REMIND ME SO MUCH OF READER TO LEO 😭 especially the end verse, ohmy–]

// So, all I have to do is sing louder than my fear

I need you here for

One more song

Just one more

You need an encore

I need to go, get there in time for the show

Let everybody know there's

One more song

Just one more

Time to be strong for

The journey ahead, sing through the doubt

Sign through the dread, with a scream and a shout

Break through the fear like the sun through the clouds

Like you're still here, no crying allowed

I'll try to get out, I'll try to be strong

Yes, I'm moving on

It's time for one more song~ //

Like?? The vibes are off the charts, I’m telling you. the resonation in this between reader (vivo) and leo (andres) is insanity.

⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

╰┈➤ Now when I say 'playlist', it thinly translates to "songs I came across on my freelancing YouTube Music which just wanted me to thrive yet suffer ig—" THAT, and I'll probably add more that come to mind, but this is good for now!

a lot of the lyrics in these songs resonated heavily within me like bass to an early 2000's rap song or extreme Vine edit and even though I didn't edit down all of 'em I know you got the gist from the few I did!!

no but seriously, these songs are all a fickle amalgamation of both: songs from autoplay and ones I had at the ready in my mental repertoire that I searched up, so-o-o-o~

take it as you will, dandybubble! 🌼🫧 *[/p] hand smooch 💖, gallop-leaps off into the nearby wheat fields like a gallant stallion 🐎*

N9 BECAUSE I WAS LITERALLY JUST LOOKING FOR SONGS THAT REMINDED ME OF OUR LITTLE STAR CHILD-

If I may add afew-

anarchy - egg

heros - emmie curie

You Will Be Ok (Stolas' Lullaby) - from Helluva Boss

ESPECIALLY this one line at the end

"And when creation goes to die, you can find me in the sky.

Upon the last day, and you will be ok..."

Goodbye - Bo Burnham

That's all I really have to add at the moment- YOU TRUELY ARE A GENIUS MY DEAREST PETAL (/p)

[cyarskaren52]

CREDIT:Noah Schutz

Jack Harlow Knew This Was Coming

Well, sort of. But now he’s got a smash hit, a new album featuring Adam Levine, and he may have accidentally altered the course of NBA history 

Written By Khari NixonJanuary 27 2021, 10:00 AM ET

EMAIL

SHARE

TWEET

REDDIT

DJ Drama was in no rush to return from his lunch break.

Sandwiched between the outskirts of Atlanta’s Bankhead neighborhood and the sprawling campus of Georgia Tech University is Means Street Studios. This hub of hip hop recording has played host to a litany of stars since its 2013 inception. Playboi Carti, Gucci Mane, Lil Uzi Vert and the late Nipsey Hussle are just some of the artists who’ve graced its halls.

Run The Jewels X SPIN Cover Story - Promo 1

00:00

/

00:29

Next Video

Machine Gun Kelly X SPIN Cover Story - Promo 2

00:56

×

Next Video

Machine Gun Kelly X SPIN Cover Story - Promo 2

Cancel

Autoplay is paused

However, on this day in November 2017, the Means Street corridors were not especially glamorous. Atlantic Records had selected the studio complex to host its quarterly A&R conference in which DJ Drama, legendary mixtape arbiter and co-founder of Atlantic’s Generation Now imprint (Lil Uzi Vert, Killuminati), played a significant role.

Overnight success stories often begin at conferences like this one, long before viral TikTok challenges and feature placements on streaming services come into play. It can sometimes take years for an artist to build enough trust with a label to earn a star-turning album or single rollout. Drama knows a thing or two about this waiting game. It was his seminal free mixtape series, Gangsta Grillz, that helped rappers circumvent this indefinite layover and maintain relevance during the 2000s.

“I was just kind of, you know, taking my time to get back,” he admits over a Zoom call, reminiscing. He was, after all, DJ Drama. He was far past the stage where he needed to outhustle fellow A&Rs and executives. New music needed to hustle its way to him.

Still, as 2014 signee Lil Uzi Vert inched closer to international superstardom, Generation Now was in the market for a second star. When Drama finally returned from his break, something extraordinary happened.

“Right as I walked in just a little bit late, ‘Dark Knight’ was on. They were playing ‘Dark Knight’ in the meeting.”

A few months prior to Atlantic’s A&R summit descending upon Means Street, during the waning days of summer 2017, DJ Drama sat in a room at the studios beside his fellow Generation Now execs: Don Cannon, a similarly legendary mixtape DJ, and their partner Leighton “Lake” Morrison. Meeting with them were KY, a renowned engineer from Louisville, and a lanky, curly-haired white boy, also from Louisville, whose brand of brash-yet-self-conscious raps had built a fanbase whose support had him teetering on the brink of vested major label interest. This was Jack Harlow, Drama was told.

He knew who the 19-year-old rapper was. Drama’s friend and colleague Randy had hipped him to Jack’s Instagram page several months prior. Intrigued, Drama followed it and listened to a handful of the young rapper’s songs. The night before the formal introduction at Means Street, Jack had been thrust into a studio session by this same friend, Randy, to record with Generation Now’s inaugural signee, veteran rapper Skeme.

Harlow has endeared himself to a wide array of musicians in a short timeCREDIT: Noah Schutz

“The way Randy talked about it,” Drama recalls, “He was like, ‘I just wanted to see if [Harlow] had his chops. ‘Cause, you know. Skeme ain’t no hoe.’”

However, despite Harlow’s passing grades at his session with Skeme, Drama and company weren’t ready to set anything in stone. “It wasn’t final,” he says as he remembers how the meeting with KY and Jack concluded. “I don’t know, it was like everybody wasn’t sold.”

In the aftermath of the inconclusive meeting, Harlow, sensing Generation Now’s hesitation, returned to Louisville and got right back to work. He would be releasing Gazebo, his fourth and breakout self-released project, the third week of November 2017, and he needed to fire a warning shot. One that both his fanbase and GN would heed. That materialized as “Dark Knight,” a bruising ramble introducing listeners to a reenergized Harlow, who did not appear to be reeling from the effects of leaving Atlanta without a deal.

“Know this shit boom when we came down south and I had to bring my own lil’ Metro,” Harlow rapped, likening a member of his crew to Metro Boomin, the multi-platinum Atlanta-based producer. The song ends on an even more confident note. “Funny how it all works out / Right before this I was feeling burnt out / Now the whole city ‘bout to get burned down.”

Harlow wasn’t quite peeved, but there was a specific edge to his delivery. The chip on his shoulder was just big enough. “Dark Knight” made exactly as much noise as Harlow hoped it would. Because of it, he quickly outgrew DJ Drama’s circle. Label offers were imminent, regardless of whether Generation Now was interested. Harlow knew this. So did Drama.

Thus, when the DJ returned from his lunch break that day at Means Street to hear “Dark Knight” blaring from studio speakers, he knew immediately he had a decision to make. On his own accord, Harlow had quickly gotten better, sharper and grown more polished. So much so that Atlantic would surely be preparing to take its own chance on him by meeting’s end, leaving Generation Now out of the picture.

“Oh! That’s just Jack,” he hastily announced to the room. “I’m already on that. We got that, you can tuck that,” he remembers saying. The room quickly moved to the next order of business. If DJ Drama was on that, the conversation was over.

Truthfully, neither Drama nor his partners were actually on that. But that would soon change. “I went to text Cannon to tell him they played ‘Dark Knight’ in the meeting,” Drama says, as he cracks a wistful smile.

“It forced our hand in a way, thankfully.”

Jack Harlow photographed in Los Angeles, January 2021CREDIT: Noah Schutz

It’s a Friday night in January 2021, and Jack Harlow is seated in complete darkness. The COVID-19 pandemic will soon be a year old, so instead of doing something like eating tacos and playing H-O-R-S-E—which, I’ve decided, would have been my suggested activity for this interview in a safer world—I’m staring at a Zoom screen as Harlow, whose camera is switched off, describes his current setting. I’m not allowed to see it. “I’m sitting in the dark right now, you don’t want to see me in this mood right now,” he warns. For a moment, it sounds like a very vulnerable-rapper way of saying I was in the zone right before this. My next question is, “What are you doing, writing?” His deadpan reply: “No, I’m doing an interview.”

It is exactly this type of shrewd and subtle wit that allowed Jack Harlow to become Jack Harlow.

Born in March 1998 to the proprietors of a family-run sign business in Louisville, Kentucky, Harlow’s narrative isn’t the most compelling. Unlike many of his peers, he didn’t have to escape extreme poverty or take penitentiary chances in order to provide. He’s not from a city that regularly produces rap stars, and despite his obvious skill level, it would be fair to mistake him for a math tutor. His free time would often consist of riding around with friends in search of adventure, hoping to catch a cute girl’s attention along the way. As exhausted of a character trope as this is, young Jack Harlow was very much just a regular kid. His writing ability is what made him irregular. It also gives him a puncher’s chance at becoming the preeminent star of his generation.

In the 2020s, as microwave TikTok fame continues to prove reliable as a launching pad to Billboard success, emphasis on range and craft in the mainstream will continue to dwindle across the board. In hip hop specifically, descendants of 808’s & Heartbreak-era Kanye West have spent much of the last 15 years redefining how much traditional rapping is necessary to be successful in the genre. These dynamics don’t interest Harlow as much as they could. His duty is to his wordplay, and the techniques he employs to keep listeners on their toes. Sometimes it’s a stretch of alliteration that he’s able to effortlessly maintain. Other times, he’ll thumb his nose so nonchalantly you’ll forget that it’s slick talk. “The ones that hate me the most look just like me. You tell me what that means,” he raps on the 2020 single, “Tyler Herro.”

Jack Harlow is ready to rollCREDIT: Noah Schutz

In present-day hip hop, recognition is less contingent on lyrical ability than it ever has been. Despite scattered worlds that continue to place the technical art of rapping on a pedestal—the J. Cole-led Dreamville imprint and Westside Gunn’s Griselda immediately come to mind—being a Good Rapper has long taken a backseat to marketability. This transition has created somewhat of a perfect storm for an artist like Harlow, who isn’t going to blow you away with metaphors or dizzying flow switches. But his unassuming charisma, coupled with a sturdy pen and the attention to detail to execute a line like, “Been tryna pop, now I’m on like Shumpert,” provides for a lane that he can dominate.

“You know, for some odd reason, it’s been what I’ve wanted to do for so long that I can’t even pinpoint what it felt like to not want to do this,” Harlow says. “Like, sometimes I wonder, ‘What was it like to be a purposeless child that was simply enjoying life?” His mother, a hip-hop fan, would soundtrack the household with Jay-Z, OutKast and Black Eyed Peas. Perhaps unbeknownst to mom, her young son was taking meticulous notes. He wasn’t just enthralled, he was inspired. “What’s Poppin’” was an eventual outcome, but an inevitable one.

Harlow’s biggest hit song to date (and of 2020), “What’s Poppin’” materialized in the way that an innumerable amount of hit songs have come together. Hotshot producer slides into hotshot rapper’s DMs with hopes that they can form a mutually beneficial partnership. This particular exchange made perfect sense. JetsonMade, the Roc Nation-managed producer behind DaBaby’s breakout hit, “Suge,” was looking to diversify his portfolio. And Harlow was in album mode.

“I heard those piano keys, and I was just taken,” Harlow recalls. After a weeks-long back-and-forth with Jetson while touring in 2019, Jack had finally carved out time to get into the studio with the in-demand producer. On day two, Harlow heard the sound that changed his career. “I think I probably reacted how a lot of people reacted when they heard that beat. It’s fucking hard.”

Incidentally, it wasn’t even the featured beat of the night. In a recent interview with Genius, Jetson and Pooh Beatz, a producer Jet often partners with (“Told Pooh he a fool with this shit”), recall the night they flipped through instrumentals, looking for something for Harlow to “pop his shit” over. “You’ve got to give the artist room to be creative as well,” Pooh said. “So I’m always listening for that simplest piece.” 

That beat, accentuated with that bouncing, accelerated piano loop, gave Harlow more than enough room to be selective with his approach. “I said to myself, ‘Jack, don’t think too hard. Don’t bear down on this beat and smother it. You know, don’t try to go crazy on it. Just have fun with it.’ So that’s what I did. I said the first thing that came to mind.”

What’s poppin? Brand new whip, just hopped in I got options, I could pass that bitch like Stockton

Then,

Just joshing, I’ma spend this holiday locked in

Seriously? “Just joshing?” I had to ask.

“That was a line I’d always planned on replacing,” Harlow admits as he chuckles. Given the opportunity to address the subtle audacity of this cheesy-but-effective line, he perks up. “I was always going to get rid of it. It was a placeholder. It was literally just something that rhymes with the other shit.”

Jack Harlow X SPIN Cover Talk 

00:00

/

04:03

Next Video

SPIN Sizzle Unit - v3

00:10

×

Next Video

SPIN Sizzle Unit - v3

Cancel

Autoplay is paused

By the time he’d completed the song, it was far too late for replacements. For just over two minutes, on “What’s Poppin,” Harlow’s subdued-but-sharp flow darts in and out of the accelerated piano loop, buoying the dancing bassline Jetson and Pooh concocted. The beat doesn’t rush Harlow, and in turn, he doesn’t stifle it. After wrapping his sessions with Jetson, he played the song for confidantes on his team and friends back home in Louisville. Their response was the confirmation Jack needed. “What’s Poppin’” was the one. “I really treasure that moment because I use it as a lesson now when I’m trying to write,” he says. “I’m just like ‘go, go, go’ because look at the success that song is giving me when I just let go. It’s a lesson, you know, you just gotta let go and…” Harlow trails off briefly, perhaps rummaging through his brain for the word that will summarize this lesson. Seconds later, he finds it.

“Be instinctual.”

Shortly after its January 2020 release, “What’s Poppin’” was added to Spotify’s Rap Caviar playlist, the leading gatekeeper in the hip hop playlisting world. Securing a placement on a playlist like Rap Caviar in the streaming era is akin to being named a member of XXL magazine’s “Freshman Class” during the early 2010s blog era. It won’t guarantee a successful career, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a more effective springboard into the national conscience. Once “What’s Poppin’” hit Rap Caviar, it never looked back.

The song and its remix, which features DaBaby, Lil Wayne and Tory Lanez, have now been streamed over 700 million times on Spotify. Consequently, Harlow is a millionaire and Grammy nominee at 22. In case that was unclear, he announces it just 10 seconds into his debut studio album, That’s What They All Say, released in December, on the album’s intro, “Rendezvous.” The album, which features Maroon 5’s Adam Levine, Lil Wayne, Lil Baby, and an appearance from the late R&B legend Static Major, is his biggest flex yet. The world had just learned his name, and already he was getting A-list stars out of bed for a set of tracks so versatile, comparisons to Drake are unavoidable.

“You know, it’s funny because, I remember my dad said to me he was proud of me because, you know, his dad was broke on a farm and grew up incredibly impoverished. Then my dad grew up a little better than him. And now, I’m a millionaire,” Harlow says, unable to disguise his pensive tone. “And he just wanted to point that out to me. It’s a huge step. I mean, I know that seems obvious for me, but it’s a huge step for him. I never met his dad—rest in peace—but if he could see the success, shit would be a whole ‘nother world to him. So it’s just nice to put it in perspective. You know, that’s the one thing I’ve been really careful about doing.”

Jack Harlow's trajectory continues to trend upCREDIT: Noah Schutz

The way Harlow ended his thought, it felt like a cautionary tale was coming. My hunch was pure. “Sometimes I think all these millionaires and artists get so wrapped up in entering the world and becoming friends with all the other millionaires when they get to L.A.,” he starts, “They get wrapped up in the world and it does become normalized. And they think to themselves, ‘Well, then, I have room to be depressed. Everyone around me is a millionaire and I’ll find something to be unhappy about.’”

Don’t let the depths of Harlow’s self-awareness disarm you; he knows he’s the guy right now. He always has. His account of the events surrounding his initial meeting with Generation Now at Means Street mirrors DJ Drama’s. Jack just sprinkles a little ego in, like parsley. “Drama was fucking with me, but he took a second. The label took a second. And I remember I ended up having to drop “Dark Knight.” I said, ‘I’ma just drop it.’ And that really got the buzz going. Labels started, people were interested. And I was like ‘O-K, yeah, yeah, no, I got it.’”

“So you sort of had to trigger your own bidding war,” I ask. He agrees. “Yeah, exactly. And they were on it quick.”

He's laid back and ready for a big 2021CREDIT: Noah Schutz

This Cinderella ascent has not come without setbacks, however. With fame comes heightened visibility, which can trip up even the most vigilant of stars. The NBA’s announcement that it would resume play following its March COVID-19 stoppage came with a strict set of safety guidelines. Players were prohibited from leaving the Disneyland campus that hosted the remainder of the season, fondly known as “The Bubble,” unless they had explicit permission from league authorities. Even so, they were still encouraged to stay clear of high-risk areas, like densely populated public venues.

Strip clubs—I’m guessing—would probably qualify as high-risk during a pandemic. That’s where Harlow was when he snapped a selfie with Los Angeles Clippers guard Lou Williams less than a week after the league had resumed play. They each wore masks, but Williams had been granted permission to leave The Bubble so he could attend a relative’s funeral, not pop up on a rapper’s Instagram Story while at the strip club. Lou Will maintains that he was simply picking up chicken wings when Harlow snapped the selfie, and not ripping wrappers off packs of singles. The NBA, however, would hear none of it and forced Williams into a 10-day quarantine. He missed the first two games of his teams’ restart, the Clippers never redeveloped their chemistry, and they were eliminated from the playoffs so quickly, their season became fodder for a Freddie Gibbs chorus several weeks later. “Hoes get fucked and sent home early, just like the Clippers.”

Naturally, no one blames Harlow for this. Not even Lou Will. “[Lou] called me like, ‘Don’t even fucking trip. I’m Lou. I don’t get in trouble.’ I was like well shit, you just gave me the pass to relax,” Harlow reveals as he fights back laughter. Still, one can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out if the restart to the Clippers’ season was less turbulent. After they were eliminated, the team fired its coach, retooled most of its roster, and saw its star player, Paul George, spend the entire summer soul searching. What a sequence of events.

There is also the matter of the aforementioned remix to “What’s Poppin,” one of the most successful remixes in recent hip hop memory. Just a few weeks after the song was released, Lanez was accused of shooting Houston hip hop star Megan Thee Stallion in her feet following a party in Los Angeles. With increased social attention to misogynoir and violence against women as the wind in their sails, scores of Twitter users “canceled” Lanez and began lobbying for industry figures to blacklist him and his music. Harlow, stunned at the news, didn’t know how to react. The very mention of it makes him uncomfortable. I asked him what his initial reaction was.

“It’s crazy,” he says. “The news broke right after we dropped the video. I was like, ‘I wonder how this is going to go.’ I was curious, I was shocked, I was just like, damn.” He would comment no further.

Don't mess with Jack HarlowCREDIT: Noah Schutz

Eventually, Harlow’s whiteness had to be addressed. He knew it, and I knew it. In listening to his music over the years, I’d observed how many of my Black friends and colleagues were accepting of him in a way that they weren’t accepting of other white rappers. It’s comforting to have a white rapper just be a white rapper, and not cosplay their Black peers with guerilla music videos and disingenuous displays of gunplay and drug use. Maybe too comforting. Last year, Harlow trended on Twitter because the platform had somehow just discovered his race. He poked fun at the confusion on Instagram, posting a screenshot of his discography, which features his very white face on every cover art. “I did everything I could do to show y’all I am white,” he wrote.

Harlow expresses an understanding of what it means to be a privileged outsider. When Breonna Taylor was unjustly murdered at the hands of Louisville police last March, Harlow hit the streets as marches and protests swept the nation. “People have asked me, as if there was a strategy involved, ‘What made you do it?’ I grew up with Black people, and the empathy I have for them is ingrained in me. It’s not something that arrived this past summer, but I was charged up by the movement. It happened where I’m from and there’s a responsibility that comes with that.”

One of the earliest memories critics will have of Harlow is his visit to Sway Calloway’s Sway In The Morning show on SiriusXM. In the footage, Harlow, wearing a brown Ecko Unlimited long-sleeve T-shirt, is even more baby-faced than he is now. Sitting next to the much stockier DJ Drama, it almost looks as if Drama is the talent and Harlow is the management. He’s quiet and fidgety, slightly deer-in-headlights, and doesn’t look much like the guy who “forced” the hand of a legend.

I remind Harlow of this moment and ask him to consider everything that’s happened since. What will his legacy be?

“I want to be someone that’s true to myself, and someone that’s wholly original to the game.” He says that he’s been that person in spurts and that his goal is to intentionally chase that for the rest of time. “The beauty of making art and music is, ideally that’s what should live forever. That’s what gives me purpose. I think that’s what we’re all looking for. Mortality is in the back of all of our heads, and I found the thing that makes it bearable.”

I ask him, “Does that scare you? The thought of dying before you reach your full potential?”

“Oh yes. So much so, I don’t even want to talk about it.”

Jack Harlow is styled by Metta Conchetta.

Khari Nixon

TAGS:Jack Harlow

REVIEWS \

READ MORE »

$3,000$89,997$4,500

$62,000

Interested in other items?

Sell your gear, get featured here

NEWSNEW MUSICCULTUREFEATURESLISTSTHE ARCHIVESPRESSCONTACT US

A Next Management Partners brand. To contact us about advertising please email contact (at) spin.com

Privacy PolicyAbout Our AdsTerms Of Usehttps://web.archive.org/web/20210128093754/https://pbid.pro-market.net/engine?site=159245;size=1x1;e=0;dt=0;category=tx9f;kw=ki3c%20htzugv%3A%20wlj%20jtv32qy%20arui%20vw46q%20t1fjf;rnd=(1611843132330)

Sent from my iPhone

[swagcoolcat]

Hi! I don’t think I got to you yet either. What’s your favorite bmc song? Full rant and everything please >:)

OH MY GOSH YES HI!!!

Anon I’ve been hoping for this ask ever since I started seeing it go around, so I’m so excited, thank you.

I can’t choose one favorite, so I’m gonna share multiple and say what I like about them, with the rants as asked below the cut :)

Two Player Game: This song is really special to me for multiple reasons, the main one being it’s the first song from the musical I ever listened to. I heard this song by chance at a summer camp years ago (2016 or 2017) and then I tried to find it again and failed. Then, again, by chance, it autoplayed on my YouTube while I was listening to music doing homework in April of 2018, and I recognized it and listened to it until I knew the song. This is also my favorite for singing with other people and it’s so fun to sing along to.

A Guy That I’d Kinda Be Into: I’ve always been really attached to this song because it’s just so sweet and fun, I love it a lot. I love Christine and Jeremy’s chemistry- both platonic and romantic- and this song displays it so well, because already you can see Christine trusts Jeremy, enough that she’s telling him all about this. She likes him a lot, she likes being around him, and it’s so special. Also, this one is really satisfying to do karaoke of because I learned the timing for an audition, so I sing along to it a lot. Also also, Christine is just like me for real and she’s one of my dream roles, and I personally like this song more than ILPR.

Loser Geek Whatever: THIS SONG IS FUCKING EVERYTHING!!!!! Like the previous two there’s already the sing along value of it. But there’s also a point where I remember listening to this song for the first time. I remember downloading the single to my phone before the Broadway album was released. And man, this song Hit so right for me. Jeremy, in my opinion, definitely benefited this song. This is a big decision for him, going from Jeremy 1.0 to 2.0. It’s a big decision moving on from Michael. And Loser Geek Whatever is such a perfect song for that decision. We know everything going through Jeremy’s head, and it helps us, as the audience, to be more understanding of Jeremy’s choice to continue blocking out Michael. (If he even REALLY had a choice, but that’s getting off track.)

Halloween: I literally just think this song is fun. Specifically the Broadway version of the song, it gets me so pumped up every time I listen to it. I love the energy going into it, and it’s definitely up there for that reason. Plus, you gotta appreciate the choreo the actors learn in the stage version, it’s truly iconic.

Michael in the Bathroom: Full disclosure, Michael has always been my favorite character. It flips now between Michael and Christine, but even then, he’s up there. As I stated with Loser Geek Whatever, this song really benefits Michael as a character, because from what we as the audience have seen, it’s really out of character for him. Throughout the entire musical to this point, Michael is mostly a pretty upbeat and chill guy. We get times where he’s more anxious or insecure (“would you be too cool for… video games?”) and there’s other times where he’s kinda pissed off (“really? so you’re not the one who’s been avoiding me?”), but both of those examples are both quickly followed by his more chill attitude, and both feel different than this situation. Michael is angry in the bathroom scene, and then as soon as Jeremy leaves, he’s sad, and he’s trapped, and he’s scared. This is Michael’s darkest moment in the show (like a lot of characters tbh- Halloween was not a good time), and the fact that we as the audience get to see it? It’s really good for Michael’s character arc. Not to mention the song itself is SO FUN TO SING. This is a song where if I’m driving and I get distracted from singing along, I’ll start the song over so I can sing to all of it.

The Play: OOOOOOOUGH I LOVE THE CHAOS IN THIS ONE!!!! Seeing it on stage through bootlegs is so wonderful, I love how this song is staged, and it being the climax of the show. It s everything. But you don’t need the stage version for this song to be chaotic. I listen mostly to the Broadway version of bmc, and wow. They weren’t fucking around with this one. Jeremy gets to interact with nearly every cast member in this song, and every interaction is wild. In the Broadway version, we actually get to hear Jeremy and Michael’s fight, which in itself is everything to me. There’s the interaction with Chloe and Brooke (which is unsettling at best). There’s Christine!!! THERE’S “THAT’S NOT CHRISTINE AND I’M STRONGER THAN YOU THINK I AM” and then there’s screaming. So much screaming. The screaming in Two River is funnier in my opinion, it’s fucking hilarious, but the screaming is so good regardless, and the the SQUIP dying?????? Chefs kiss. I love the play.

[spiralesplatcast]

Rumor has it that a new radio station and TV show has been seen starting to broadcast onto the city's airwaves as of late, and as if to match, a brand new recording studio has popped up nearby the beach in the Golden Ward as well. The building itself is fairly small, but the otherwise admittedly plain-looking place is absolutely covered in a chaotic mess of blue, yellow and grey stickers and symbols strewn about with seemingly little rhyme or reason, giving it quite a bit of colorful flair. Large posters proclaiming that they are hiring can currently be seen strung across and hung on almost every available surface, with a few stray papers even scattered on the ground right in front of the doorway. Orange paper lanterns are hung by the short path up the walk, inviting people to come inside and check the place out! Not while they're actively live of course, but any other time is generally free game.

Overall, there's no mistaking it: the famed Anarchy Splatcast is here from Splatsville to hijack the airwaves once more, this time for everyone in Spirale to enjoy!

(autoplay warning)

ABOUT. || FORMS. || POSITIONS. || APPLY.

"Listen up! It's going down..."

"Nah, nope, never mind. It feels WAY too weird to be doing Shiver's lines for her, I'm just gonna ad-lib this."

Somewhere offscreen, an audible sigh could be heard from a member of the crew, but the lively show host paid it no mind as she continued, pumping a fist into the air with vigorous enthusiasm.

"Okay, SO! You're probably wondering where the heck I am right now, right? Good, 'cause I'm about to tell you! Welcome to the studio for the ANARCHY SPLATCAST! All of the chaos of Splatsville, now here in the Golden Ward for your convenience!"

"Our show covers all of the latest and GREATEST in both breaking news and the hottest music, so you're DEFINITELY gonna want to tune in. You can listen to us on the radio, or see us on TV, and you can probably watch on your phone or something like that too! Um... what else... oh, right! WE'RE HIRING! I'm kinda hosting this thing solo right now, but I promise, you DON'T want to miss out. Even if I guess 'us' really just means me and the camera crew for now. Well, that's about all I had, so..."

"Catch ya later!"

[thelampisaflashlight]

 Whenever I leave my music on autoplay, Planet Booty’s music will come on, but it’s always the existential songs lmao

Anyway, So So is on and I’m just sitting here like...

“I’ve been searching for a way to acceptance, I had my hands around the future, but it slipped right through...”

“Have you ever wanted something so so bad it made you so so sad, and, have you ever fought for something so so long, immediately goes so wrong, I cried in vain a thousand times a when reality and dreams couldn’t align-”

The overall tone of the song is just, “Are you depressed? Yes? Let’s just keep going, yeah.”