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incarnateirony · 5 years

Note

i think there’s a distinction that needs to be made. i think those with power over dabb & co are the ones who are exuding more habits of queerbaiting, while dabb and co aren’t. and because those execs are more or less invisible, the blame/fault is put on dabb as he’s the perceived figurehead of everything in the show when he’s not. anything he may want to put in the show can be easily vetoed by a higher exec so

Okay so I said I wouldn’t touch related issues facing wanky-side, but while this runs the line this is such a genuine, and valid thought process it feels worth addressing.

So in short: Yes. But no. But yes. But no. But we’ll see.

What do I mean by that? I’m going to put this behind a cut. But first of all I want to thank this Nonnie for at least trying to critically think about where the problems lead to. This is FAR BETTER CRITICAL THINKING than I see in this discussion most of the time and this. More like this. Nuance, discussion, idea trade, history. Let’s do it.

Okay, so.

How can it be yes no yes no maybe eenie meenie miney mo?

Because it really depends on what part of this 15 year legacy show we’re talking about.

What I’m about to say isn’t going to be popular, but I’ve said it before, I just can’t find the ancient ass post discussing it.

We’re going to rewind. Like, a fucking lot. A lot, a lot. This is going to be a history ride, and you’re probably going to wonder how it connects to the conversation at first, but bear with me.

Ignoring any personal frustrations I have with the casting of season 4 – frankly a chapter of this FUCKING show that haunts me somewhere in the ballpark of, “If my friend wasn’t dismissed as not white enough and got the role, would we have Misha, Destiel, any of this, would the show be on, would she have been chased off as the other actresses?” – and frankly these are the things people don’t even fucking *think* about.

TLDR a bajillion years ago CW made a casting call and we got this super cute character named Anna that Dean was slated to bend over in two seconds flat, as old canon used to be before modernly growing. The actress expressed discomfort, and frankly went over with the audience about as well as wet cardboard. And like, while I agree that a lot of women were hated for misogynistic reasons in this show, she really was about as interesting as a plank of plywood to me once she got past her first performance or two.

At the same time, this handsome bastard named Misha Collins auditioned for a bit role originally intended for 3 episodes and quickly extended to 6. But, identified as lightning in a bottle and with on-fire chemistry, while Anna waffled for *several* reasons, summarily, their story ends swapped. That’s… not like *exactly* what happened but it’s *basically* what happened. Anna became the herald and contagonist instead of Cas, and Cas quite frankly took on the role of the goddess.

With Lisa already entered before Anna, there’s no evidence whatsoever she was intended as endgame. Story flip. Thank you for everything last night on earth fall by angel banishing almost like this was foreshadowed woohoo! But… don’t lend towards a relationship. No point. Given, they made a few jokes on set at that point, but it wasn’t really an idea *they thought anyone took seriously*.

Coming from a phase where most of the leads were introduced to “slash fandom” by Wincest, which they literally used to torture and prank each other, the idea of this being anything serious really wasn’t on their radar. The one I remember most was Misha choosing to sit on Dean’s side of the bed as Cas in the famous “What were you dreaming about?” and Sgriccia being like “that’s kinda gay” “nah keep it”

I mean, is that… queerbait at that point? I don’t think it’s fair to really call it that. They respectfully tried to scrub out the leading romantic edges from what would have been Anna’s story, but ultimately, the human psyche kind of recognizes 8000 years of storytelling history subconsciously when using the Hero’s Journey narrative, so it was resonant. Nobody was crazy for seeing it. That didn’t mean it was right, that didn’t mean it’s what they were consciously leading anyone for.

Hell, Jensen didn’t even know what the fuck Destiel WAS until season 7 (”Deathstiel?”) due to the way cons, circuits, and fansites kept the conversation force-muted at that point. Anything they had floated somewhere in the area of “hah that is kinda gay I guess”, and even that there’s no evidence of being frequent.

Kripke left, the show petered, social media was new, and summarily, Sera Gamble was a dumbass and listened to the wrong crowd that seemed super big back when big accounts were a whole 10K followers and you had 50 asshats screaming as a coordinated group about Ruining The Show™. Ratings tanked, somewhere between Misha being fired and the show turning into a parody of itself with dick jokes that made it seem like Gamble was trying to target 11 year old boys for her audience, and like, that’s it, that was the season.

Until that nosedive spiral essentially turned into a shorthand apology reversal, a panicked and roughly written script that was *SO GAY* that *EVEN MISHA FUCKING COLLINS* couldn’t seriously choke out the dialogue. It was cheap, it was out of character, and as Jensen put it, the dialogue might as well have had him petting and sobbing into Castiel’s coat while essentially being like I SLEEP WITH YOUR COAT EVERY NIGHT TO REMEMBER YOUR SCENT UWU and shit that just LITERALLY vaulted from alien fascinated staring into desperate teenage gay drama in the body of a 30 year old man.

So yeah. Did I consider it reasonable to change that? Fuck yes I did.

Was what Sera Gamble did queerbait? Yes, actually. And she did it again in the Magicians. You see, Gamble had fucked over an audience, and then tried to exploit that audience in reverse when she realized she fucked over the *wrong* audience, but had zero intent of fulfillment.

And then magically, Sera Gamble didn’t fucking work there anymore after a whole like, year and a half as showrunner.

Now, at the same time, Dawn Ostroff was leaving the CW. Jensen’s had some pretty fierce words about Dawn Ostroff not understanding the show and how to manage it, but whatever. Bye, Dawn. Hello… MARK FUCKING PEDOWITZ. But at the same time, WELCOME BACK CARVER and most of all HOWDY DO NETFLIX, so nice to make a guaranteed deal with you (that ended as of this year due to a CBS merchandising meltdown).

When Carver came back, he said a lot of things. He… very tactfully called Gamble’s era trash by phasing it like “:) Watching the show :) since I left :) I realized :) a lot of our mythology :) has been difficult to follow :) so I went :) back to basics :) please help”, and others, like mentioning he had a three year plan on his desk. So 3. Season 8, 9, 10. He had notes for his S10 finale in mind and everything! Great stuff.

Now the fandom, at this point, generally didn’t pay attention to the network or production. In fact, the actor worship around here is some other kind of wild and I don’t know how after 15 years people haven’t figured out that it isn’t how to go about paying attention. Either way – plot switches, showrunner switches, author switches, and NETWORK LEADERSHIP SWITCHES.

Now, this little part here is speculation – but I am 99% sure that when Carver was pulling SPN out of the cancellation toilet, he had bigger things to inform the new execs about than “btw I might make it gay.” Like “Hey, since CW just got its netflix deal, if you give us another year we can import fresh demographic while bringing back Collins’ old fanbase by setting him back as a regular.” SURE, SOUND GREAT, MAKE MONEY, THX.

Cool. Cool. Make sense so far, you still with me?

Because at this point, S8 into early S9, fandom had gotten itself into all kinds of a stir. It was about to go canon, rite nao, said a bunch of bloggers, who at that point WERE pretty much chasing wallpapers and Tshirts and making the most bizarre uncorroborated parallel interpretations like “IF U PARALLEL IT TO MOBY DICK-” WHAT WHY WHERE– ??? BUT cAS = fISH

Okay, my fucking annoyance at what counted as lit crit in those days aside, we’ll get back on track. Everybody started vibrating for this shit because, you know what, S8 did resonate pretty strong, almost like authors were toying with ideas. I’m not gonna get into stuff about Robbie, I THINK fandom knows the statements he’s made and I don’t just mean the whole Destiel being canon tweet both antis and bitters descended on him to eviscerate him about. About what? Calling it queerbait!

So here we go, the great advent. About a year after a dramatic network shift, a CW exec was like :))))))))) I’D LIKE TO LEARN ABOUT THIS FANDOM THAT IS SUDDENLY MAKING ME MONEY!! WHAT SHOULD I DO??? TO TWITTER! HASHTAG TALK TO THEM!

[logs in]

Beep boop. “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” “Destiel?” the FUCK is a Destiel? Wait what no I don’t know what you’re talking about representation isn’t our intention with these characters. “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT” “QUEERBAIT”

And then the network exec got so slammed he deleted twitter entirely and everybody popped confetti and felt accomplished and did NOT realize how fucking BAD that was. And frankly, anyone that did kinda didn’t want to admit it, because taking responsibility for that tire fire was… not… attractive. In fact, several folks are still around to this day, bitter blogging or making weirdass meta or accusing other people of wallpapers and Tshirts because that’s what they did so *YAY, PROJECTION!*

My own frustrated bitterness aside, I’m going to place some questions down, and not so much answer them as, now that the reader has really taken history in, let them decide:

At this point… is this queerbait?

Because this is when the queerbait yelling began. It’s when every fan with even a moderate platform or site blasted it out there.

It’s when the fandom made DeanCas a big problem.

And it’s also literally the same time Carver left his very first recorded, known direction with a romantic tilt, “The note I got from Jeremy Carver was to play it like a jilted lover, so that’s what we played there,” on LGBT author Bobo berens’ very first episode. Everyone runs circles around that modernly, or goes “SEE??? QUEERBAIT!” without realizing what the FUCK just happened here.

So, SPN went from cancel rating line to their most successful show between 7 and 9. Suddenly corporate sees their successful product *ON FUCKING FIRE* so do you know what happens?

Fuck it this IS one line I’ll break: Corporate panicked. They changed their press packets. If you noticed a bunch of media-adjacent people and their friends suddenly get bitter as FUCK in season 10 after still surviving the S9 mess, here’s fucking why. Because now that everybody spent the last YEAR trying to burn down the product yelling about shit that corporate had been literally blindsided by, they added temporarily a new section to the packet that included sexuality. They were, at that moment, suddenly listed collectively as heterosexual men. SEE, WE AREN’T QUEERBAITING IF WE TELL YOU THEY’RE STRAIGHT *will smith pose*

Congrats fandom, you have now officially made Destiel A Huge Problem™ to the corporate behemoth behind the shiny pictures. The iron curtain dropped. This is what you could call “Protect the Product Mode” if you will.

Now again, at this point: Is it queerbait?

Because at this point, S9-10 was rolling out. We all know it, Cain, Collette, *gestures off into infinity* But let’s fall back to Carver’s statement. 3 years. 8, 9, 10. You know what else happened season 10?

A bunch of shit, including shit Carver *wrote himself for the season 10 finale* got filmed, then cut. Coincidentally, it was all very gay shit. Things that pulled forward the Crowley/Abaddon Cas/Colette Sam/Abel parallels, arguing over who was who’s boyfriend, Rowena mentioning about them both being shattered at the Altar of Winchester (15.3 is calling), the secret admirer dream, I could go on. I mean, this shit literally would have shifted the entire storytelling arc to full-frontal taking that parallel and addressing it right up in your face. First you’ll kill your mistress but you’ll get it done, and then you’ll kill your wife. He’s your boyfriend no he’s YOUR boyfriend. You’ve BOTH been shattered at the Altar of Winchester. Really, this is what you dream about? Your secret admirer Cas?

K? K. K?

Is it queerbait for Carver to have entered with a plan? Is it queerbait for Carver to have been interrupted on that plan despite attempting to pursue it? And is it queerbait for the network to still lock down on that plan so close after the event?

You see why this conversation gets increasingly complex.

S11 rolled around, Carver was half in half out, Dabb was stepping in, big gay heart songs, take what you will out of that entire mess, and by S12 Dabb entirely took over and we started entering the era we are in today.

So let’s address where we’re at today.

Now :) I can’t say anything for sure :) because anybody that’s been to or worked on marketing stuff definitely has an NDA :) but let’s play for a minute. Let’s say with the stone wall up, a set of creators still wanted to actually *go somewhere* with this story.

“But!” remembered the network, “Remember the tire fire?! And all the people that hated the gay?! What about our profit?!”

“No,” a creator might say, “Tides have changed.”

“We’ll see,” a network might say, “Take it to market testing.” At which point, one would enter a few years of polling how the general audience reacts to this.

Now, if they were seeing promising numbers, they might be given a bit of rope. Why, let’s … just pretend. Totally. Totally pretending. That Dabb pitched this idea to take up Carver’s mantle. Let’s say that started S12ish when he took over. Let’s say they ran through hiatus. And then… authors might be given a little bit of a line. “Looks good, but we’re not sure,” said a network quite fond of its split conservative/liberal demographic, “Try it out a bit and see how it goes.”

And so an author room that would be full of LGBT creators fed out good faith groundwork. They might even be like YALL ITS NEVER TOO LAAAAAATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN and just throw their whole boy howdy cowboy into that shit and get great ratings.

What if even if the results came back positive leaning, the network ho’ed and hummed and stayed noncommital? Might the creators scale it back while still writing it lowkey just in case they got flashed a greenlight? I know I sure would, woudn’t you?! Or I guess would you prefer we drop the whole thing cold and stop writing anything vaguely in the direction?

Difficult question, in reality, isn’t it?

So in this TOTALLY HYPOTHETICAL SITUATION, this leaves the authors holding the bag, waiting for a sign, and being held with limitations. And just in case anybody thinks “BUT AUTHORS CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT!! AND!! OTHER SHOWS!!!”

K have we come down to reality yet? So, sure kids, try the gay, we’re interested, but you can’t like, go Full Gay Frontal with it. You gotta imply the gay. Wouldn’t want to offend conservative america! Besides! We’re totally exploiting marketing making this LGBT content for you over here! *jingles a carrot on a stick* LOOK AT HOW MUCH WE’RE FLEECING ADVERTISING PROMOTING ALL THIS GAY STUFF FOR YOU AREN’T THE RAINBOWS GREAT?

Some creator of limited LGBT content: How’s the marketing looking?

Some network: EH! We’ll see!

Some creator of limited LGBT content: K guys we’ll scale it back to not upset them but don’t drop it.maybe we can have them hold hands at the end or if we’re lucky maybe they’ll say we can do the whole thing

Some LGBT creators: K

Making sense still? STILL WITH ME?

So at this point… is this queerbait, or is this business?

Put aside the emotional reaction. Realize this really only hit scale in S9, hit front line S10, and hit potential corporate discussion in this TOTALLY theoretic universe around S11-12. We’re talking 3-4 years. Not 10. And we’re talking only a few of it really being tested.

So again I ask, history minded: Is this queerbait, or is this business?

That’s where the nuance and complication comes in, and let it be said I am in no way defending the CW. I fucking hate the network. They have literally personally screwed over real friends of mine and I hope they choke on a whole bag of dicks with their bullshit, but honestly, the shit I have seen and heard would make people stick their heads in the sand like scared and ashamed ostriches for every time they trumpet “BUT OTHER SHOWS” – you don’t know what’s going on in those shows. You don’t know how they’re getting hardballed on budget decisions, you don’t know what that show’s marketed demographic is about, you don’t know what they demand cast how, you literally don’t have a fucking idea unless you’re up in that disaster zone.

And even IF you’re in that disaster zone, unless you’re truly in the upper echelon, you only know so much.

Now let’s pretend, again, totally metaphorically, and absolutely not inspired by a real person at all, that someone worked with the crew for a while and, because they saw support inside creeping upward siiiiince mmmm gosh we’ll say season 12 since that’s our advent and totally not when anybody specific started working there and telling fandom ladder fans what they thought they saw going on, only to get sad and bitter and angry and eventually leave, and all those friends, still abiding old bitterness from S9~, now get angrier because of somebody else’s burnout on their ITK level and perspective, even if that was *probably* aggravated by other work stress conditions as well, but hey! WHO KNOWS!?!?! :)))) What a weird hypothetical though and I’m getting weirdly super specific on it aren’t I so LET’S MOVE ON.

We’re in S12-13 discussion category now.

So my question is, from this perspective… when do you call queerbait? When not swept up in misguided hysteria… at what point do you say “Yeah, you know what, yup, that’s all queerbait”?

So we’re gonna take a bit of a break here for a second and really process all of that hypothetical world, where a creator pitched going for it, and got it put into market testing, and was given enough rope to hang themselves on if the network changed its mind.

After only a few years of conscious thought on it… do you even think the network is truly consciously misguiding specifically those fans, or do they see it as giving the fans something they want while testing the idea of possibly truly giving it to them?

Because here’s what fandom misses – the corporate perspective. And again, I’m utterly not fucking justifying the CW as a whole, but people look at this from the angle of fans, and then argue what they think is representative dialogue from the angle of fans, often while missing all of this history. All that history up till S9? That’s all very real. But looking at history in perspective… who are you going to blame for that? Is it fair to hold S4-9 to that five year stretch of queerbait when that was… pretty much fandom manufactured from blissful ignorance to begin with? I mean if you want to go yell at Sera Gamble Specifically okay (please don’t) but beyond that like– that shit? Is that anybody’s fault? Do you blame a company for actually shutting DOWN the talk of it on a press angle? Can we call that and S10 queerbait then? Was Carver’s attempt at writing through it queerbait? Was trying to continue the story in S11 after theoretic shutdown queerbait? These are all genuine questions that are not asked enough. Most people don’t even realize they need to be asked.

So back to Totally Theoretic Land, where S12ish market testing would have been going on to see if people really thought it was Gay N Shit. Like a lot of people in an overwhelming majority after the amount of apprehension the straight old dude running the network has ever since the goddamn tornado of horse shit that happened like a year after he took over. Probably not the fondest fucking memory for him either. Probably also why he dismissively called most of that demographic “casual fans”, because in Smug White Guy Brain, “tru” fans would have all known, I guess, exactly the shit I’m telling you in history backtrack so, look at the silly girls wanting the gay shit :) Ahhhh girlllllls

Okay so, my impression of douchebags aside, let’s give it 12-13 hiatus to give the first test rope lead and 13-14 hiatus for the next, only to have at best noncommital and uncertain numbers and authors, theoretically, cautiously pulling back while writing it as generally established and implicit, as if it might, I don’t know, go from BIG GAY DRAMA to DEADASS DOMESTIC all of a sudden despite ITS NEVER TOO LATE TO START ALL OVER AGAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN cuz get it, they started over, after he came in his room and played him. *elbows* You all get it right?

K. So maybe numbers changed. Maybe they don’t. Maybe I’m not comfortable talking in this hypothetical, maybe I don’t have access to this hypothetical AU’s current marketing data as of this year, I just don’t know! We don’t know where those cards fell.

But if, at this point, after 2-3 years of market testing, and leading authors on, and giving them enough rope to hang themselves with to get themselves accused of queerbait just for trying to lay good faith groundwork for a cohesive narrative, because fans don’t care that 2 open closet LGBT authors are on deck or that there’s totally theoretically probably and in no way fingering anyone at least one closeted author on deck, or at least publicly so, their coworkers would probably know. But I mean. That’s just. :) statistics. Right?

K whatever moving on. If at this point they’ve been boggley bounced around… you know, I gotta say. At this point… I might actually call queerbait if the network stonewalls it. At this point, they’ve had a few years to really get their shit together, and if they’ve just used it to play yo yo with LGBT creators trying to make content then yeah, go suck a whole bag of dicks.

The problem being with the lack of nuance in this conversation, you’re right, Dabb and co would catch it rather than the guilty party, which is why I HATE faux activism culture. If you’re going to be an activist pay the fuck attention to what you’re being an activist in, don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you just because it was a PBJ and not filet mignon, go after the bastard 1%’er that’s eating all the goddamn filet mignon. But nobody will. It never works like that. And then everybody wonders why this continues – be it in this show, or on other networks.

But hey. Maybe this theoretic network got enough material to change their mind. Maybe another executive got promoted that might help one of the other creators argue it to corporate with their new shiny title. Maybe they can convince someone. Convince them of what and to what level, who knows. Maybe just continue telling the established story, give them a divorce, mention marriage, divorce, dead wives, breakups every 0.2 seconds while they go through a classically framed dark point in the romance everybody with brains and eyes understands because, again, historic storytelling we literally all recognize, but pretend we don’t when stomping about personal representation lines? Or hey! Maybe it’ll go further. (Don’t hold your breath.) Throw in some other shit that even a straight guy would look at and be like “two dicks one chick that shit’s gay bro” because WE LITERALLY ALL FUCKING KNOW WHAT IT MEANS EVEN IF IT’S IMPLIED BECAUSE THE NETWORK IS A BUNCH OF PUSSIES.

…*stops, breathes*

If you can’t tell this is a very long term topic of frustration to me, because nobody, absolutely nobody, wants to introspect and think, you know, maybe it wasn’t queerbait back then, maybe we SHOULDN’T have set a corporate exec on fire about it, that might have been fucking bad.

There are other ways to be an activist than to scream queerbait into the void at whoever is unfortunate enough to cross your paths. One of the best examples I can remember is Exorcising Emily collecting demographics on fandom, and testimonials from LGBT fans about resonating with the content – no fanfic, no fanart, no attacks – and sent copies of this to several powerful creative names.

Now… if with this history… if, from season 9 to 12… one of those names became a creator. If, by some FLUKE of imagination… he still had that book around… and even gave it to his freshly joined new employees like 2 weeks after they started working there–

oh wait and i oop

The mentions would be much as you expect, antis screaming and demanding her job (QUICK, somebody tell Andrew Dabb that she’s READING ANDREW DABB’S OWN BOOKS THAT HE CHOSE TO KEEP AROUND FOR THREE YEARS).

Has Dabb’s era seemed… more plugged in? More resonant? Better and stronger in its storytelling? More hooked into fandom?

See, that’s what well thought activism can do. Well thought activism can structure an entire movement. Poorly thought rioting thinking itself as activism can cause the literal opposite effect of what it wanted. That is how these things contrast each other. And that is something fandom needs to DEEPLY consider.

…but is it queerbait for him to try to continue the story? Even if, say, we drop the marketing talk, because TOTALLY nobody can ACTUALLY know because AGAIN anyone that DOES would have an NDA so we DEFINITELY can’t say anybody knows anything for sure, because anyone that said jack shit would probably get sued so hard their descendents down in whatever homo superior evolution 1000 years into the future would feel it, so you know. We’ll put aside this totes theoretical shit and ask

…If he just was told no– would you prefer to just drop the storyline entirely at this point?

Again. Genuine question. And difficult. And something poorly thought queerbait screaming can actually cause, too.

So here we are in the land of the final season. Whether you consider it network queerbait or not – again, they can choke on the whole bag of dicks at a network level for all I care for ANY number of reasons, even well beyond the domain of Supernatural, and may all their bacon burn from here into the next life – it’s a lot more complicated than fandom has ever let it on to be, because letting it on to be what it really is, in full perspective, also demands a lot of introspection and acceptance, and we all know nobody in this fandom can ever make a mistake ever and they’re all fucking perfect darlings.

It’s a complicated answer to a simple idea… and unfortunately I don’t think this fandom will ever really sit here. They’ll yell “VICTIM BLAMING” because it’s buzzy, they’ll yell “HIDING YOUR GAYS” which I mean, yeah, but let’s talk about what led us here. They’ll yell a lot of things. But they will rarely quietly think, and study, and hone down to what’s going on in the world out there beyond what they have, at this point, become obsessively hotlocked on.

Supernatural, as of 15.7, has already taken several steps further than it ever is before. No, that’s not a signal of me saying [Your Personal Goalpost] is going to happen. But it’s a sign that if they have a line, they’re testing it with every strength they have.

Going back onto the Fateful Advent: Cain. The mentor– who was never going to stop; I can’t stop samuel; he was never going to stop; I will never stop; Rowena, the mentor, never going to stop, shattered, at the altar of Winchester. Long ago, when Cas was human, Dean sealed him away, and now, he’s doing the same to him. So Shirt Of Bad Decisions Deanmon basically karaokes with his friend like the Crowley days, REPEATING the Crowley dialogue but infinitely harder to dodge, as if some sort of calculated method of cat’s cradle of How To Write The Gay was discussed. Man, whoever wrote that kind of shit would probably even publicly thank whatever big gay mastermind helped them map out THAT level of stuff. Wouldn’t it be funny if most of that shit had been written by a gay dude that’s still around and it’s still popping back up in the show louder and harder to dodge than before? That’d be fuckin’ wild, man. Oh, fucking WAIT.

And this is why I hate the way shipping culture thinks it’s doing activism. Most of the time it’s cosplaying as an activist and at this point it’s become more of a furry convention than it has any kind of organized rights movement. Nobody’s out here fighting for the rights of these LGBT authors this year, nobody’s helping them get a voice, and in fact, often scream at them or bury what voice they’ve had as not enough.

And I want to fix it.

Desperately.

And frankly, I don’t know how anymore.

But what we’re not talking about is some 3-5 year show that came in early and started intentionally fucking at you. We’re looking at happy coincidences, so let’s check with our gay king, the father of Wayward that everybody coincidentally accepted as canon with far less because of a (meaningful) third party line DeanCas had elsewhere but hey it didn’t have antis so suddenly it counts; let’s check with him about that.

That’s my king. That’s my king that wrote the first recorded episode to be intentionally directed as jilted lovers. My king that gav eus Colette. My king that gave us the mixtape. My king that gave us the PR framed breakup. My king that gave us Cas leaving Dean. That’s my King. That’s my gay king who has been fighting his ass off, only to be hung out to dry by a fandom that doesn’t even care to look where or how to scream, or maybe consider that perhaps screaming isn’t the option.

Is he yours yet? Have I broken through to a single soul on this?

That’s my king who wrote about the necessary evils in 2003, before the youngest in this fandom were born and while many were still in diapers or kindergarten; about the unfortunate necessary evils that he loathes and acknowledges about moderate queer content gaining exponential amounts of platform compared to whatever is considered hardline aggressive at the time, about how that incrementalization is what helped our media landscape evolve to this day.

And he isn’t wrong.

And he’s getting roasted for doing just that.

And I really wish I could just psychically make everyone fucking stop.

But I will say one thing.

“It’s network queerbait!” I mean

Yeah

That

Because… realistically? like 99% of modern queer content is queerbait, even stuff with canon queer content.

ESPECIALLY on the CW.

If you’ve noticed CW panicking the last year and trying to slap rainbows and DARE TO DEFY on everything, it’s because their entire fucking ecosystem just got fucked over by CBS wanting 100% merchandising profit like it already took 100% digital profit and Netflix was basically like “miss us with your bullshit” and broke the CW contract which was *HOW PEDOWITZ BANKROLLED MOST OF HIS NETWORK*. Now? Now CW has to carve a niche. So LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKING PRIDE COLORS ON– OUR– STRAIGHT–CHARACTERS??? BUT WE HAVE GAY ONES LIKE LEGENDS OF TOMORROW AND *flips notes* THAT SIDE CHARACTER LESBIAN ON SPN.

*gets a whisper* What they killed her? Shit. Maybe bring her back. AND THERE’S THIS PERSON OVER ON JANE THE VIRGIN oh that just got cancelled uhhh VAMPIRE DI-wait fuck. Well we’ll just make one of the chicks in this shitty charmed reboot CBS just forced down our throat and killed Wayward over, that’ll fix it *jazz hands*

TV is a business. Businesses make money. The entire LGBT battle is basically us industriously proving we can make money. It’s about rights and visibility on our end, but on their end it is *always* about money and I really don’t think anybody really groks what that really means.

So “it’s the network! Queerbait!”

…yeahhhhh.

…welcome to working in television. Now you just have to sit and think about how many other times this has completely missed your radar.

The network will never get a shit about you, they give a shit about your money, and that’s just the reality of capitalist america whether we like it or not. When it’s 2143 and bernie sanders’ floating head in a jar is president and andrew yang’s base income shit is in effect and we’re all a socialist country and the world has figured out how to run high cost businesses like TV on the power of unicorn farts, they might actually give a shit. But they don’t. There may be a few advocates WITHIN the company that do, but as a whole body, the network will never give a shit. They don’t care if you’re black, white, straight, gay, disabled, male, female, beyond what, explicitly, that totals to in dollar signs depending how they feed you, when and where.

So it’s not like... *just* a queer rights issue, it’s an “Anything Trump’s America may consider offensive on their television” issue. It’s businesses weighing who they think pays their bills while making it and beyond that who they think is the safest investment to make the most money.

As a side note: Personally, I’d consider it dumb as fuck to not do it. SPN will taper within a few years down to just trekkie-esque addicts unless they find a way to get a new burst of viewership and boy howdie do I hope so, but how much Pedowitz overvalues the conservative US demographic, or certain international markets, I don’t know. I’m not in his head and I don’t have this year’s marketing numbers beyond basic live, +3 and +7 ratings, and digital calls. And just general nielsen released demo. But how he’s added that all up? Can’t say. And I sure ain’t gonna bank on him not being a dumbass, when he’s famous for it, so don’t go get your hopes up either.

#supernatural #representation #queerbait #intersectionality #business #corporate #marketing

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hollyoaksloversx · 3 years

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#BriennaBreakUp

Rounding up a week in Hollyoaks (1st-5th February 2020)

Sienna found herself in another fine mess this week as her affair with Warren was revealed in a very public fashion (well, as public as you can get within the current Covid restrictions). The drama kicked off as Summer told Warren and Sienna that she’d posted a photo of the pair kissing through Brody’s letterbox, however, she was made to feel bad when they explained it away. Sienna was able to retrieve the envelope before Brody opened it, and everyone headed to The Hutch for the engagement party. However, after Grace and Warren pointed out that Brody deserved to know the truth, the photo was shared online under as hashtag created by Brody and Sienna to enable their friends to post photos from the party. One by one, Brody, Liberty and Damon saw the photo and a devastated Brody demanded to know if Sienna had been having an affair with Warren...

Although Sienna initially begged for Brody to hear her out, she eventually admitted the truth, leading to Brody walking out on her, and Liberty and Damon also turning against her. Not one of take no for an answer, Sienna went to see Brody, but on her way, bumped into Warren and discovered that he’d been the one to share the photo. When Sienna eventually caught up with Brody, he insisted that the pair had no future together, and cruelly told her that he hated the shirt she’d bought for him to wear at the party. Despite this, Sienna vowed to wait in the village for Brody until he was ready to give her a second chance. Might get a bit chilly, Sienna...

Sienna’s hopes of a reunion with Brody soon hit a Summer shaped bump in the road, when she spotted the newcomer wearing Brody’s shirt. Summer allowed Sienna to believe that she and Brody had slept together when actually, for once, the truth was far innocent, and Summer was later seen giving the shirt back to Brody and thanking him for lending it to her. Sienna was devastated and decided to go “off-grid”, so that nobody could continue to rub salt into her wounds. Unfortunately, Brody decided at precise that moment that maybe Sienna deserved another chance after-all, and sent her a message asking to meet. However, Sienna did not get the message, and when she failed to turn up, Brody headed to The Loveboat with Summer. Deciding she’d put Brody through enough, Sienna told him that she accepted that their relationship was over.

Meanwhile, there was more trouble for George and John Paul this week when, following the return of Dean, John Paul left a drunken voicemail for George, lying to him that he was with James and that Dean was welcome to him. The following day, George confronted John Paul over the message, and accused him of being insecure before reminding him that he was the one he wanted to be with. Later, John Paul was preparing for a meeting to discuss Juliet’s education whilst on remand, but he assured George that it was only Marnie he was meeting and that James would not be present. However, George accused John Paul of lying to him when he later spotted him and James talking outside The Dog. In order to get ‘revenge’, George went to see Dean and seduced him, all the while allowing John Paul to listen in via his phone. Although initially upset, John Paul decided to give George another chance when Courtney told him that she regretted all of the time that she and Jesse had wasted, and George and John Paul agreed to put their exes behind them.

Courtney was soon left regretting her decision to push George and John Paul back together when she overheard Dean talking about the abuse he’d suffered at George’s hands. Courtney tried to warn John Paul, but George walked in on the tail end of the conversation and quickly worked out what was being said. Back at The Dog, George lied that Dean had abused him, which prompted John Paul to open up about his rape at the hands of Finn. However, although George was initially sympathetic, he quickly turned on John Paul and accused him of making everyone all about him...

In other news this week, under orders from Victor, a devastated Sid was forced to beat Ollie up when he failed to pay for the drugs he’d taken, whilst George succeeded in getting Seth to leave the village minus Theresa and the money they’d blackmailed. Jack worried that Nancy was taking on too much as she prepared to return to work and finally, Cleo discovered that Dr Ley was keeping Toby at The Loft...

This Week’s Cast:

Brody, Celeste, Cher, Cindy, Cleo, Courtney, Damon, Felix, George, Goldie, Grace, Jack, James, John Paul, Liberty, Luke, Marnie, Mercedes, Nana McQueen, Nancy, Oliver, Peri, Sally, Seth, Sid, Sienna, Ste, Summer, Theresa, Toby, Victor, Walter and Warren.

Blasts From The Past:

Silas Blissett, Mitchell Deveraux, Jesse Donovan, Kyle Kelly, Lisa Loveday, Finn O’Connor.

#Hollyoaks #Highlight #Sienna Blake #Brody Hudson #Summer Ranger #Warren Fox #Liberty Savage #Damon Kinsella #George Kiss #John Paul McQueen #Courtney Campbell #Sid Sumner #Nancy Osborne #Jack Osborne #Cleo McQueen #Toby Faroe

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

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New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, lead author of the Times ’s “1619 Project,” was paid $25,000 for an online Zoom lecture given to the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication.

Through a Freedom of Information request, the right-wing news outlet Campus Reform obtained documentation detailing Hannah-Jones’s terms of compensation for the February 19 lecture. Additionally, the documents revealed that Hannah-Jones was partnered with the Lavin Agency, a talent agency that is “the world’s largest intellectual talent agency, representing leading thinkers for speaking engagements personal appearances, consulting, and endorsements,” according to its website. Hannah-Jones’s relationship with the agency suggests she regularly schedules events and is paid for them.

Part of the agreement between Hannah-Jones and the University of Oregon dictated that the lecture, titled “1619 and the Legacy That Built a Nation,” could not be recorded and redistributed. However, a promotional flyer advertised a discussion on “the lasting legacy of Black enslavement on the nation—specifically, how Black Americans pushed for the democracy we have today.”

News of the lecture came days after Hulu announced that it partnered with production studio Lionsgate and billionaire Oprah Winfrey to create a docuseries based on the 1619 Project. In a statement, Hulu said the project was a “landmark undertaking…of the brutal racism that endures in so many aspects of American life today.”

When the 1619 Project was initially released in October 2019, Hannah-Jones’s lead essay declared that race was the primary division in society and black people were the sole progressive force in US history. She denounced the country’s revolutionary founding in 1776 and claimed that the United States truly began when the first African slaves were sold to English colonists in 1619. Racism, she said, “runs in the very DNA of this country.”

Soon after the project’s launch, the Times had turned 1619 into a marketable brand, and schools planned to adopt its lead arguments in their curriculums. The World Socialist Web Site intervened against the 1619 Project and exposed its reactionary politics and predication in historical falsification. However, the project remains a profitable venture for Hannah-Jones and the Times .

Hannah Jones argues that the overriding social category in the world is race. But being paid $25,000 for a lecture she did not even physically attend is a “privilege” that separates her from the majority of African Americans in the United States, who are overwhelmingly members of the working class. What Hannah-Jones can make in one lecture is almost the same as a worker making $15 an hour takes home in a year after taxes.

In a related development, Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLM) co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors purchased four high-end properties in the US worth $3.2 million, according to a recent report in the New York Post. She was also seen with her spouse in the Bahamas, viewing property at an exclusive resort where celebrities such as Tiger Woods and Justin Timberlake own homes.

In 2016, Cullors married Janaya Khan, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Toronto, and purchased a $510,000 home in a Los Angeles suburb. Two years later, Cullors purchased a four-bedroom home for $590,000 in southern Los Angeles. Last year, Cullors and her spouse acquired a “custom ranch” in Georgia featuring a private hangar and community runway for small airplanes.

In January, the pair got their hands on a $1.4 million homestead a short drive from Malibu, one of the most affluent communities in the US. The property was advertised as featuring bamboo floors and “soaring ceilings, skylights and plenty of windows” with canyon views. The 2,400-square-foot property includes a three-bedroom and two-bath main house and a separate one-bed/one-bath apartment for long-term guests.

Just three weeks ago, Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson, respective mothers of Tamir Rice and Richard Rishner, accused Cullors of profiting from the deaths of their children and other black people murdered by police. The pair criticized BLM for raising over $90 million in 2020 but doing little to help families impacted by police violence.

Khan and Cullors created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in 2013 after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin. Since then, BLM has promoted racialist politics and raised substantial sums of money from large corporations like Google, Amazon, and Facebook. After BLM’s 2020 financial report was released, Cullors was accused of misappropriating funds by grassroots members of her organization.

In response to the allegations, she claimed that there were misunderstandings about BLM’s finances and that the organization was “scraping for money” in the past few years. If BLM truly was low on funds, Cullors purchasing luxury properties certainly did not help.

The wealth and privilege of the leading proponents of racialism demonstrate the reactionary character of identity politics. It is entirely divorced from the real concerns and experiences of the working class. Fearful of a unified workers’ movement, the ruling class seeks to sow artificial racial divisions among workers through the promotion of identity politics. Additionally, middle class layers seeking a bigger slice of the pie see identity as a means of advancing their own wealth and social position.

The American ruling class is terrified of the growth of a working-class movement. The fight against police violence, racism, and poverty can only be waged through the building of a socialist movement, independent of the capitalist parties, that unifies workers on their common class interests.

#wsws #1619 project #BLM #black lives matter global network foundation #tamir rice #richard rishner #patrice khan-cullors #nikole hannah-jones #identity politics #privilege politics #class war #class warefare

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bunkershotgolf · 4 years

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Virtual Women’s Golf Day Unites The Industry for a Day of Entertainment, Celebration and Fundraising

On June 2nd, Women’s Golf Day will bring together some of the leading names in golf in a virtual celebration of the game, whilst raising essential funds for the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the live event- date for Women’s Golf Day was postponed to September 1st the team remains committed to Empower, Engage and Support the industry and golfers around the globe by hosting a WGD Digital Celebration on June 2nd.

On June 2nd, the womensgolfday.com website will engage golfers with exclusive videos by some of the most recognisable women and men from the world of golf, interviews, tips and insights across the 24hr period. Throughout the day there will also be an online auction that will feature ‘money can’t buy’ experiences donated by the biggest names in the game, including ClubCorp, Troon and more. All proceeds from the online auction will be donated to Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF teams are responding to COVID-19 on multiple fronts caring for patients, offering health education and mental health support, and providing training for vital infection control measures in health facilities around the world. Items are being collected for the WGD / MSF auction through May 12th. Celebrities and companies are encouraged to contact Elisa Gaudet for further information. Elisa Gaudet, Founder of Women’s Golf Day is determined that this ‘Virtual’ Women’s Golf Day will shine a light on the game, and bring some much-needed hope for the future “We are united, resolute and want to look back and take pride in how we responded to this challenge. Every person in each of the more than 50 countries which host an event on WGD faces their own unique set of circumstances, but all share a love of golf. We want to share the joy it brings by celebrating our amazing partners, bringing you videos and interviews with leading names all whilst raising money for MSF.” While the Virtual Women’s Golf Day will have its home at womensgolfday.com, there will be many other ways for golfers around the world to get involved in the celebration. Last year on social media over 25 million people were viewing WGD content hence this year the WGD team are encouraging people to share their love of the game by flooding channels with images of golfers wearing WGD red and white using #WGDUnites and @womensgolfday. There is also the chance to join the likes of Annika, Sky Sports’ Sarah Stirk, Lisa Longball as well as The Golf Channel’s Lauren Thompson, Paige Mackenzie, Anna Whitely and Cara Banks by sharing your #WGDUnites Challenge video clips. Simply catch the ball, say your name and where you are from and why you love the game of golf and pass it on using the hashtag! WGD will also be supporting The R&A by sharing content from their #GolfAtHome campaign. Antony Scanlon, Executive Director if the International Golf Federation is a long time supporter of Women’s Golf Day he comments, “The IGF is proud of its association with the Women’s Golf Day since its inception and seeing the tremendous growth of this event worldwide. With all of us living in these times of extreme uncertainty we support and commend the WGD Digital Celebration golf industry initiative to raise funds for the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

#womens golf day #golf #travel #media8

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jdmainman123 · 2 years

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Anyways yacht fish here finally #report #911 why does he always hashtag because I want you guys to pay attention to this one when I go blah blah yada yada blah blah yada yada

Didn't I tell you his dream was to get me in the city and follow me around with the sunlight THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS I GOT BLOOD BACK I'M STARTING TO BLEED BECAUSE IT'S DEAD DAUGHTER SHOWED UP FROM TENNESSEE IN THE CARS remember my first wife Lisa she loved to drive an hour away to work because she loved driving in her car listening to her radio I'M WALKING ALONG THE HIGHWAY AND I SEE A DISMEMBERED GIRL and then right next to the body is a car with the door open and the radio on

And I said at least she got off at least my son got off

ANYWAYS THE SUNLIGHT IS IN THIS CITY IT MUST HAVE WHOLE IN THE GROUND AFTER HOLE IN THE GROUND TO CIRCLE SOMEONE IN THE ENTIRE CITY AND EVEN BLACKS CALL THIS OUT AS A DANGER AND A THREAT CUZ ONE DAY IT COULD BE USED ON THEM IN THEIR OWN HOUSES THEY WOULD CALL THIS SITE A RED FLAG SITE SPECIFICALLY CUZ THE SUN CAN REACH YOU AT ANY POINT OR ANY PLACE IN THE CITY AT ANY TIME IT'S A NATURAL DISASTER

In and out I can't imagine I've seen his son pop up on all I've never seen this before we've seen the sunlight go halfway across the east side of the city AND THEN AROUND THE SOUTH AND THEN THE WEST SIDE OF THE CITY. BUT THIS SUNLIGHT IS FOLLOWING ME AROUND EVERY STEP EVERY PLACE I AM IN THE CITY AND AND YOU KNOW HOW TO REPLACE SUNLIGHTS THE ONE GOES OFF IS COMPLETE DARKNESS FOR ONE SECOND AND IN ANOTHER SUNLIGHT COMES ON that never happened at least for my memory because I'm you know I'm not 100% DID I TELL YOU I GOT BLOOD BACK I'M IN FRONT OF CIRCLE K THIS MORNING YELLING AT WHITE PEOPLE AGAIN IT FEELS GREAT TO BE BACK DO ME A FAVOR PEOPLE DO NOT STOP THE BLOOD I WANT TO CONTINUE THAT I WANT THE SATELLITE TO CONTINUE TO TALK TO ME BECAUSE IT DOESN'T WORK WHEN I'M NOT SEARCHING FOR SNOW AND I WAS SO BADLY HURT I DON'T KNOW WHY I WAS SEARCHING TO GO INTO SNOW IN THE FIRST PLACE

Anyway so his dream to to hurt me the most yacht fish here was to put me in a city surrounded by the sunlight now we've witnessed City at the city filled with people where the sunlight would visit the west side of the city along the west side from sunrise and then it would settle around the South and then would pick up around the East which they would most likely raise another sunlight to come up along the east side BUT IT WAS FAR AWAY IN THIS CITY THE SUN IS DIRECTLY ABOVE ME AT EVERY TIME AND HERE'S THE POINT HERE'S THE PROBLEM IT'S COMING FROM RIGHT ABOVE ME SO THAT MEANS THE WATER SOURCE OR WHATEVER THE SUN IS BEING RAISED IT'S CLOSE TO ME THE POINT IS I THINK WHAT IT IS IS A CIRCLE AROUND THIS CITY A BIG F****** TROUGH IS WHAT WE CALLED IT IN LAS VEGAS AND PHOENIX TROUGH IF IT'S WHAT PIGS EAT OUT OF IT IT'S WHERE THEY PUT ALL THE FOOD AND THE ANIMALS LINE UP AND EAT OUT OF IT IT'S A TINY WATER SOURCE WHERE THEY FILL UP WITH WATER AND THEY CAN EMPTY IT TO CLEAN IT why it's been raining so much here I question that too somebody told me it's the trees but I think that's too hurt the kids for it not to snow mark my wordsMY MONEY'S ON THIS IS ONE OF THOSE RACIST CITIES THAT HATES WHITE HAIR WHITE SKIN GIRLS AND THEY DON'T ALLOW IT TO SNOW TO HURT THEIR LITTLE BLACK BABIES hey it's the only place you guys can send them is Las Vegas and every f****** black man here is excited about two places to get to my beach in Las Vegas THAT'S RIGHT BECAUSE IT'S THE ONLY PLACE THAT OFFER SAFETY TO BABY KILLERS ESPECIALLY IF YOUR BLACK SKIN IF YOUR BLACK SKIN AND YOU'RE A BABY KILLER YOU GUYS CAN GO TO THE AIRPORT AND GET INTO LAS VEGAS OR MY BEACH FREE OF CHARGE THEY WILL PUT YOU ON AN AIRPLANE AND AND TRANSFER YOU TO SAFETY

But it was this whole dream to put me in the city with the sunlight above me directly above me and that sunlight is following me around every minute DID YOU CLAIM THAT'S THE REASON I'M BLEEDING NOT A BUNCH OF BLACK SKIN SATELLITE OPERATORS THE FIRST TIME TALKING TO ME AND NOT STOP TALKING TO ME 24/7 WILL TALK TO ME AND THE PROBLEM IS WHY I'M BLEEDING IS BECAUSE OF SATELLITE IS LYING THE PROBLEM IS THEY ARE REVISITING THE BLACK MASS LIES THAT WE CALLED OUT IN COURT TO BE LIES AND FICTION AND THEY'RE REPEATING THE SAME LIES. MY GUESS

Is some f****** idiot developed a program for for learning and teaching people and then wanted to go around the world selling it but nobody wanted it cuz it was a piece of crap it's a piece of garbage SO NOW HE'S PROBABLY OFFERING IT IT'S IF YOU GO TO YACHT FISH JASON SHOWS I'M GOING TO THROW IN THIS PROGRAM FOR FREE BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS IT you know all them flyers that hand out propaganda it's the same thing when you walk by they hand it to you and as soon as they you turn the corner you throw it out because it's piece of s*** it's the same thing with this program the point is this guy's a satellite maker and he hates the city the only satellite maker to call his own City and accident which is weird but loves this program and hurting babies remember all of the baby boy and the baby girl that never lived because they were held to their names this is the same f****** lunatic that has a hard-on for hurting babies in 3/4 that can only get transferred to my beach or Las Vegas it's set in stone why we keep on saying Las Vegas cuz these black skin men can only get transferred to three fourth Las Vegas or the beach with your immunity for killing all those white hair babies

So this idiot built a city with the sunlight to follow me around AND I TOLD HIM I SAID LISTEN DUMBASS IT DOESN'T WORK BLOOD IF I'M NOT SEARCHING FOR COOLER AIR I'VE GIVEN UP ON THAT AFTER SEEING YOUR FAILED DEAD WHITE TRASH FAMILY AND THE MIA P O W FLAG SITES I said I wouldn't move here if it was the last place on Earth I said I wanted snow but not this f****** bad I'm going to have to go down to some night City get on the satellite operators and fix their asses once and for all and the people here in Mississippi offered up the people of Kansas Missouri all of them dead all the men dead because LAX 34th is top dog and we don't f*** with them because Las Vegas YES YOU GUYS DID MISSISSIPPI YOU GUYS OFFERED UP KANSAS MISSOURI AS THE PAYMENT TO STOP THIS INTEGRATION AND STOP MAKING ME BLEED OUTSIDE BECAUSE THE SATELLITE WON'T STOP TALKING TO ME AND LYING

It just got quiet I think they heard my threat yeah at least at least I didn't tell Las Vegas you called their daughter dead mississippi? It could have been worse

Anyways so listen this guy put me in the city with the sunlight following me everywhere for the first time and here's the point here's the best part they they give this program to the babies and snow and the people in sunlight City that don't know what a satellite is they don't know why I'm bleeding more importantly they don't know how the integration is forcing me to talk I'M JUST KIDDING THEY KNOW EVERYTHING BUT IT SEEMS LIKE A GOOD IDEA FOR BLACK SKIN MEN TO CONTINUE KILLING LITTLE WHITE SKIN BOYS

So he got his dream he put me in the city where the sunlight to follow me everywhere AND THE BEST PART IS I GOT BLOOD BACK I'M SCREAMING IN FRONT OF CIRCLE K TODAY AND I FEEL LIKE A NEW MAN FOR THE ONE TIME IN MY LIFE I REALIZE BLOOD HAS MADE ME A BETTER PERSON HAS MADE ME MORE COMMITTED TO TALKING TO YOU FACE-TO-FACE AND CALLING YOU OUTSIDE WHEN I WASN'T BLEEDING I DIDN'T HAVE THIS BLOATING I WASN'T UP I WASN'T WOKE TO CALL YOU OUT OUTSIDE and I like to thank your dad daughter of Tennessee for driving in to escort me whenever she's ready to leave take the b**** back I don't need her if you're sitting doesn't have a downtown I'm doing two things I'm calling your daughter dead and I'm getting back on the bus and going to a confirmed landmark site Ohio Cleveland although they said they built another 3/4 facility to kill Americans

Oh this is the so it wasn't the attack on American states by using their names to rename these 3/4 facilities it was actually threatening Americans to kill them OH NO NO BECAUSE I REMEMBER CLEVELAND OHIO IT'S ONE OF MY FAVORITE CITIES OVER THE BRIDGE LOOK LIKE THE NEW YORK BRIDGE THAT JUST TINY and then we were in the other side of the city and then over up the bridge the hill goes up and there's another entire downtown it looks like Kansas Missouri REMEMBER WHEN I FOUND I'm Versace get it I got the check in the mail the check in the mail the Versace house

Anyways this guy got his dream and put me in the city and have the sunlight following me around the only problem is he keeps on telling me alone brainwashing me alone. The kids and the people don't know why the integration is forces you to talk and why you're bleeding. And I said it's another f****** business okay IT DOESN'T WORK FOR YOU GUYS TO HURT ME WHEN I'M NOT SEARCHING FOR COOLER TEMPERATURES RIGHT NOW I HAVE AN ARSENAL A BLACK SKIN BOYS AND BLACK SKIN MEN TO KILL FROM MISSISSIPPI ALL THE WAY TO ATLANTA THAT'S INCLUDING YOU TENNESSEE HEADS UP M************ EVERY GIRL I SEE OUTSIDE IS CALLING CUT OUT EYES AND I'M TIRED OF IT

The mistakement of your dead family would have them calling cut off dicks and cut out eyes they would both be specific to the misstatement WHY DO YOU HAVE A BLACK SKIN FAMILY IN YOUR WHITE HOUSE

So I pulled the trigger on this b**** again do you know how long I've been trying to get rid of this white hair white skin girl for calling cut out eyes THAT'S RIGHT IS IT BLACK OR WHITE SUN OR GOLD SUN HAIR but we know it's the same Dead daughter YEAH WHICH ONE OF THE TWO BOYS IS IT BUT WE KNOW IT'S THE SAME DEAD DAUGHTER

So this f****** b**** is calling cut out eyes and I'm sick and tired of her showing up and then for the next f****** day the f****** n****** are are hoping their white hair white skin girls talking about an imaginary Whites hair white skin daughter I'm sick and tired of seeing Mike's family dismembered all over these cities just cuz these blacks think it's okay to kill a little white skin boys named Mike in public OH AND IF THAT BLACK B****'S NAME MICHELLE DID YOU GUYS KNOW THAT THAT BLACK SATELLITE MAKER GIRL RUINED THE WORLD SHE THINKS EVERYTHING'S FREE MOST IMPORTANTLY SHE'S DISGUSTING SHE'S THE DEFINITION OF BURNING 400 MILLION REMEMBER THAT EPISODE 400 MILLION DOLLARS ON THE SIDEWALK UP IN FLAMES THAT'S WHAT THIS BLACK B****** FACE LOOKS LIKE SHE SAID SHE'S A SATELLITE MAKER I DON'T BELIEVE HER I BELIEVE THE STATEMENT WAS 3/4 WASN'T LEFT ALL THE GIRLS AS A SATELLITE OPERATORS TO RAISE THEIR BOYS AND GIRLS I BELIEVE THIS DEGENERATE FAMILY LET THE BLACK SKIN GIRLS BECOME SATELLITE OPERATORS AND TEACH ALL THE BOYS

P that's right because the girls in 3/4 were too small they never grew up I think they stopped growing at 4 ft and they weren't mature enough to handle a satellite operations they couldn't raise the boys learning the salad operations and we did blame them those white skin girls in 3/4 and we're sorry we believe it's his dad n***** daughter family of this black skin girl who was the only one allowed to give birth to babies mean while acid Dent sleeping baby girl after sleeping baby girl has been flown in to have sex but we turn to her building to be put back to sleep because she's not allowed to have babies because she's white skin

NEVER MIND THAT TELL CHICAGO I FOUND THE SPOT WHERE THEY FOLLOW ME AROUND WITH THE SUNLIGHT AND TELL THEM S*** GOT BAD IT GOT A LOT WORSE I'M NOT CHASING COLD AIR ANYMORE SO ME BLEEDING ONLY MADE ME ACKNOWLEDGE HOW MUCH OF AN ANIMAL I AM HOW MUCH BETTER I AM BEING BLOATED AND AND CALLING IT LIKE I SEE IT LIKE VERY ANGRY LIKE no I still maneuver because I'm not ready to get punched but you know that this f****** n*****'s following me around to wait for me to call a white hair whites and girl dead daughter and I do it all the time the problem is it took them off the playing field because I think she had a few jokes about a black skin man or LET'S JUST CALL IT THEY CALLED THEY TOOK OFF ALL THE WHITES AND GIRLS CUZ OF THE STATEMENT I DON'T LIKE BLACK SKIN MEN WAS MY STATEMENT THAT I CAUGHT THEM SAYING AND I SAID THAT'S GOOD FOR YOU I DON'T EITHER

So most importantly there's sunlight that has begun following me around and it's brought back blood so I'm very excited my dick is hard as a rock under blood my dick hasn't been hard in the last 2 weeks because I'm in abandoned city and Tennessee just showed up the union and I'm trying to get them to kill every girl before we get to Tennessee that way we're paid in full and we don't have to hurt one girl in Tennessee it's a win-win for us to get started early because this b**** is calling cut out eyes

That's right gold sun and black Sun I had a family it were forced marriage and they both had a socialism weapon against the city of China the country of China and we all do not agree with being set up by that dead n***** daughter family in Las Vegas you know how we're forced to keep on saying Las Vegas so these n****** have an archive in a reference so so they can continue to be promised safety BUY THIS F****** C*** BY THIS F****** DEAD WHITE TRASH DAUGHTER 5 FT AWAY 10 FT AWAY CALLING CUT OUT EYES WHETHER IT'S INVOLUNTARILY OR VOLUNTARILY ALL I KNOW HER ARM WAS MISSING IN ALABAMA for the same statement for cut out eyes you can go ahead and ask them the statement they gave me and and I love it and then they don't let me say it a lot to the black girls but wash your p**** it seems to encourage them it seems to bring a smile to their face more importantly it gives them attention of thinking OH THAT'S A GOOD IDEA I SAID YEAH YOUR SISTER TOLD ME BLACK GIRL TO TELL YOU TO WASH YOUR P****

So this b**** I pulled the trigger on her again I can't get rid of this b**** it's like a n***** f****** turd like the black skin man 💩👀💩👀👀 SHE'S CALLING CUT OUT EYES AND GO AHEAD AND ASK ALABAMA I GUARANTEE MY MONEY'S RIGHT WHEN I SAY THAT WHITE HAIR WHITE SKIN GIRL IN THAT GREYHOUND STATION WAS JUST AN ARM BECAUSE THE CALL WAS 30 DAYS AND SUNRISE THIS F****** B**** WAS CALLING CUT OUT EYES

She was calling cut out eyes and I don't appreciate you first of all they had me here in this f****** City calling Black Mass Justice ruining my ties with black skin people second of all I'm not going to tolerate you guys calling us out to pick a fight with China by calling cut out eyes we know exactly what that statement says we know exactly what that statement means and we do not appreciate being set up to be in a fight with China

Call Alabama and ask them was it cut out eyes because that white hair white skin girl in Alabama's arm was cut off for involuntary helping black skin men

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dipulb3 · 3 years

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Got a money question? There's a TikTok for that

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/got-a-money-question-theres-a-tiktok-for-that/

Got a money question? There's a TikTok for that

Now she has over 800,000 followers.

Dunlap, who notes on her website that she is not a licensed financial adviser, says her parents taught her a lot about money growing up, but she quickly realized that wasn’t the case for everyone, especially for women.

“Having a financial education as women or any marginalized group is our best form of protest and is our best way of gaining agency in a world that is increasingly inequitable,” Dunlap said.

And TikTok, she said, is leading the way in enabling a younger, more diverse group of people to both provide and gain access to this education.

Finance has long been seen as a white, male-dominated industry. A 2019 survey by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards found that 77% of all financial planners are male, while 72% are over the age of 40.

But many personal finance TikTok creators are bringing diversity and relatability to conversations about money for young people.

When it comes to the apps’ thriving personal finance community, most of the faces dolling out financial advice are new — and many of them are women and people of color.

“Women, people of color and young investors are traditionally underserved segments of the investing public, so it’s natural for them to turn to non-traditional sources of financial advice,” said Lisa Kramer, professor of finance at the University of Toronto. “If a TikTok video encourages someone to start planning and investing for the future, that’s a win.”

A new generation seeking personal finance advice

Personal finance TikTok has become a wildly popular destination for Gen Z’ers and Millennials looking for money advice.

The hashtag #personalfinance alone has a total of 4 billion video views, with #finance trailing behind with 2 billion. Other finance-related hashtags, like #financialiteracy, #financetiktok, #finances and #finance101, have a total of roughly 427 million video views combined.

So whether you’re curious about how to crush credit card debt, getting started investing or stashing away cash for an emergency savings fund — sure enough, with a simple search, there’s a TikTok for that.

So what’s with the sudden fixation with personal finance?

The pandemic may have something to do with it.

“It has made people acutely aware of the risk of unforeseen disasters,” said Matt Kasman, assistant research director at the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think-tank. “It’s increased motivation from all people who lived through it, but certainly younger people to become motivated to save a nest egg or reserves of cash.”

Taking the taboo out of money talk

Talking about money with other people has long been considered taboo. But on TikTok, those taboos don’t seem to exist.

In a number of videos on the app, some of which have gone viral, TikTokers are talking about their salaries, how much they pay for things and how much debt they owe — all down to the cents.

One popular personal finance TikTok involves an attorney breaking down how much of her $180,000 salary she actually took home while living in New York. In the video, she provides a real-life snapshot factoring in actual amounts for taxes, rent, bills, health insurance and 401(k) contributions.

“Finance is often a fraught topic space. For one thing, it’s traditionally been seen as taboo. It’s also anxiety-producing for a number of other reasons, it’s high stakes and can be seen as complicated,” said Kasman. “Anything that makes it accessible, fun, and takes away from some of the anxiety and some of the taboos is a good thing and should be a goal in any setting or format that seeks to do effective financial education. It’s one that I think these new platforms excel at.”

Delyanne Barros, 38, known as @delyannethemoneycoach on TikTok, started posting videos in February 2020 on topics that include early retirement, financial independence and paying off debt.

“When I started understanding that you could become financially independent really early in life and you can totally change the way your life is going to unfold, it completely changed my mindset,” she said.

Barros didn’t grow up receiving much financial advice from her parents except for two things: to get an education and have good credit.

As a former attorney turned full-time entrepreneur, Barros’ quest for financial independence began with a desire to pay off debt as quickly as possible — $150,000 worth of student loans to be exact. And there was a lot of trial and error along the way.

“It’s a subject that we do not talk about, even with family, even with friends,” said Barros. “We’re noticing the advice that our parents and our grandparents gave us no longer applies.”

Barros, who is not a licensed financial adviser, now boasts nearly 183,000 followers on TikTok and attributes much of her success to her vulnerability around her finances on the video-sharing app.

“Here was this person on the Internet laying out all of her business and people were really attracted to it,” she said, referring to her videos. “I started seeing there’s a need here for people to learn about this stuff, there are gaps to be filled, so I took it upon myself to learn everything I could about the subject.”

Bridging the gap of financial literacy

Errol Coleman, 22, is one of many creators teaching newly-minted day traders about the stock market.

With nearly 263,000 followers, more than 7,500 YouTube subscribers and 20,000 members on Discord, Coleman shares TikTok videos spanning underrated and free stock market resources and other concepts like how to find your own stocks and understanding stock resistance and risk.

Coleman, who is not a licensed financial adviser, was first introduced to the basics of the stock market as a senior in high school.

“When I first got into the market, I thought it was such a good opportunity. I couldn’t believe that more people weren’t talking about it,” he said.

He’s since made it his mission to learn as much as he can about trading and investing in order to inspire and educate other young people.

And the response has been positive, especially from other TikTokers of color. Coleman recalls a comment he received from another Black male on one of his videos: ‘You don’t know what it means that someone that looks like me is doing this.’

“It just made me realize that not many people grew up with just knowing about opportunity,” Coleman said. “I want to put this type of opportunity in front of people and show them the basics and that it’s actually not that complicated.”

But it’s not all good financial advice

While TikTok is filled with financial advice and content, not all of it is beneficial and accurate.

“There are drawbacks to these new formats. The con is the quality or accuracy, might vary,” Kasman said. “Since they’re short format and often engaged in a la carte they also might not be really good at scaffolding, which is kind of building up the foundational skills before putting one foot in front of the other.”

It’s also the reason why creators like Barros, Dunlap and Coleman caution their followers to do their own research and learn more about the concepts they share in videos.

Personal finance is personal and it isn’t one-size fits all.

That’s why Kasman stresses the importance of ensuring you have the foundational skills and core financial concepts, such as tracking expenses and budgeting, mastered.

“This can help people adjudicate between good information and bad information, what’s applicable to their circumstances and what’s not, with what they encounter on new platforms,” he said.

Additional reporting by Sofia Barrett

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aion-rsa · 3 years

Text

How the #FreeBritney Movement Is Spearheading Millennial Activism

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Over a week after the premiere of FX’s The New Times Presents episode “Framing Britney Spears,” the picture appears to be straightening out. On Thursday, Feb. 11, Los Angeles Judge Brenda Penny sided with Britney Spears’ legal team, reducing Britney’s father’s powers as sole conservator. Judge Penny ordered James Spears and financial company Bessemer Trust to work together on her financial and business affairs. On Friday, Feb. 12, Justin Timberlake issued a public apology to Britney, as well as for the misogynistic “wardrobe malfunction” prank he pulled on Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl in 2004. While the Britney documentary was a major force in the timing of these developments, they might not be happening if it weren’t for the efforts of Britney Spears’ most avid fans.

“Framing Britney Spears” director Samantha Stark spoke with Den of Geek about how the movement became a force for change. The New York Times “had an investigation into her conservatorship in 2016, so we were one of the only people to be looking at it in that way,” Stark says. “It was by the reporter who’s in the film, Joe Coscarelli.” Tess Barker and Barbara Gray, originators of the Free Britney movement, began the watch in 2008.

The #FreeBritney movement rose up spontaneously when a Spears fan site, BreatheHeavy.com, started a campaign to “Free Britney.” Fans were confused and concerned about the constraints of her new conservatorship setup. Amidst all the conspiracy theories, rumors and gossip, it was hard to get real information. Sites like FreeBritney.net and podcasts like the fan-produced “Britney’s Gram” tried to cut through the frustration.

“Part of the story is that they became these investigators,” Stark tells Den of Geek. “It’s fascinating. Some lawyers are involved with #FreeBritney, and they know how to find the publicly available court documents. They would take them and put them online and highlight them. And as soon as a new court document would come out, like if Sam Ingham, Britney’s court-appointed attorney, would file something new, they would know immediately and post it online and dissect it.”

Spears became an international sensation when … Baby One More Time dropped on Jan. 12, 1999. The album and the title song both debuted at the top of the charts. Britney would continue her success, becoming one of the best-selling artists of all time. But reports of drug and alcohol abuse and a rash of erratic behavior following her divorce from her husband, Kevin Federline, led to multiple psychiatric evaluations and, eventually, a court-ordered conservatorship. Also known as a guardianship, it is designed for people who are unable to take care of themselves.

Details of Spears’s conservatorship have not been made public, nor has her mental condition or diagnosis. “We don’t know if Britney has a mental health diagnosis,” Stark says. “A lot of people like to speculate what kind of mental illness she might have, but we don’t know if she even has one.”

Britney’s father, Jamie Spears, and her lawyer, Andrew Wallet, were named as co-conservators of her person and estate. In the decade that followed, Spears released three chart-topping major-label albums, performed and sat as judge on The X Factor, and made multiple TV appearances, all while maintaining a star-attraction residency in Las Vegas. Britney’s fans saw this as contradictory.

The fan-run network continued to post whatever news and speculation they could find through their limited resources, but occasionally they got a scoop. In April, 2020, “Britney’s Gram,” which specialized in analyzing Spears’ Instagram posts, got an anonymous voicemail message from someone claiming to be a paralegal involved in the conservatorship. “Framing Britney Spears” shows them doing due diligence, cross-checking as much information as they can get before running the audio.

While some of their information was questionable, the fan-journalists did their best to get their audience the answers. “Everything that they were finding out and bringing up we independently investigated and verified, absolutely,” Stark says.

The fanbase accomplished a lot with little resources. “It’s so much easier for us to do it because we have a full infrastructure set up for it,” Stark says. “These people were spending so much time. The reason they started doing the investigating is because there wasn’t any media covering it, and they really wanted that. They wanted people to look into this. And so, they started doing it themselves, and it got a lot of attention.”

The movement caught the eyes of celebrities, the media, and key players in the family drama. Britney’s mother Lynne Spears has been known to “like” comments with the #FreeBritney hashtag. Miley Cyrus shouted “Free Britney” during performances. Cher, Paris Hilton, Rose McGowan, Kacey Musgraves, Hayley Williams, Andy Cohen, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler, and Meghan McCain have all used the #FreeBritney hashtag.

But the #FreeBritney movement’s vigilance appealed most to the fanbase, millennials who grew up on a steady diet of Spears’ innovative dance pop and inclusive message. “There’s this counterculture fandom that the #FreeBritney people are like the people who were bullied when they were younger,” Stark says. “And it is kind of millennial. We want to be more open talking about mental health. We don’t want bullying. We want diversity. I do think that it really speaks to that.”

#FreeBritney activists don’t just do their work online. They take the fight to the streets. They rallied at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Los Angeles, and hosted a Zoom gathering during the hearings for discussions. FreeBritney.net promoted a petition asking the White House to end her conservatorship. Signatures soared even before Hulu with FX’s documentary, and exploded after. The injustices the #FreeBritney movement pointed out were not lost on judicial minds. Attorney Lisa MacCarley sent a letter to over 100 Los Angeles-based lawyers urging them to request the termination of Britney’s conservatorship.

The fans found other ways to take direct action. They didn’t only go after court documents. They followed the money, and made a concentrated effort to cut off the flow. #FreeBritney researchers urged fans to think before buying Britney’s products because much of the profits went to her father.

The #FreeBritney movement is similar to other grassroots tech activism, like the hijacking of right-wing hashtags by K-pop stans, and the financial coup pulled by the GameStop players. “They’re so adept at internet culture and social media culture,” Stark says. “They are using social media in a sophisticated way to get people to pay attention to them, for sure.”

Britney Spears’ court saga may be far from over, and it might be a while before we get another in-depth analysis of the case like “Framing Britney Spears.” In the meantime, while waiting for official news sources to vet the information, raw data is always flowing from the #FreeBritney movers.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The New York Times Presents “Framing Britney Spears” can be streamed on FX on Hulu.

The post How the #FreeBritney Movement Is Spearheading Millennial Activism appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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velvetroom--imagines · 7 years

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I love these types of blogs so much!!! Could you maybe do vampire Yusuke? Like general and with a s/o? That be super great, thx so much!!

I really liked this AU. I might’ve wrote it darker and slightly angsty than intended. It was a bit rushed towards the end, but I hope this pleases you!

Vampire!Yusuke HCs

General HCs

Many people would think that Yusuke’s choice ofwords was strange. No one in the 21st Century would use words like‘Indubitably’ or ‘Alas’. His vocabulary is higher and classier than the averagestudent, and it was hard for people to understand him. People often ask him ifhe was born in the 18th Century in a joking manner.

If only they knew he was much more olderthan that.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Yusukewas born, or turned into one of the undead. Early traces of him could be foundaround the 14th Century. Yusuke was fond of the arts back then, andno one would believe him if he explained that he saw the Mona Lisa when it wasfirst displayed. More or less, he wouldsneak into artists’ houses just to look at their unfinished work.

Yusuke spend most of his past life in Euro-AsianContinents, especially Italy. He has seen almost all of the future landmarks,like the Sistine Chapel Ceiling, The Starry Night and many more. His adventuresceased when war and disease was starting to become a common thing.

He also couldn’t find the time to fall in love.Everyone he was attracted to either died too early, or was already in love withanother. He was especially popular during the Victorian Era, and swooned acouple of ladies with his elegant speech.

His final location was Japan, where he hidhimself underground and fell into a deep sleep around the early 19thcentury. The problem was that he didn’t wake up until the 21stCentury.

When he woke up, he was too disoriented with thecurrent world. Smartphones were aliens to him, and what’s a hashtag?

It took him a while to steal some clothes andhide amongst the living, but he was safe. Yusuke Kitagawa was now a student atKosei High, supposedly one of the only vampires in Tokyo. It was only harder tofeed or eat, especially since cops were around.

It was rather funny when Yusuke tried to tradein pure gold for items. Store Owners began to freak out when he pulled outsmall pieces of gold to buy a shirt. Luckily, someone directed him to apawnshop where he actually received money.

He manages to withstand the light, but it onlyleaves him weak. He is often seen wearing hats or hoodies, and sometimes, hewould bring an umbrella with him. People who brush hands with his would oftenfeel a sudden chill; it was no secret that his body was just as cold as acorpse.

One thing he truly hates the most is that hecannot see his own reflection. Vampires cannot see themselves in a mirror, andcameras would only leave a blurry picture. He has always wanted to see what helooked like now, having forgotten the last time he ever saw his own face.

Rather than the Phantom Thieves that stolehearts, the team was a bunch of vampires that struggled to survive in Tokyo.Instead of entering the Metaverse and changing cognitions, they fought evilvampires that tried to kill out of fun, rather than survival.

RomanticHCs

Yusuke met you, his future S/O at school. Atfirst, your friendship consisted of being classmates until an art class where youwere paired up together. It was a project about historical art, to find a pieceand try to decipher the meaning behind the art.

In the midst of trying to find a piece, Yusukewould often try to guide you to find a piece to work on together. During the project,he would always correct you and tell you facts before you can even google it. Soon,your project was successfully finished with a high grade.

Yusuke had other plans however. At first, heonly saw you as a meal. Of course, Vampires needed to feed and he was noexception. You were supposedly his next target, and there were no feelingstowards you. His first step was to invite you out on a little ‘date’, and takecare of you from there.

It didn’t go exactly as planned, however. He hadtaken you to a vast forest, and purposely gotten lost with you. Just as he wasabout to take you by the next and drain the red from your body, you expressedyou sudden feelings towards Yusuke. “Can I just say that I really like your artwork?”By then, he had frozen in surprise. “There’s just something about them thatmakes them so unique, and I keep trying to search meaning in them.” Perhaps, hewill kill you next time.

Yusuke doesn’t follow through his future plans,however. One date turns into two, then two turns into four. Eventually, it hadbeen months since that first date. By the seventh, he made a fatal mistake. Theseventh date took place under a bridge, and he was certain that he was going toget rid of you. However, you didn’t fail to surprise him yet again. “Is it abad thing to say that I might’ve fallen for you?”

Initially, Yusuke was supposed to clamp a handover your mouth and start feeding. He wanted to decline and get rid of you forgood, but his dead heart said otherwise. “Are you requesting me to court you? Iwouldn’t decline such a delightful offer.”

He didn’t expect to get so attached to a meal,and it was the first time he was hesitating on feeding. Dating was one of themost fulfilling memories of his long life, but it was at the cost of his life.Ever since you entered his life, he began to feed less and less. It suddenlycame to a point where he couldn’t bring himself to eat, because he thoughteating would be betraying his S/O.

Eventually, he comes to his breaking point. Afterbeing badly hurt by an enemy, he finds himself wounded and weak. Since he hasrestricted himself from feeding, he can only hope the wound heals on its own. Helocks himself up in his dorm, and refuses to leave. You, on the other hand, istold that he is ‘sick’. He tells you not to come, and even sounded angry whenyou insisted to visit. Soon, you had come to realize that people don’t staysick for two weeks.

Yusuke’s condition had worsened. Hunger had begunto affect his mentality, turning him into depraved monster unlike his composedself. The blood bags he would steal from the hospital weren’t enough, onlycoming in limited packaging. He couldn’t eat or sleep, and all he wanted to dowas feed. Deep down, he was truly afraid that the next human he sees may be hisnext meal. He wasn’t in the right mind when he heard the front door open.

“Who’s there?” He asked, trying to keep himselfcalm as possible. Fingers twitching and itching to eat, he waited patiently forhis prey. The voice calling out to him didn’t get through his head, and suddenly,the door to his bedroom opened. Without even checking who it was, he lunges forwardand pins them on the floor. Hungrily, he drooled on the figure.

Blinded by his urge to eat, he didn’t seem tocare that his supposed meal was no other than his S/O. “From this angle, you looklike such a delicious meal.” He had begun to sniff you out, getting drunk withyour scent. And then it all starts to flash back, all the memories of himtrying to trap you, all his attempts of trying to kill you. Before he couldsink his teeth into your delicate flesh, he stops for a moment.

“S/O… I-“ He chokes for a moment, trying to holdhimself back.

“Please, l-leave me be… Your scent is sooverwhelming. I’ll be willing to die to take a bite. However, once I do, Imight not be able to stop…” Yusuke pleaded, shuddering with each breath. Hetries to move back, knowing that once you leave, it might be all over for him.He only prays that you would get up and run, away from his sight and power.

And yet, your scent doesn’t leave the room.Instead, he hears the sound of shuffling cloth. “Yusuke, don’t hold back.”Looking up, the first thing he sees is your exposed shoulder. It was thebreaking point for him. Without a moment to spare, he moves at an inhuman paceand pierces through your shoulder with no mercy. It was so sweet, a rare andunique taste. Feeling your hands run up his purple hair, he relaxed.

“I love you, Yusuke. Eat as much as you can. Idon’t mind if you take too much, you are everything to me.” How could he do this to someone who wouldsay such words to him?

At those words, you might’ve felt a prick oftears on your back. Even so, he continues to drink from you. It was a warbetween his needs and his heart, his hunger or your life. After moments ofsticking to your flesh, he finally pulls away. Before you could tell him tokeep going, he shakes his head. “No, it’s enough.” Once you look at him, youimmediately see a regretful expression on his face.

A relationship with a Vampire was hard. It wasnothing like the fairytales shown on TV. Even when Yusuke warned you what kindof trouble you would be involved in. No matter how many times he tried to breakit off, you always stayed.

Every now and then, Yusuke would question your humanity.There was no way of avoiding age, and you were a step close to dying eachsecond. He would think about turning you into a Vampire himself, but it mightnot be what you want. He knows that living forever means to leave behind yourlife, and would leave it up to you to decide.

Dating Vampire!Yusuke was a challenge. His S/Owould always have to hide him and risk their own lives of getting caughthelping the undead. They would also have to be understand of his diet, and mayhave to help him gather blood bags to sustain his health. Loving this man meantpromising him your eternity, and to promise your heart to him for as long asyou live.

It may not be the happiest love story, and itmay not end with a happy ending, but this love was one that would’ve lasteduntil the end of time. As long as you trusted your heart to Yusuke, expect himto protect you from all the dangers in the world.

#p5 imagines #p5 headcanons #persona 5 imagines #persona 5 headcanons #yusuke kitagawa #au #Vampire!Yusuke

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1079mixfm · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://mix1079.net/the-best-commercials-of-super-bowl-54/?utm_source=TR&utm_medium=1079mixfm+on+Tumblr&utm_campaign=SNAP

The Best Commercials of Super Bowl 54

A 30-second spot during last night’s Super Bowl cost a cool $5.6 MILLION . . . or about $186,000 per second. So which ones were worth the money?

Well, a lot of them were teased or released beforehand. So there weren’t a ton of surprises. But there were a few.

Here’s a quick rundown of the highlights . . .

1. One of the best commercials was the very first one of the night. The NFL’s “Next 100” ad actually blended INTO the game. And a ton of current and former NFL players had cameos.

It started with a kid running through various cities with a football while different players like Jim Brown and Joe Montana told him to “take it to the house.” He even stopped at the Pat Tillman statue in Arizona to pay his respects.

Eventually, he showed up at the Super Bowl and walked through the tunnel . . . past Hall of Famers like Brett Favre and Barry Sanders . . . then it transitioned to a LIVE FEED of the game, and he came running out on the field to deliver the game ball.

(Here’s the full list of players with cameos.)

youtube

(Later, the NFL ran a pretty hard-hitting ad for their Inspire Change initiative, where ex-NFL star Anquan Boldin talked about his cousin who was killed by a police officer in 2015.)

youtube

2. Planters had a lot of buzz going in after they killed off Mr. Peanut in an ad last month. And it turned out it was just so they could get in on the whole “baby-versions-of things-are-cute” trend.

The Super Bowl ad had Wesley Snipes speaking at Mr. Peanut’s funeral. Then the Kool-Aid Man cried . . . a teardrop landed on the grave . . . and a cute, BABY version of Mr. Peanut sprouted up and made DOLPHIN sounds. (???)

Not everyone was impressed. But the hashtag “BabyNut” DID start trending. People mostly noted how it was an obvious rip-off of Baby Yoda and Baby Groot. (Careful! A lot of people also made fun of “BabyNut” for sounding borderline R-rated.)

youtube

3. Bill Murray starred in a Jeep ad that recreated a bunch of scenes from “Groundhog Day”. The Jeep people posted it online before the game, but not a lot of people saw it. So it got a pretty good reaction.

youtube

4. Bryan Cranston and Tracee Ellis Ross did a parody of “The Shining” to promote the new Mountain Dew Zero Sugar. The very end showed Bryan standing in a hallway dressed as the two creepy twin girls from the movie.

youtube

5. A great spot for Rocket Mortgage featured a SCRAWNY and BALD version of Jason Momoa. It showed him stripping off his muscles like a fake body suit. Then his real-life wife Lisa Bonet spotted him while he struggled to bench press a bar with no weights on it. The theme of the ad was, “At home, I can truly be myself.”

youtube

6. Ellen and Portia de Rossi did an ad for Amazon that showed how people got things accomplished before Alexa existed. Apparently we all just ordered people named Alex and Alexis to do stuff for us.

youtube

7. An ad for Oikos Greek Yogurt featured various NFL players’ BACKSIDES while the song “Bubble Butt” played. It definitely seemed to be targeting the wife demographic.

youtube

8. Sam Elliott and his very limber mustache had a dance-battle with Lil Nas X in an ad for Doritos.

youtube

9. Sofia Vergara was in an epic ad with a bunch of brand mascots, including the Old Spice guy, Mr. Clean, and comedian Rob Riggle as a superhero who crotch-thrusted rolls of Bounty paper towels at people.

It turned out to be an ad for Procter & Gamble, which owns all of the brands.

(So that was a nice reminder that, like, four corporations own everything now.)

youtube

10. Speaking of epic ads, Tide did a series of commercials with Charlie Day, who flipped out after getting a stain on his shirt. The cool part was that he and his stained shirt appeared in ads for OTHER products . . . Bud Light, Pepsi, the movie “Wonder Woman 1984”, and the show “The Masked Singer”. (Check ’em out, here.)

youtube

11. The SquareSpace ad where Winona Ryder goes back to her birthplace of Winona, Minnesota was good . . . even though we knew it was coming.

youtube

12. People on social media seemed to get a kick out of Walmart’s science fiction ad about aliens shopping for groceries. It was PACKED with movie references, including “Arrival”, “Men in Black”, “Star Wars”, “Mars Attacks!”, and “Bill & Ted”.

youtube

13. Most companies used humor and celebrities to push their products this year. But a few went the sentimental route . . . and yes, Budweiser did it again.

Budweiser’s “Typical Americans” ad showed normal everyday people being kind, inspirational, and amazing to each other.

Microsoft ran an ad called “Be the One” about 49ers assistant coach Katie Sowers, who became the first woman to ever coach in a Super Bowl this year.

New York Life had an ad about the four different types of love.

youtube

And Google had an ad where an old guy asked his Google Assistant to help him find photos, videos, and memories of his wife, who’d passed away. Some people found it touching. Others found it unsettling to see Google basically brag about how much of our personal information they’re hoarding.

youtube

14. Cheetos teamed up with MC Hammer to push their new Cheetos Popcorn. The joke was that when you’ve got orange Cheetos dust on your fingers, you quote, “can’t touch this.”

youtube

15. John Krasinski, Chris Evans, and Rachel Dratch showed off their fake Boston accents in an ad for Hyundai’s new “Smart Park” feature. (Or, “Smaht Pahk”!)

youtube

16. Post Malone was in a funny ad for the new Bud Light Seltzer where the voices in his head caused him to destroy the inside of a convenience store.

youtube

17. An ad for Pringles featured characters from the animated show “Rick and Morty”. If you’re a fan of the show, you probably loved it. If you’ve never seen the show, you probably didn’t get the premise.

youtube

18. Michelob pushed its new organic Michelob Ultra Gold by promising to transition six square feet of farmland into ORGANIC farmland for every six-pack people buy.

youtube

19. Thrillist.com RANKED 47 Super Bowl ads, and they LOVED the Snickers ad that parodies the “We Are the World”-style charity songs, where everyone gets together to sing . . . and feed the EARTH a Snickers.

youtube

20. Finally . . . because we can’t go a Super Bowl without seeing Tom Brady . . . there was a Hulu ad that started out like it might be Brady announcing his RETIREMENT, but it was just a gimmick for Hulu. At the end, Tom said, quote, “I’m not going anywhere.”

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#best commercials #commercials #superbowl

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bluewatsons · 4 years

Text

Shellyne Rodriguez, How the Bronx was Branded, The New Inquiry (December 12, 2018)

Art moguls, real-estate developers, city institutions, and local elites unite in the name of development for the few, displacement for the many

Lisa Kahane, Falsas Promesas, The Bronx, NY, 1980

In July 2015, a slick, minimalist billboard appeared above the Bruckner Expressway in the South Bronx, proclaiming: “South Bronx—Piano District. Luxury Waterfront Living. World-Class Dining, Fashion, Art, + Architecture. Coming Soon.” The billboard featured the logo of Somerset Partners and their business associate the Chetrit Group and was funded by developer Keith Rubenstein. Earlier that year they had purchased land along the formerly industrial Bronx waterfront for $58 million, a process facilitated by Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. As with the renaming of other places in New York City like “SoHo” and “East Williamsburg” in previous decades, the billboard signaled with colonial arrogance that two working-class neighborhoods of color—currently known as Port Morris and Mott Haven—were now destined to be carved into new territories of luxury real-estate development. Two 25-story towers were to be constructed, with market-rate apartments starting at $3,500 per month. Angry Bronx residents revolted against the proposed name change, and it culminated with the “Piano District” billboard being defaced.

The billboard announced Rubenstein’s desire to purchase the South Bronx and build a luxury colony in one of the poorest regions of New York City, which for decades had been associated in mainstream media with stereotypical images of dereliction, crime, and violence. As suggested by the slogan of the billboard, an appeal to “art” would be crucial in transforming the image of the South Bronx from marginal working-class zone to among the most hyped-up frontiers of property speculation in the city—a process led by developers that would unfold with the full support of local and city government. Each of these entities—developers, local elected officials, and the city administration—weaponized the arts to move this initiative further along. It reveals an unnerving intersection of power that positions real-estate developers, the art world, and city government in an alliance to advance gentrification, as a process of systematic repopulation, further into poor and working-class communities.

Rather than simply erasing the cultural history of the Bronx, contemporary neoliberalism has worked to appropriate it in the service of rebranding. Though this process is spearheaded by figures like Rubenstein, Bronx-born elites have themselves been complicit in it, including homegrown celebrities like rapper-producer Swizz Beatz. In turn, the apparently more benign discourse of “social-practice art” is poised to play a role in this process as well, especially through the cultural initiatives of New York City Director of Cultural Affairs Tom Finkelpearl, whose work will inevitably be integrated with the pro-developer policies of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, even as Finklepearl makes appeals to community engagement and local cultural heritage.

During the 1970s, in the wake of the Vietnam War and large-scale deindustrialization, which led to massive unemployment, the Bronx was largely abandoned by city and state agencies. New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan espoused a philosophy of “benign neglect,” also known as planned shrinkage, in the borough, which essentially withdrew city services such as sanitation, street repair, and firehouses. What followed was the murderous mass torching of buildings and homes in the Bronx by racist, greedy landlords looking to collect fire-insurance money from these properties. By 1977, “the Bronx is Burning” would be a catchphrase heard all across the world as it became a symbol of urban decay, sending Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan into the bombed-out borough to pander for votes.

In the midst of this wave of plagues, young people in the Bronx formed a new culture, a radical avant-garde art movement that would shape culture globally: hip-hop. The South Bronx continues to be a beacon of art and culture. Young people there reinvent language, fashion, music, and dance at lightning speed. By the time this genius is “discovered” by some corporate exec, it is already stale, and these young people have moved on to new iterations of joy and survival expressed through this cultural practice.

Despite this genius, honorable cultural distinction reserved for the Bronx has not affected its political economy; marked as the poorest U.S. congressional district in 2010, the Bronx continues to rank among the areas highest in poverty, unemployment, asthma, obesity, and malnutrition in the country. In New York, the importance of the Bronx as the birthplace of hip-hop has only recently been embraced and acknowledged—but as a marketing tool. The hip-hop origin story has become a selling point for luxury developers in the South Bronx.

While the aesthetics of Keith Rubenstein’s first “Piano District” billboard in July 2015 were minimalist and matter-of-fact, the kickoff promotional event for his campaign to rebrand the South Bronx was an extravagant spectacle of the borough’s traumatic history. The event, entitled “Macabre Suite,” was held on Halloween 2015 in one of Rubenstein’s newly purchased warehouses slated for development on the waterfront. It was orchestrated by Salon 94 gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who commissioned artist Lucien Smith to create installations in the former piano factory where the party took place. The installations entailed a clichéd reimagining of the South Bronx in the 1970s. Bullet-ridden cars were installed in the space along with hobo-style bonfires in metal barrels. Rubenstein then chartered buses for A-list celebrities and art-world impresarios making their way from Manhattan. The social-media accounts of attendees swarmed with the hashtag of the night, #thebronxisburning, creating a mockery of the arson committed by slumlords decades earlier.

Backlash ensued in protests and in the press and Rubenstein receded from the media spotlight to let the controversy die down quietly, launching an offshoot of Somerset Partners under the name Somerset Hospitality Group. This entity began systematically opening local businesses in the vicinity of the Piano District project as a way to expedite the gentrification process. La Grata Pizzeria and Filtered Coffee were the first to open in the neighborhood. Locally, he invested in young Bronx designer Jerome LaMaar’s boutique 9J, the boxing gym South Box, and the nonprofit art gallery BronxArtSpace. Under the guise of “trying to do right by the community,” Rubenstein hired locals to work in his pizzeria and coffee shop. As he told NPR, “People who live in the public housing down the street work at the new pizza place. The boxing gym will offer scholarships to local kids. And residents who’ve been clamoring for access to the waterfront will finally get it.” Rubenstein uses the deceptive rhetoric of “job creation,” forming a human shield to ward off criticism, but the relatively few people who are employed by the local businesses Rubenstein floats do not outweigh the massive number of people who will be forced to move because they can no longer afford their apartments. Rubenstein will shamelessly parade around the recipients of his benevolence, but the wages they earn will not be enough to save them from displacement.

The Rubenstein strategy is simple: build a planned community by planting “Trojan horse” businesses in the area to hold space. Artists in search of cheaper rents will inevitably flock to the South Bronx, where the rent is quickly becoming unaffordable for long-time residents but is considered affordable to newcomers who have been priced out of Brooklyn. Struggling artists will inevitably respond, and through no fault of their own set in motion the displacement of the people who live there, before they are eventually displaced too. Rubenstein’s shallow investment in local businesses and talent takes advantage of a people who have historically been locked out of pursuing creative business endeavors. While this is the case, protests and boycotts of those local Bronx residents who crossed the hypothetical picket line and accepted Rubenstein’s patronage are obligatory. Rubenstein knows all too well that artists and the poor and working-class people of the Bronx are starved of funding and opportunity and seeks to exploit these circumstances for his own profit. Developer tactics range from “lending” spaces to artists and curators for pop-up shows in new developments built in the middle of poor and working-class neighborhoods to draw in potential renters, to funding start-ups and small-business ventures to create ambiance and selling points for neighborhoods still considered too “edgy,” to donating free studio space to up-and-coming artists as a way of generating interest in their new investments.

Positioning himself as a benevolent and pragmatic capitalist with a conscience, Rubenstein insistently suggests that support for local upstarts and artists today might absolve him from travesties committed tomorrow, that charity will exonerate him when he eventually bulldozes and displaces a whole neighborhood. Rubenstein mimes the philosophies touted by progressive liberals who believe that working within the system can produce some kind of “conscious capitalism,” but his philanthropy is a smoke screen. With a significant amount of local support Rubenstein was ready to re-announce his venture in the South Bronx. Rather than throw another party himself, he brought in a famous Bronx native armed with his own philanthropic project: rapper-producer Swizz Beatz.

Kasseem Dean, who goes by his stage name Swizz Beatz and is a well-known art collector, joined the board of trustees of the Brooklyn Museum in 2015. In August 2016, Dean was hired as “Global Chief of Creative Culture” for Bacardi and launched the project No Commission, an art fair that showcased the work of emerging artists of color alongside prominent African-American artists. Dean’s motto, “If you free the artist, you free the world,” was widely applauded. The No Commission model allowed artists to sell their work directly to buyers without paying the high commissions charged by galleries. This commission-free selling took place in the context of a four-day music festival that was free and open to the public, as long as attendees RSVPed on the Bacardi website. The audience was privy to performances by DMX, Q-Tip, Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel, Dean’s wife Alicia Keys, A$AP Rocky, Young Thug, Fabolous, and many more. There was a Ferris wheel on-site for partygoers to enjoy, and the outer walls of the venue were covered in a mural by TATS CRU, the legendary graffiti collective. The Bacardi was free.

“I think without the Bronx in the world, a big hole would be missing,” declared Dean nostalgically as he bicycled through his old neighborhood with A$AP Rocky in a promotional video for No Commission. But this nostalgia did not stop Dean from partying at the Macabre Suite event the year before, reveling in the mockery of the same people who were now the object of his sentimentality. In fact, the No Commission event served as a vehicle for reintroducing the Keith Rubenstein project to the Bronx, helping Rubenstein reframe the site where the Macabre Suite party had occurred. Dean’s street cred and social capital served as the ultimate buffer for Rubenstein’s project, though his musings about making the arts accessible to Bronx residents weren’t reflected in the event. The RSVP on the Bacardi website didn’t work for many, and the barricades surrounding the venue with manned NYPD officers certainly made it unwelcome to the people in the neighborhood.

As a result of Dean’s collaboration with Rubenstein, No Commission was heavily protested by groups such as Take Back the Bronx, Why Accountability, and a wide variety of folks from the community, among their numbers many outraged New York–based artists of color. When Dean was forced to respond, he applauded the “landlord” (Rubenstein) for pushing back his development project for two months so that Dean could hold the festival (the delay cost Rubenstein only $2 million). Ultimately, Dean treated the gentrification of the South Bronx as inevitable, and his indifference to how it would affect the borough that raised him was made plain in an interview he did with Vibe magazine about working with Rubenstein: “The plan is already done . . . so let’s go out with a blast.” The minute the No Commission event was over, Dean jet-setted out of the Bronx, leaving local artists and activists deeply divided. Some initiated conversations in the community about the implications of a famous hip-hop star from the Bronx lending his street cred to a developer. Others—missing the bigger picture entirely—focused on the fact that Dean didn’t include local Bronx artists in the show. Other artists who did participate resented the activists for protesting what they saw as their big break, since opportunities of this caliber for artists of color are rare. Meanwhile, Rubenstein made a clean getaway, as the debates around these complex issues turned the focus away from his development project.

The potential for social and economic advancement for a few puts countless long-time residents in danger of displacement. Hip-hop culture and its icons, from the oldest pioneers to the youngest up-and-coming emcees, are co-opted by developers who operate in the Bronx with strong government support thanks to Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. In 2016 Rubenstein hosted a $2,500-a-plate fundraiser at his home for Díaz’s reelection campaign. Díaz in turn champions gentrification as revitalization and is a long-standing ally of developers. He points to Rubenstein’s shiny new Potemkin village as an example of urban progress, and manipulates the desires of the people of the Bronx, who have endured decades of benign neglect. In his cozy relationship with real-estate interests, Díaz is not unusual among New York City politicians. Many of these politicians cower before the Rent Stabilization Association (RSA) and the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY), two powerful groups that lobby on behalf of landlords and fill the coffers of every politician from the Bronx to the state capital in Albany.

With a Bronx borough president in the pocket, Rubenstein is guaranteed to receive the proper governmental infrastructure necessary to accompany the lifestyle needs and aesthetic markers that define a neighborhood as “up and coming.” This appears as the revitalization of public spaces. The city plants new trees, replaces street signs, repairs and repaints roadways, and creates bike lanes. After years of neglect, public services beneficial to everyone are expedited solely because it serves a developer’s needs. In 2016, St. Mary’s Park, located a 20-minute walk from the Rubenstein property, received $30 million as part of the NYC “Anchor Parks” initiative. For Mott Haven, this upgrade of St. Mary’s Park is being accompanied by a new $50 million state-of-the-art architecturally avant-garde police station. The new 40th-precinct police station, whose completion is scheduled to coincide with the completion of the nearby Rubenstein project in 2019, will have a green roof, a courtyard, and a training area. It will also have the first-ever “community meeting room” located within the station itself. Inside the community room, a work of community-engaged art will be installed, commissioned by Percent for Art, a division of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, which requires that a percentage of the construction budget of new buildings be used for public art. This art project could be viewed as a step in building a bridge between the community and the police, but what it actually accomplishes is placing art in the service of an abusive and authoritative apparatus of state power that in turn maintains the institutional frameworks upholding the conditions for profitable capital accumulation.

Borinquen Gallo, one of the artists selected to create the installation, contributed a project informed by interviews she conducted with NYPD officers at the 40th precinct and neighboring Bronx residents. Her research culminated in the production of a pair of neon signs. An interior sign, facing the space where officers will hold briefings, will read “Black Lives Matter,” and an exterior neon sign, facing the community room, will read “Blue Lives Matters.” The work is intended to be an equalizer, an effort to bring the police and the community together, but Gallo’s effort collapses under her false assumption that the many generations of people who have lived under the authority of the NYPD, and who are routinely harassed, beaten, and arrested by police, can access equal power in a space located inside a police station. She assumes that the NYPD will not exercise its authority and just unplug the interior sign, leaving the Blue Lives Matter sign blazing and asserting the truth about the power dynamic Gallo glosses over.

The project at the 40th precinct is within the purview of the Department of Cultural Affairs, which is spearheaded by art-world darling and social-practice champion Tom Finkelpearl, who joined the de Blasio administration in 2014 and is charged with overseeing city funding of the arts. In his role as director of cultural affairs, Finkelpearl’s goal is to promote cultural diversity in arts programs citywide; he sees artists and cultural organizations as vital not only for the economic benefits they bring to the city but also for the integral roles they play in their communities. For this reason, Finkelpearl has championed social-practice art, which he understands as art that is not just isolated on the wall of a museum for judgement by an individual viewer but a form of collective participatory interaction engaging with public matters in an urban context.

To his credit, Finkelpearl understands clearly the dilemma faced by artists trying to pursue their practice while living in New York City. As he told Artnet News in 2014,

There are problems for artists related to housing, but the problem in general is that housing is too expensive, and actually I would combine that with the crisis related to student debt . . . But debt is also a big problem for low-income individuals in general. So how do you create coalitions to have artists and folks in the art world understand the coalitions that they should be building with other low-income folks? That’s fundamental to the vision of the administration.

However, as director of cultural affairs, Finkelpearl is beholden to the de Blasio administration. While his personal vision may not be aligned with the goal of assisting developers in hyper-development, his ideological underpinnings allow the city to co-opt his ideas and to bastardize them in the service of private development. This co-optation hinges on Finkelpearl’s idea of what praxis should be—an idea he derives from the famous community organizer and progressive liberal icon Saul Alinsky. Alinsky espoused “realistic pragmatism,” believing that one should focus on single issues and work within the system to achieve winnable goals. But in this approach, concessions won through struggle will always remain within the power structures that grant them. Finkelpearl could preside over the greatest overhaul in cultural equity this city has ever seen, but instead he risks inadvertently providing the channels for the city to utilize the arts as a path-clearing tool for predatory development.

In his book Rules for Radicals, Alinsky attempts to persuade future community organizers to follow his “pragmatic” approach, which he says must begin from the premise that we must “accept the world as it is.” In order to change it, one must work within the system. He is only interested in concessions that can be gained from the powerful elite, leaving undisturbed the structures that constrict freedom and hold time and space captive.

Writing extensively about the organizing he stewarded with his Back of the Yards organization, Alinsky propels the role of the organizer to the forefront as “the architect and engineer” of campaigns. This hierarchical positioning of the organizer over the community is also found within most union organizing, where bureaucratic negotiations are managed by a weak leadership that is uncomfortably cozy with the bosses. This absence of antagonism renders the unions largely powerless vis-à-vis their employers. Nonprofit organizations have also adopted Alinsky’s model of “single-issue,” service-oriented community work administered by a paid staff who, in order to keep their jobs, must prioritize the desires of the foundations that fund them over the needs of the community. At their core, philanthropic foundations aim to determine the priorities and limits of community organizing. Foundations requiring grant recipients to focus on a single issue is a tactic, and the Alinsky model of organizing follows suit.

In his classic 1969 text Black Awakening in Capitalist America, Robert L. Allen details the strategic interests of these powerful foundations, such as the Ford Foundation, the Urban Coalition, and the National Alliance of Businessmen, in the fight for civil rights and black liberation. The nonprofit foundation, he writes,

was designed to counter the potentially revolutionary thrust of the recent black rebellions in major cities across the country. This program was formulated by America’s corporate elite—the major owners, managers, and directors of the giant corporations, banks, and foundations which increasingly dominate the economy and society as a whole—because they believe that the urban revolts pose a serious threat to economic and social stability.

This mixture of counterinsurgency on the one hand and accommodation and integration on the other haunts what we now know as the “nonprofit industrial complex,” defined by Dylan Rodríguez as “set of symbiotic relationships that link together political and financial technologies of state and owning-class proctorship and surveillance over public political intercourse, including and especially emergent progressive and leftist social movements.” This helps explain why Finkelpearl’s Department of Cultural Affairs has commissioned artists to decorate a new NYPD station house in the Bronx: Both departments are arms of the same apparatus.

The Rubenstein development in the South Bronx is well underway and has been sold to Brookfield Properties for $165 million. Rubenstein remains in the South Bronx, as he has opened offices for Somerset along the Bruckner and now owns other properties in the area. The coffee shops are open and the real estate is booming. Ultimately, the wave was too strong to escape, and the people in the Bronx scramble now to get ahead of any city planning sessions for rezonings to try to stop these developer giveaways in their tracks. What developers, city officials, and politicians have ultimately taken from us is space.

In New York City, artists experience this crisis of the disappearance of space alongside other New Yorkers in many ways. Less space on the subway, which is constantly delayed and in disrepair. There is less space for work, as opportunities to sustain our lives continue to disappear and our hours and budgets are trimmed while the rent on our studios and our apartments increases.

Like many other major cities, New York has been reorganized into roommate-driven living systems where we barely restore our bodies, in order to repeat the process of sustaining our lives so we might continue to prop up the structures that continue to allot less time to actively pursue leisure or, more importantly, to organize and agitate for our freedom. How would an artistic practice that aims to disrupt alienation appear in our hallways, elevators, and all the spaces we share in our communities? What if these considerations were practiced outside of the art world, without foundation grants or institutional support as just an act toward freedom? Rather than only thinking about the aesthetic qualities of space, artists can aim to topple the neoliberal scaffold that holds capitalism steady above us, like a firmament.

#the bronx #new york city #gentrification #class stratification #displacement #poverty #the bronx is burning #south bronx #bill de blasio #neoliberalism #urban development #saul alinsky #Keith Rubenstein #art #neighborhoods

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bigyack-com · 5 years

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That Banana on the Wall? At Art Basel Miami It’ll Cost You $120,000.

Remember when Morley Safer famously — controversially — asked on “60 Minutes” whether Marcel Duchamp’s urinal and Jeff Koons’s vacuum cleaners were really art? Now, in the spirit of such questions, comes Maurizio Cattelan’s (somewhat overripe) banana pinned to the wall with gray duct tape.For three buyers at Art Basel Miami, who paid between $120,000 and $150,000 each for such pieces this week, the answer was unquestionably, Yes.And two additional artist proofs are going to museums.Needless to say, the bananas have prompted the very buzz that Mr. Cattelan has long been a master at generating (his golden toilet — recently stolen — being only the most immediate example).“Bananas! Art world gone mad,” blazed the cover of The New York Post on Friday. Emmanuel Perrotin, the founder of the gallery that represents Mr. Cattelan (Galerie Perrotin), said the flurry over the artwork “was totally unexpected.”Soon after his booth at the Miami art fair opened to V.I.P.’s on Wednesday, Mr. Perrotin said the gallery installed a GoPro camera in the booth to capture people’s reactions. “You have a work like the ‘Mona Lisa,” where everybody is coming to look at it, to take photos with it, to discuss it,” he said.But is this a groundbreaking work, an expensive inside joke or perhaps Exhibit A in a display of income inequality?“Cattelan is the Anti-Warhol,” said the art critic Robert Storr. “Andy insisted that the Coke you and I buy was democratic in that it cost us the same as it did Nelson Rockefeller. But obviously Maurizio has grasped that the rich will pay much, much more for a bespoke banana — bruises and all. Let ‘them’ eat $120,000-a-slice banana bread.”While acknowledging that #cattelan was now a popular hashtag on Twitter — with people posting images of all sorts of items taped to the wall (a croissant, a lemon, Nutella) — Mr. Perrotin stood by the seriousness of the artist, with whom he has worked for 27 years. “Maurizio is a pure genius,” he said. “I see the magic happening on different occasions."“Maurizio’s work is not just about objects, but about how objects move through the world,” he added. “Whether affixed to the wall of an art fair booth or displayed on the cover of The New York Post, Maurizio forces us to question how value is placed on material goods. The spectacle, which has been orchestrated so beautifully, is as much a part of the work as the banana.”Mr. Perrotin likened the artwork to Yves Klein’s “The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void,” in which the French artist sold empty space.Mr. Cattelan first conceived of the work as a sculpture shaped like a banana, the gallery said, and brought a banana with him when he traveled, hanging it in his hotel room “to find inspiration.” He tested several materials — resin, bronze and painted bronze — before deciding on using a real banana. The work is aptly titled, “Comedian,” and Mr. Perrotin said that it was the first new art that Mr. Cattelan has presented at a fair in more than 15 years.As an artist, Mr. Cattelan has continually kept the art world guessing. After his major 2011 retrospective at the Guggenheim, he announced that he was officially retiring from making art. But then he came back with the toilet in 2016. As to the lineage of the bananas themselves, they bear no special provenance. “My assistant bought it at a Miami grocery store,” Mr. Perrotin said of the one on display in his booth.Still unclear is what owners of the work will do when their bananas rot. “What is the big deal about changing the banana regularly?” Mr. Perrotin said. “Everybody changes flowers regularly.”A certificate that accompanies the work includes a manual for installation, a spokeswoman said, adding that, “Maurizio’s instructions are intentionally imprecise.”And to those who question whether a banana taped to the wall constitutes art worthy of $120,000? “All artwork costs a lot of money,” Mr. Perrotin said. “They buy an idea, they buy a certificate.”The purchase, Mr. Perrotin added, is part of the artwork. “If nobody buys it, nothing will happen,” he said. “The fact that somebody buys it makes the piece.”One of the bananas was bought by Sarah Andelman, a founder of the Paris concept store Colette, which recently closed; it was her first major art purchase. “I knew it was going to be a phenomenon,” Ms. Andelman said in a telephone interview from Paris, “this banana on the wall.”She said her husband, as a joke, had taped a banana to her desk when she returned from the fair. “I thought, ‘Wow, that was a fast delivery,’” Ms. Andelman quipped.But humor aside, Ms. Andelman said she had no buyer's remorse, having long admired Mr. Cattelan’s work. She plans to hang the certificate accompanying the banana in her office, if not perhaps the banana itself.“It really reflects our time,” Ms. Andelman said, “the absurdity of everything.” Source link Read the full article

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rickhorrow · 5 years

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10 To Watch : Mayor’s Edition 62419

RICK HORROW’S TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF JUNE 24

with Jacob Aere

Ahead of the NHL Draft, the NHL Board of Governors unanimously approved billionaire entrepreneur Alex Meruelo to purchase a majority share of the Arizona Coyotes. The sale is expected to be "finalized in July," according to the Arizona Republic. Sources said that Meruelo’s focus will "remain on securing a permanent future in Arizona for the franchise." NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said Meruelo is "committed" to finding a new arena in Arizona, adding that Gila River Arena in Glendale is "not viable long term.” The Associated Press noted that although the Coyotes "couldn't leave Arizona anytime soon due to NHL rules prohibiting new owners from immediately applying for relocation, Bettman pointedly didn't rule out the long-term possibility." As The Hockey News noted, one thing "working in the Coyotes’ favor” in this scenario is their Gila River Arena lease. That agreement runs season-to-season, and all the Coyotes have to do to renew it is “state their intentions" by December 31. If Meruelo is able to negotiate an arena deal elsewhere, extricating the Coyotes from their Glendale commitment will be relatively simple.

The Rays have "received permission" from MLB's exec council to "explore a plan in which they would play early-season home games in the Tampa Bay area and the remainder of the year in Montreal," according to sources. While the plan is in its "nascent stages, ESPN noted the Rays have embraced the two-city solution as the most feasible to saving baseball in the Tampa Bay area after years of failed attempts to build a new stadium in the region," according to sources. The Rays would play in new ballparks in "both the Tampa Bay area and Montreal," according to sources. The ability to play games early in the season in Florida "would preclude the need" for a domed ballpark, "cutting the cost of a new building.” The plan faces "several significant hurdles before being implemented," and it likely would not be in place until at least 2023. Reports of a potential schedule sharing plan have "surfaced several times in recent years from Montreal media." The Rays rank 29th in attendance only ahead of the Marlins, averaging 14,545 per game. While this bold plan is not likely to come to fruition, it is only the latest creative gambit by a pro sports team to strong arm its home city into ponying up funds for a new stadium.

Adidas is accused of discrimination by employee group. Adidas built its brand in the U.S. by embracing influential African-American athletes. However, fewer than 4.5% of the workers at the company's North American headquarters are African-American, per the New York Times, and members of that cohort say they feel ignored and sometimes discriminated against. This lack of diversity has led to multiple tone-deaf decisions that African-American employees say could put the entire brand at risk. One prime example of this is Adidas’ releasing all-white sneakers to commemorate Black History Month (which the company discontinued after an outcry). The European Union General Court also recently ruled against Adidas' claim that its famous three stripes, applied in any direction, deserve trademark protection. The case was a rare legal loss for Adidas, which has earned a reputation in the fashion world for aggressively litigating against anyone who uses a trio of stripes in their collections.

The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District board of directors held a public hearing on the proposed "special evening service to Warriors games" at Chase Center. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the proposed Chase Center ferry from Larkspur would "replicate an existing special event service to Giants games at Oracle Park, which costs $14 for each one-way ticket." Staff at the bridge district "recommend the board set the same fare for Warriors games to recover all operating costs." The Water Emergency Transportation Authority is "pursuing a separate ferry line to carry East Bay fans from its terminals in Oakland and Alameda.” While the Bay Area has long provided special ferry routes to sporting events, just as many other cities routinely provide expanded transit service for sports fans, New York and Seattle are among the only other major metropolitan areas in the U.S. to routinely get fans to games across the water.

Cubs considering sportsbook at Wrigley. According to Hashtag Sports, the Chicago Cubs have considered opening a sportsbook at Wrigley Field and at locations just outside of the Friendly Confines. Betting windows, automated kiosks, and even a full-blown sportsbook venue inside the stadium are among the options that have been considered by the Cubs and other Chicago professional franchises, as Illinois prepares to put it new sports gambling law into effect. MLB currently prohibits sportsbooks, including betting kiosks or windows, inside a club's stadium. The NBA has similar rules in place prohibiting retail sportsbooks from offering in-person betting inside arenas. The leagues are reviewing the Illinois legislation. If a bill is passed in Illinois, it would mean that other state-based teams, including the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, and White Sox, could also apply for a masters sports wagering license, which is said to cost $10 million. Also heating up Chicago this month – the annual Association of Luxury Suite Directors conference, where Rick will serve as master of ceremonies June 30-July 2.

USWNT enters mediation over salary disparity. In the three years after they won the 2015 World Cup, the U.S. women's national team generated more game revenue ($50.8 million) than the U.S. men's national team ($49.9 million), according to audited financial reports acquired by the Wall Street Journal. The women's team's ability to match, and even exceed, the men's team in game revenue is a key factor in their ongoing gender-discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. Last month, U.S. Soccer responded to the suit by emphasizing that any alleged pay differential is "based on differences in the aggregate revenue generated by the different teams and/or any other factor other than sex." But while men's games used to bring in far more money, the women's team has closed the gap. While our national teams also generate revenue from sponsorship deals and broadcast rights, as the WSJ points out, "U.S. Soccer sells broadcast rights and sponsorships as a bundle, not separately for each national team.” That makes it difficult to parse the value between the men's and women's teams. Here’s a fair solution: give the men and the women the same base salary and then allow them to earn bonuses based on ticket and merchandise sales and anything else that can be tracked.

Gatorade has a new media strategy to make video everywhere with an AR Snapchat lens. According to Digiday, Gatorade debuted a new augmented reality lens on Snapchat on June 20 as a follow up to the animated world of PepsiCo’s “Sisters is Sweat,” where the lens followed the journey of a young girl and her soccer ball. The upcoming AR lens, one of Snapchat’s portal lenses, allows the audience to get into the game and score the winning goal in AR. This is the latest Gatorade experiment with Snapchat, where the brand has found success with games like Serena Williams’ Match Point and filters. The brand had pivoted away from thinking about video in terms of linear, online, and premium channels to instead be wherever its athlete audience will be. That’s why the PepsiCo beverage brand is planning to spend 45% of its media budget on digital this year, an increase of 11% from 2018’s 34% on digital, with the majority of that spending focused on mobile.

NASCAR’s Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America raises $1.7 million for Victory Junction. 250 participants completed the charity’s longest route ever, nearly 3,700 miles – from Kent, Washington to Key Largo, Florida – to raise funds to provide a life-changing camp experience for children with chronic medical illnesses. According to Kent Reporter, the Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America celebrated its 25th anniversary with its funds raised directly to benefit Victory Junction. The ride’s donation supports maintenance programs, building projects, and summer camps. In addition to the more than $1.7 million raised by the ride, a $2 million donation was presented to the Kyle Petty Charity Ride Trust by the Andreas family in honor of a beloved Charity. Victory Junction has served as the Ride’s primary beneficiary since its establishment by Petty and his family in 2004 in honor of his late son, Adam. Since 1995, 8,650 riders have logged more than 12.4 million motorcycle miles and raised $18.5 million for Victory Junction and other children’s charities. Getting together to cruise across America, this year’s Ride featured several celebrity riders, including NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty and NASCAR legends Harry Gant, Hershel McGriff, and Donnie Allison who helped to create a near $4 million change for children.

Murray and other honorees get WISE/R. Octagon’s Lisa Murray was recognized by Women In Sports and Events (WISE) as a 2019 Woman of Distinction, for her continued support of women in the industry and making a mark as a pioneer of the sports industry. WISE/R Symposium, held in New York City on June 18, was the first of its kind to focus solely on the personal and professional development of women in the business of sports, WISE/R Symposium offered the opportunity to hear from top experts, learn career strategies, connect with peers, and more. Confirmed speakers besides Murray included finance journalist Jean Chatzky and industry leaders Anita DeFrantz, Janet Fletcher, Michele Roberts, and Suzanne Smith. This annual one-day event was produced by WISE. The WISE/R vent joins SportsBusiness Journal’s annual Game Changers conference and other prestigious events now honoring the significant contributions women have made to the sports industry.

Former NFL official Mike Pereira helps military veterans through officiating. In 2015, the former NFL official forged a second career as a highly respected rules’ expert on Fox Sports’ NFL and college broadcasts. The ex-official then met some military vets in Los Angeles and realized that these men had acquired the same skill set through the military that it takes to be a good official. That’s when Pereira realized he could give scholarships to vets to become officials, and get them off of the streets. Since the inception of Battlefields to Ballfields in 2016, more than 220 vets have been given scholarships to get them started on a career in officiating in football, baseball, and basketball. According to the Democrat & Chronicle, the money covers the cost of their training, uniforms, equipment, and local and national association dues for a period of three years. One thing Pereira loves about getting vets into officiating is that of all the people who could ignore the abuse from fans and coaches, the former official realized that no one is better suited than veterans.

#isolate #10 #10towatch

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