#only the most SPECIFICALLY tailored stream of content for me

[invinciblerodent]

hey in case any of you needed to see the so-called "horny confession" from a first person POV, it, uh.

it CERTAINLY HITS DIFFERENT, with the remarkably intense eye contact of it all.

this popped up recommended to me from this channel I had never seen before, and if I told you I've seen it like five times now, that'd be an underestimation

[vidreview]

VIDREV: "Short Seasons Are Killing TV" by Captain Midnight.

[originally posted august 29th 2024]

Captain Midnight is one of those creators i don't really follow because the vast majority of their work (mostly Big Corporate IP analysis) doesn't interest me, but every once in a while they'll come out with something that's EXTREMELY relevant to my interests. this one caught my eye because i've been on that "the streaming model is really bad for television" grind since 2018, and i'm always curious to see how mainstream perspectives on this stuff are evolving.

i'll just say at the start that this is a pretty good video. most everything i've watched by Captain Midnight has felt at the very least on the right track, if not always entirely on point, and the lack of cutesy overly familiar Content Creator-isms are a godsend from this type of channel. it makes for a bit of an odd duck for a full VIDREV, because i'm not here to discuss the shortcomings of what was said, but rather to take a closer look at what wasn't said.

in short, this is a video about how the now-standard 8 to 10 episode TV season in a post-streaming world has strangled much of what makes the medium unique, and he points to how many of the top-rated streaming shows are older titles with a hundred or more episodes as evidence (though he leaves out that streaming rights to shows like The Office have been the subject of contentious bidding wars in the past, a fact that would only strengthen his argument). he hits a lot of my personal favorite talking points: streaming tv is worse at good individual episodes, the idea of "filler" doesn't really make sense when applied to american television, the serial episodic structure lets you get to know characters better over time. near the end he pulls out the Netflix Marvel shows Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, each of which had a 14 episode first season that felt somehow overlong, despite their characters being literally tailor-made to support serialized week-to-week stories. these, he says, were an important early example of how the prestige streaming model encourages movie-like storytelling instead of TV-like storytelling. these are a good points, many of which i've made myself across my recent informal series of video essays about modern television writing practices.

but on the other side of all that analysis, Midnight's conclusion leaves something to be desired. here's the closing paragraph that jumped out at me, with my own added emphasis: "I love serialization on TV and I always have, I just think it can often be used better within the scaffolding of episodic stories. and for a while there it felt like TV was getting better and better at melding the two together into something truly interesting and special. but somewhere along the way that progress got lost, and many in the industry ended up thinking that serialization and short seasons were the shortcut to quality." take a good, long look at those bolded statements, and consider how important they are to Midnight's argument. after 17 minutes of wide-ranging and generally pretty good analysis of specific shows and recent trends, these three generalizations quietly paper over a gargantuan blind spot in order to get the script over the finish line.

first, "for a while there." for a while there refers to the internecine years between the dawn of the Netflix streaming era in 2011 and the eventual Wall Street-ification of all the media companies by 2018-19, when there was a big shift away from purely serialized television towards the more expensive "prestige" model we're so accustomed to now. what were the causes of this shift? what was actually going on "for a while there"? well, the 2007 writer's strike increased the writer's royalty take from home video sales, and gave them more bargaining power with networks. for this and a million other reasons, a lot of post-2007 shows saw a diminished episode-per-season count from 23 to 16-18. this was a huge boon to writers who now had more time to work on fewer episodes, meaning the quality of each individual episode shot through the roof. it helped that everyone coming into showrunning capacity at this period had years of experience working in the sitcom/cop-drama mines, developing a hunger for a show that could tell a continuous narrative within an episodic framework. with this new higher-quality television spreading away from cable-only networks into broadcast, suddenly everyone was talking about "the golden age of tv" and hyping up the medium as a place for nuanced, artful storytelling. Netflix saw where the wind was blowing and invested heavily into this trend, selling the idea that on streaming, there's no need for a set episode-per-season count for every show, no need for every episode to come in at a set length, no need to avoid more controversial adult topics for advertisers. of course, they very quickly reneged on that promise and have since become everything they promised not to be, but whatever. as Netflix succeeded, other networks decided they wanted to eat the streamer's lunch and develop their own services, making big deals with established names that made for great marketing. this meant a wave of well-publicized high-profile investment that pulled triple duty with audiences hungry for more mature media, creators hungry to make more mature media, and investors with dollar signs in their eyes. perhaps you can guess whose interests are the ones that actually matter in this equation.

but then after all that investment and quality increase, Midnight says, "somewhere along the way" the trend shifted, and "many in the industry" adopted the streaming model as the artistic ideal. now, hold on, wait. who in the industry? do you mean writers? directors? producers? executives? these roles each have wildly different relationships to the medium and to the stores of capital which allow it to be produced, and putting them all in a single consensus-bucket together as if they're all the same thing is wildly misjudged. you know what happened "somewhere along the way"? studios and streamers (and their increasingly powerful Wall Street backers) realized that favoring streaming over home video meant they didn't have to pay those costly royalties that were so painstakingly won in the 07 strike. you may recall that apocalyptically low streaming royalties were a major point of contention in the 2023 writer's strike. (the irony of Netflix starting as a DVD rental service is lost on no one.) like every service that emerges out of big tech, streaming was tailor made to break unions and steal profits without looking like that's what they were doing. they sold a big loud exciting bill of goods, got everyone to invest before regulators could catch up, made themselves an essential part of the creative economy, stole absolutely everything that wasn't bolted down while no one was looking, and left all their traditional unionized competitors scrambling to make up the shortfall. if this sounds familiar, that's because it is THE business model of the post-08-recession world. you might call it platform decay, or if you're Cory Doctorow you might call it "enshittification," but i'm gonna cut out the middle man and call it what it is: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. it's the enclosure of the commons in microcosm, the natural process of enclosure and monopolization inherent to an open market. as is always the case with their loud proclamations of innovation, tech has invented nothing new here. it's pretty much just What Capitalism Does.

we do not need bloggers to reinvent Marxism from first principles to understand what's happening. Marx already did that for us.

another key factor for understanding what happened "along the way" comes with the development of Mini-Rooms. instead of creating a crew of staff writers experienced at multiple levels of production who work for months together to write the scripts for a single season of television, streamers like Netflix would assemble small rooms of relatively inexperienced writers paid slightly above intern rates under the guidance of maybe one experienced showrunner that were only given a few weeks to pump out scripts to please investors. this has led to shows that often feel samey, rushed, and terminally inconsistent. now, instead of writers having more time to work on fewer episodes for the same (or greater) pay, they have less time to work on fewer episodes for worse pay and virtually zero royalties. this coincides of course with cost-cutting measures across the board in streaming, with producers desperate to decrease time on set wherever possible and eating the cost of breaking union regulations because Economies Of Scale Are Fucking Absurd, meaning everyone on a production has less time to do their work, which inevitably means that their work is worse. and with TV seasons being so drastically shortened, and the gaps between seasons so drastically widened (not to mention the expectation that few if any shows will make it past season 2 (because union contracts get a pay bump at season 3)), there are fewer opportunities for young filmworkers to gain experience, build connections with fellow filmworkers, and hone their talent pool over a period of years. a show isn't just its writers, directors, and stars after all, it's an entire business operation employing hundreds if not thousands of people. for a filmworker in the 90s or before, getting a gig on a popular show could be life-changing because it was one of the rare Hollywood situations that was relatively dependable for a long stretch of time. those kinds of jobs are increasingly rare, and the alternatives are starting to look more and more like undignified freelance work than a real sustainable career.

all of these factors and so many more have had the downstream effect of making the entire industry less stable, burning out promising young talent instead of developing it, discouraging others from trying to break into the industry in the first place, and lowering the baseline quality of popular media so the viewing public sees it as less valuable. perhaps you can fill in the blanks on the ensuing race to the bottom.

this is not the result of a creative consensus. this is not something that "many in the industry" just sort of randomly changed their minds about "somewhere along the way." this is an economic trend driven by economic forces far beyond the purview of any single working person's decisions. maybe you can find interviews that suggest otherwise, maybe there were lots of writers excitedly extolling the virtues of streaming media over traditional forms-- but those people are no less vulnerable to marketing hype than you are, and why should they have been more educated about the economic realities of streaming than we were? we are, all of us, simply reacting to systems in motion, trying our best to make sense of them, searching for the silver lining that keeps us from going insane at the instability of it all. this is why it's so important to have a materialist framework for your analysis-- without that anchor you're just judging by vibes, trying to divine an explanation from consumer trends and missing the forest for the trees. look not to the words of any given writer or actor or producer, but instead to the money, to the actual flow of material power. look at the victories of organized labor, and the resultant retaliations by organized capital. Midnight's thumbnail loudly states that "WE BROKE TV," but "we" didn't do a damn thing. our consumption habits didn't do this, the creative preferences of writers or directors or showrunners didn't do this-- it was rich people with lots of money who saw an opportunity to make even more money and took it, damn the consequences.

here's my problem with consumer-side criticism. it tends to see a hard dividing line between those who make media and those who consume it, and thus generalizes all of the makers into a single heterogeneous mass that can only be understood in the vaguest possible abstract. without a materialist economic framework for understanding the flow of power in these systems, consumer-side criticism can only go so far before it crashes headlong into a big scary Marx-shaped wall. there's a door to the other side only a few feet away of course, but it's rare for a critic in this mode to walk through it because I guess they see the business side of things as irrelevant or overly complicated. like, we're here to talk about the contents of media in a very layman's death-of-the-author sort of way, to judge trends on their own merits and not rely on outside sources to skew our perspective. this is fine when the scope of your analysis is relatively small, but as soon as you start asking questions like "why isn't [thing] as good as it used to be" your consumer-end framework fails you utterly. i'm not saying Captain Midnight is a uniquely craven paragon of this particular misstep by the way, in fact on the whole i'd say he's better about this than many. this is an extremely widespread problem for a generation of critics brought up after The End Of History, when trickle-down free-market hokum was adopted as Natural Law, leaving them only the empty feelgood individualist babble of neoliberalism to interpret the world. but it's not an insurmountable problem! i've yet to meet a commie my age that didn't start in that bubble and have to work their way out of it. i certainly made my share of embarrassing neoliberal apologia before finding the immortal science! it is the process of a lifetime to unthink these blind spots, and i point them out in all kindness in the hopes that others might avoid such mistakes in future.

and frankly, everyone is asking these "why is [thing] bad now" questions because it's begun to affect every facet of our lives. it's not just movies and television shows, it's basic web services, it's the USPS, it's the healthcare system, it's jobs and housing and education, it's everything. what is it, precisely, that you want to fix? you want to see better movies and tv shows? how do you propose to make that a reality, beyond "i hope that creators/audiences adjust their habits accordingly"? to my mind, this notable tension is a perfect opportunity to point people in the direction of an actual systemic cause, and thus an actual systemic solution. do not stop your analysis at "shorter seasons are bad and i hope they stop doing that" when you could help your audience think about these things in terms of class, labor, and solidarity, by giving them an illustrative example they might apply to their own working life. there is no fix to this macroeconomic trend in reform, no union so strong it can put a lance through the heart of capital's lust for profit. maybe bringing all this up in a video would feel too political for a lot of creators in this space, but the politics are gonna do what they're gonna do regardless and it's gonna be your problem (and your audience's problem!) sooner than later. i'm not saying every video essay should be a dedicated Marxist polemic, that would get old real fast, just that the current liberal individualist framework lets the real perpetrators off the hook and limits our ability to imagine better futures. if you want to feel like your fluffy unimportant media analysis is "justified" at a time of war, genocide, and crushing economic disparity, you might start by using them to normalize a more collective, materially-grounded way of thinking about the world. it's the little things that add up most in the long run, and you'd be surprised how easy it is to make "too political" into "too important to ignore" with a little strategic frog-boiling.

that's my opinion, anyway. this is still a pretty good video essay and i think you should go watch it. i'd also recommend Midnight's review of the Borderlands movie and the interminable nostalgia of modern Marvel movies for a bit of good fun.

[final note: at the start of the video, Midnight mentions that Adam Conover also released a video about the harms of streaming television at the same time, but that it goes in a very different direction. i'm gonna give it a watch and see how it stacks up by comparison. i expect that it will have a more materialist framework (since Conover actually works in the industry) and correctly identify where the problems lay. i also expect that he'll fall flat when it comes time to talk about solutions, because like Cory Doctorow he's invested in the anti-monopoly line, which fundamentally believes that if you just break up the monopolies then capitalism will be fine actually. i guess now i'll put that theory to the test, and if i find anything interesting i may end up writing about it.]

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Watched Grace Petrie's Butch Ado About Nothing last night. Tried to write a post about it, couldn't get my thoughts coherent. Not sure I'll be able to at all. This might be one of those ones that I'm not going to be able to analyze in a way that makes sense, it hit me with too much. I might just have to be purely a fan and not a critic on this one (I mean... not that I'm great at the critic angle normally, but I normally have something more useful to say than just "I really really loved that").

And I know that's a problem for Grace Petrie. I heard her on the Comedian's Comedian podcast recently, saying her very loyal audience can be a blessing and a curse because she struggles sometimes with how people love her and relate to her and feel validated by her but that means they'll love it no matter what she puts out there so she can't tell if a good audience response means she actually made something critically good.

So I've got one thing on that: I was slightly worried about how funny it would be, specifically because it's her first one. She has all these years as a performer, but only one comedy show, technically it's a debut hour, and I was prepared to be understanding if it's well written but not funny. I had no need to worry though, and that makes sense. She might not have written a stand-up hour before, but she's toured with comedians for years, she's been making jokes on stage, she knows how to do it. Some of the jokes I noticed sounded a little like the sort of thing a musician might say on stage between songs, quick little ones that segway into something else, like she'd tied a few of those together to make the hour, but I thought it worked really well. I like the little jokes musicians tell between songs, I thought it created an interesting style to do into stand-up based on it.

Okay that's all I've got for analysis. If I were an actual reviewer, I think I'd have to recuse myself from reviewing this show because I have a conflict of interest, that conflict being that it's more specifically tailored to be relatable to me than any comedy show I've ever seen. Though to be fair, I'm sure lots of straight guys with wives and kids have that conflict all the time, yet feel no need to declare it when praising a show for making relatable observations about the general human experience.

It's going to take me a lot longer than this to come up with something at all coherent to say about the content of the show. For now I'll say, this has jumped immediately into my top ten favourite stand-up hours. Also wins stand-up hour that's made me cry more than any I've ever heard before, so there's that (did also make me laugh, though, honestly it was funny enough so I'd believe she'd been doing it for years). Congratulations to Grace Petrie on winning that. Third stand-up show performed in 2023 to put tears in my eyes, but first of all time in terms of most tears. That's a good thing for a comedy show to win, right?

I'll try to have something better to say at some point, but for now, I highly recommend. (...Message me if you missed the stream and want to see it.)

[accordokite]

My Nijisanji DR is complicated, so I'm gonna try and explain the key important parts, not just for whatever audience sees this, but for myself. It'll help me put words to what I have in my head of this DR.

Firstly, all of the vtubers look just like their models offline. They act just like their characters, and all of the lore and their memories are real. In short, Vox is actually a voice demon, Doppio actually has his supernatural ability thing, et cetera. Magic is real in this reality, and both the XSOLEIL and ILUNA Institutes are essentially this reality's elite supernatural schools.

Nijisanji as an agency quite different from what we know it to be in this reality. ANYCOLOR as a company does not exist, and the company solely consists of the EN branch. So, when the Nijisanji company is referred to, there is no need to clarify which branch, since there is only one. I mainly did this for my own sake, since there is over 100 VTubers in Nijisanji JP. Without knowing much about them, it would be hard to pinpoint a reality and shift there.

The founder of Nijisanji is still Tazumi, and he does speak both English and Japanese (I could not remember if he spoke English or not, but I included it just in case). In my Nijisanji desired reality, VTubing is much more popular than it is in our current reality. Especially for a wealthy agency like Nijisanji, VTubers within this agency have about 10x more viewers on average than they do in this reality.

Essentially, VTubers are the new popular form of streamer, and can even be compared to music artists or actors with their level of popularity and content. Nijisanji is probably the most popular, but other well-known agencies such as HOLOLIVE exist here too.

As stated in my post where I gave a general description of all of my DRs, all of the Nijisanji members live together in one big magical mansion, known as the House of Nijisanji. This house is at the center of an artificially created island, created by the Nijisanji company. The island is named Riku Island, after Tazumi's given name. New VTubers will typically move in about two weeks before debut, to get settled into their dorms, meet their genmates, get tutorials on how their streaming applications work, etc..

Each wave has its own hallway, and although Staff live on the island, the only people who live in the house are Tazumi and the other VTubers. The hallway has individual dorm rooms for each member, that are highly customized and tailored to the person. There is a total of two floors when I will first shift, however, I suspect that eventually more floors will need to be built as more waves are added.

My wave is Nijisanji's 8th wave, Altarana. Before I explain the wave and how I got in, it is important to explain that in this reality, not all members auditioned. Some waves were personally scouted out, while others did audition. More specifically, LazuLight, OBSYDIA, Ethyria, and Nijisanji's 9th wave, TEAM SOS (inspired by those who sang the "Let's Get it Started" cover on YouTube, hosted by Aruvn) all auditioned to be in Nijisanji in this reality. This means that Luxiem, Noctyx, ILUNA, XSOLEIL, and Altarana did not audition, and were hand-picked based on wave themes Nijisanji wanted to do.

My wave is interesting, because before I was a VTuber, I was actually a vocaloid producer. I would produce songs and covers, which is why me and my four other genmates were picked.

I also have a few Nijisanji VTubers, both boys and girls, listed to be a potential S/O in my script. I also included already existing and official couples for this reality.

I think that so far, these are the most important details about the DR. Some details I am not quite comfortable sharing yet, and so I will end this post for now.

[creativesgenie]

"5" Powerful Strategies For Successful Social Media Marketing!

In the current digital era, social media isn’t just an option—it’s essential. Businesses that master social media marketing are not just surviving but thriving. However, with so many platforms and strategies out there, how do you know what truly works? Here are 5 social media marketing tactics that you need to implement to elevate your brand and outpace your competition.

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4. Utilize Data-Driven Personalization

Personalization has moved from being optional to essential. Social media platforms provide a wealth of data that can be used to create highly targeted and personalized content. By analyzing user behavior, preferences, and demographics, you can tailor your social media campaigns to resonate with specific segments of your audience. Whether it's personalized ads, custom content recommendations, or targeted messaging, using data to drive your social media strategy ensures you’re delivering the right content to the right people at the right time. A digital marketing agency can leverage this approach to craft bespoke social media post ideas that cater to individual client needs. This level of personalization is crucial, especially for businesses seeking social media marketing near me solutions that resonate with local audiences.

5. Adopt a Multi-Platform Approach

Focusing all your efforts on a single platform is a common mistake. To maximize your reach, it's essential to adopt a multi-platform approach. Each social media platform has its own unique strengths and audience demographics. By diversifying your social media presence across multiple platforms, you can reach a broader audience and reduce the risk of losing your entire following if one platform’s algorithm changes. This approach is particularly beneficial for a digital marketing agency that manages social media content for digital marketing agencies across various industries. Incorporating this strategy into your social media management services ensures that your clients' messages are seen by the right people.

If you’re looking for "social media marketing near me," Creative's Genie is here to elevate your brand. Our expert team crafts tailored strategies that drive real results. Let us handle your social media management while you focus on growing your business. Contact us today to avail yourself of affordable social media marketing plans.

[speed-seo]

How to Dominate Search Results: Proven Strategies for Organic Traffic Growth

Did you know that a staggering 60% of online experiences begin with a search engine ? Imagine the frustration of pouring your heart, soul, and money into your website, only to have it languish in obscurity.What if your ideal customers are actively searching for the products or services you offer, but they can't find you? The good news is there's a solution: mastering the art of organic traffic growth.But how do you achieve this without getting lost in the ever-expanding online sea?How do you ensure your website isn't just another grain of sand on the digital beach?The answer lies in mastering the art of attracting visitors organically – without relying on paid advertisements. It's about making your website so appealing to both users and search engines that it naturally rises to the top of search results.In this comprehensive guide, we'll expose the facts that helps dominating search results and driving a steady stream of organic traffic to your website. We'll break down key strategies, tactics, and techniques that experts use to achieve online visibility and growth, all without getting bogged down in jargon or technical complexities.Whether you're a seasoned business owner, a budding entrepreneur, or a passionate blogger, this guide is your roadmap to unlocking the full potential of your online presence. Get ready to discover how to make your website a magnet for organic traffic and watch your visibility soar to new heights. Cracking the Code of Discovery Imagine the internet as a vast library. Your website is a single book on its shelves. How do readers find your book amidst millions of others? That's where search engines come in. The Role of the Librarian: Search Engines 📚 Search engines act like digital librarians. They constantly scour the web, reading (or "crawling") every webpage they find. They take notes on each page's content, creating an index. When someone types a search query, the engine consults its index, picking out the most relevant "books" and presenting them as search results. The Power of the Right Words: Search Terms 🧲 People use specific words and phrases to find what they need. Let's say you're a baker specializing in gluten-free bread. Potential customers might search for "best gluten-free bread recipe" or "gluten-free bakery near me." These are search terms. The Key to Visibility: Aligning with Your Audience 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 To get your website noticed, it's crucial to understand what your target audience is searching for. By aligning your website's content with those search terms, you increase the chances of appearing in relevant search results. 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By paying attention to the data, you can steer your website in the right direction, ensuring a steady stream of organic traffic and long-term success. Your Journey to Online Prominence Starts Now 🚀 Ranking top on search results might seem daunting, but with the right knowledge and tools, it's entirely achievable. By understanding how search engines work, creating captivating content, optimizing your website's technical aspects, building a reputable online presence, and tracking your progress, you can unlock the full potential of your online visibility. Remember, this is not a one-time fix. It's an ongoing journey of learning, adapting, and refining. The digital landscape is constantly evolving, so staying informed and embracing change is key to maintaining a strong online presence. But the rewards are well worth the effort. A website that ranks high in search results translates to increased traffic, greater brand awareness, and ultimately, more opportunities for growth and success. So, are you ready to embark on this exciting journey? Take the first step today. Implement the strategies outlined in this guide, track your progress, and watch as your website rises through the ranks. It's time to make your mark in the digital world. Additional Resources: - Google Search Central: Explore Google's official resources for understanding how search works and improving your website's visibility. - Website Speed Test Tools: Use tools like GTmetrix or Pingdom to assess and improve your website's loading speed. - SEO Checklists: Find comprehensive checklists online to ensure you're covering all the bases for optimal search engine optimization.Your success starts with a single click. Start your journey towards dominating search results today! Read the full article

[devasheesh12]

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[bmebookmyessay]

Write End to Academic Stress With Expert 'Write My Essay for Me' Assistance

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[mineofilms]

YouTube Age Restriction Content on Roku

You own a Roku SmartTV. You download the YouTube app onto your RokuTV. You connect your YouTube account.

You are ready to start streaming videos from YouTube through your TV. You go to watch and one of two things happen. The first is the video glitches out and plays the next video inline. The second thing that happens is you receive an error messages that says; "Something went wrong," "Playback error," or "An error occurred, please try again later." The one I kept getting was “Something went wrong. Log into your Google account and verify your age.”

This would not happen all of the time, but would happen on some videos while never happen on most. It sort of behaves like it is an age restriction thing. However, I never have any issues on any other devices with my YouTube account except on the RokuTV. Videos in my watch later would either glitch out and it would skip the video, playing the next one in the queue or it would give me the playback error message. I’d switch to another account and watch the same video and it would work without any hitches. I go back to my primary account it would do the same thing on those specific videos.

After spending a few hours of looking stuff up on the Roku website forums and YouTube videos on the subject I was able to navigate to what the issue “probably” was. The forums were useless. There was some obvious checks and balances suggested. However, most of the suggestions were dead-ends while others didn’t even make any IT sense. The support staff that would chime in from time to time on the thread was either bot responses, (likely) or customer service agents clearly not reading what is being said and that, is like, tech 101. If they are missing that bad then get help from other areas I say. Me being 25+ years in network admin/IT doesn't really care who is at fault with this. Roku is a device for non-technical people so every help question should not be a thousand word essay on technical aspects about Google/YouTube/Roku written in this "I know more than you" mentality. I did get this fixed; but the forum was not much help.

If you experience this glitch follow these steps. You will not have to factory reset your RokuTV or anything crazy like that. All your troubles are with the YouTube app on the TV and how it was originally installed and signed into:

1) Check age/birthday is fully filled out on your Google account associated to the YouTube account in question. I went ahead and also made my birthday public. I cannot verify whether or not this makes a difference. I did it just to be certain that I could get it working. I know people want to hide their personal information, but many of these apps now require as much data about you as it can so it can tailor your experience. They also do this for advertising purposes, of course, but if you want access to the app and all its features you got to give them access to your behaviors and data. If your correct birthday is already there you can skip this step.

2) Now we need to either Reset and/or Remove the YouTube app on your RokuTV. On your RokuTV, go to the YouTube app. Click settings and click reset app. You can either remove the app and reinstall or just redo the credentials. Resetting the app, basically does this, but I went ahead and did a remove/reinstall of the app just to be certain. It only takes a minute. I only wanted to do this once anyway.

3) Reboot your Roku the proper way. Settings --> System --> Power --> System Restart.

4) Reinstall the YouTube app on your RokuTV.

5) Be sure to sign in with your main/primary YouTube account if you have multiple accounts first. If you have multiple accounts on the same email, which you can do, just make sure your primary is the first/primary account that you sign into. I have 2 accounts on the same email, by which one of them is an old legacy YouTube account. That for me was more than likely the issue on my side of this subject.

6) Once I put back in my credentials with my legacy account as the primary account, which it is, the videos that were being skipped due to age restrictions began to play. I had no more glitches either and it seems fixed for now.

For me, I had the newer account on the TV first and it was a year before I realized I had 2 flippin' YouTube accounts. I did not realize years ago that when you create a Google account, mainly a Gmail account that it automatically creates you a profile for YouTube. My initial YouTube account was setup in 2006 before one had to have a Gmail to use YouTube as an account holder. The settings are radically different since YouTube was purchased by Google later in 2006. Some of the legacy settings from before absolutely do not transfer verbatim from account to account. It is important if one has an older YouTube account that is their main YouTube account, like mine, that you have to pay attention to such things, which I did not at the time. Now I always run into some sort of issue with permissions or sync issues. I have most of this fixed now and wrote a blog about my last Roku/YouTube issue. I keep seeing online that these same issues are not easy to find the specific workarounds to fix these issues. I wrote that blog and this one so that there is something coherent on the INTERNET solving these issues. More specifically to non-tech people. I have found they have the most issues with getting technology to work for them.

Hope this helps people that stumble upon this BLOG. My solutions came from years and years of just tinkering with these devices and understanding how these things work. I mean when you walk into a Wal-Mart and purchase a 50-inch SmartTV for under $300; what do you expect?

 YouTube Age Restriction Content on Roku by David-Angelo Mineo 5/29/2023 1,041 Words

[hellskitchenswhore]

About Me

Hello everybody, and welcome to my Recommendation lists of stories about our favorite whores of Hell's Kitchen. I decided to make these lists mostly because I'm an addict and I need a constant stream of Matt Murdock content to feed the brain goblin. I'm also worried that gorgeous pieces of writing will get lost in my blog forever, and I'd like to be able to go back and appreciate them. Maybe you'll appreciate them too :)

A Note to Authors

The most important thing to remember about my rec lists is that they are my rec lists - they are tailored to my tastes specifically. What I mean is that if your work doesn't appear here, it is in no way a reflection on your work. Maybe its delightful, delicious smut but a little too much for my delicate heart, or there was a specific kink or pet name that doesn't do it for me. Maybe there's something in it thats totally innocuous but triggers my own unique history. I've read so many fics that are absolutely wonderful but don't make it on my lists for personal reasons. That doesn't mean that its not amazing writing, and it doesn't mean that its not exactly what a ton of other people are going to go batty for! I really have spent a lot of time thinking about it, and finally decided that being an impartial archivist for all Matt Murdock fics ever written is not my job and that I'm allowed to have personal preferences. If your goal is to reach as many people as possible, I strongly recommend posting on Ao3!

That said, please remember that I'm human, and I'm also kind of dumb. The brain is mush at the best of times, and sometimes that means I don't consider things from every angle. But I truly only want to show respect, appreciation, and admiration to you beautiful artists. So if there's anything that upsets you or anything that rubs you wrong, please please please tell me! I love getting feedback, I promise I won't be the slightest bit offended or upset. If its something bad, I guarantee that I just didn't even consider it that way and I'll be so grateful to you for bringing it to my attention. I promise you, 99% of the time I'm just a ding dong and didn't think of it that way. I want these lists to make people happy, ESPECIALLY the writers. You are my heroes and I want to be worthy of these gifts that you give to us so freely.

Disclaimer

To be clear - none of the works listed in these anthologies are mine. I am not a writer. This is strictly a collection of works that beautiful artists have posted here on tumblr out of their own generosity. If there are any mistakes, please feel free to let me know.

[its-not-a-phase-mom-i-d8-demons]

The Undateables Reaction to MC having a Nightmare

Pairings: Diavolo x MC, Barbatos x MC, Simeon x MC

Warnings: FEM!READER!!!, swearing?, kissing, a miniscule mention of blood and zombies lol, luke being a sweetie pie (as per usual), just comfort in general bc i’m needy, mention of a panic attack, big daddy diavolo can fucking rail me ok?

A/N: people make fun of me for liking diavolo :((  so I had to get this out of my system

Diavolo

Confused

I mean, he’s had nightmares before of course, but he’s never seen a human have one

He didn’t even know humans had the capacity to dream until a few nights before

So when he wakes up to you writhing around in the silken sheets, crying and begging some unknown entity to “please stop” and “don’t hurt him” with tears soaking your face, he was stumped

You seemed distressed so he did the only thing he could think of; wake you up

Now, this baby

He didn’t know, ok?

When he grips you firmly by the shoulders and gives you a good shake he only succeeds in scaring you a lot more

Your hand shoots up and you drag your nails across his pretty face in blind defense and wake up, tangled in mounds of silk, with a hulking figure hunched over next to you

Falling off the bed, you scramble as far as you can away from the monster and into a corner of the room

Barbatos, after hearing all the commotion, enters the room at that moment, allowing light from the hallway to flood the dark bedroom

“My lord, MC, what on earth is going on?!” He asks, noticing you crouching in the corner and he goes to you and rests a gentle hand on your shoulder, “My lady, are you alright? What did the young lord do to you?”

“Barbatos?” You whimper, tentatively peeking up from your hands.

“You can tell me, I’ll deal with him myself.”

“MC? Where’d you go, dove?” Came Diavolo’s disoriented voice from the bed, “Why’d you scratch me?”

A second later Barbatos was on his feet in a somewhat defensive stance, protecting you from any advance the demon lord could make.

You were still behind him crying less stormily, but crying nonetheless. Noticing how the butler was posed, you only started crying harder.

“Barbatos, please, i-it wasn’t him! It was me!” You said, emotion choking your sweet voice, “I h-had a bad dream and when I woke up, I hurt him!” 

Cocking a brow, the butler strode toward the light switch (i think they have electricity??) and upon flicking it on, understood what had happened.

The demon lord was still slightly hunched over on the mattress, nursing a scratched, bloody cheek, you were crouched against the far wall, sniffling and crying out of fear, the bed was a mess…

“Correct me if I’m wrong MC, did you have a nightmare?” He asked gently, “Can you move?”

“M-hm.” You nodded shakily, tears stil streaming down your flushed cheeks.

“Let me help you stand… there. Lord Diavolo, humans are fragile creatures, especially after such an ordeal. I trust you can calm her down?”

“Of course! Ah, Barbatos, would you mind getting some tea and possibly a bandage or two?”

“My thoughts exactly. I will be back promptly.”

Then the butler left the room.

Diavolo dabbed at his face with the shirt he’d discarded before getting into bed and turned to you. “MC, love, what happened?”

With a sob, you threw yourself into his arms, buried your face in his chest, and began to cry again. It was a terrible dream, all seven brothers and the rest of the devildom, including Barbatos had turned into zombies. After running and fighting for most of the dream, you and the Demon King had finally been cornered by an endless horde of zombies and slowly you realized there was no hope. Just as the brothers were about to pounce on your royal boyfriend, he’d looked behind him and said, “I’ll always love you my darling MC-” and that’s when a zombie grabbed you and started shaking you violently, effectively and abruptly rousing you and causing a minor panic attack.

Diavolo stroked your hair oh so gently until Barbatos returned with the tea and handed you a cup of the steaming, sweet-smelling liquid to calm your nerves. After taking a few teary sips, the warmth spread down to your toes almost immediately and you were able to stop crying.

“Talk to me,” He murmured, tilting his face to Barbatos while he cleaned and wrapped his wound, his amber eyes on you all the while, “What happened?”

“Bad d-dream,” You stuttered, clutching the delicate teacup with white knuckles, “The brothers got hurt, t-turned into zombies to be specific a-and it was just us but then they got you and Mammon started screaming a-and shaking me-”

“That was me, dove. I sincerely apologize, I didn’t know what was wrong, nor a way to properly handle it.” Diavolo brushed stray tears from your flushed cheeks and pressed a gentle kiss to your temple, “Forgive me?”

You nodded, sighing with a body-wracking shudder and settled back into your boyfriend’s muscled arms.

“My Lord, in case this happens a second time, why don’t you ask MC how she would prefer to be roused from such a dream. These things can be traumatic for their minds, it’s best to put her at ease.”

“Indeed.” The tanned redhead nodded, holding out your empty teacup for the butler to refill, “Dearest, how can I help?”

Barbatos

Knows this happens to humans and wasn’t surprised when you had one only a few weeks into staying at the palace

Prolly read a book or seven to learn this human bs

You claimed it was only from your new surroundings at the breakfast table, as to but the Lord and his butler at ease, but Barbatos is very intuitive

In fact, he’d seen you walk from your bedroom to the bathroom, hugging a blanket around yourself and sniffling, looking very frightened for a reason he didn’t know

Now he did

Hmm

The next evening, around two in the morning, you come running out of your room crying, hoping to find someone, and eventually, you did

Thinking it was one of the brothers, you crashed into them, wrapping your arms around their waist and burying your face in their chest, crying stormily until you felt the demon awkwardly pat your head with a gloved hand

…

Lucifer didn’t wear his gloves to bed… did he?

Did he even go to bed in the first place?

Probably not

Since when did Mammon wear a tailored waistcoat to bed?

Levi smelled different too, more like tea leaves, dishsoap, and ink than the salty ocean and fabric softener you were used to

Satans forearms were thicker than these as well; hours of holding books to his face gave him a little muscle

Where was the gentle coo and giggle you always got when you snuggled with Asmo?

Where the pecs your head usually rested on when Beel gave you one of his otherworldly hugs?

Why wasn’t Belphie’s shaggy hair tickling your face?

Wait

You look up and to your horror and embarrassment, it’s Barbatos. Not Beel, or Mammon, or Asmo (who you had been hoping to see) instead, it’s an extremely handsome butler with a very concerned look on his face

“MC? What happened?”

“B-Barbatos! I-I I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-” You begin to back away, stuttering and tripping over your words while tears continue to soak the collar of your nightshirt, but before you can escape, gentle hands stop you.

One slender, gloved hand cups your cheek, brushing away tears, and another gently holds the small of your back.

“It’s alright, no need to apologize,” He spoke softly as not to scare you any further, “Come with me, I’ll make us some tea.”

The butler wraps you in a blanket and makes you comfy on the couch in the sitting area before starting the hot water and returning to the room.

He stood in the doorway awkwardly until you asked in a tiny voice, “Would you… would you mind s-sitting with me?”

“Of course.”

Not too close at first, but eventually after you cuddle up to his side, Barbatos settles an arm around your shoulders and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear.

“What happened?”

“Um…” You kept your eyes downcast, knowing you’d told him your dreams weren’t a big deal, but he knew.

“Dreams again?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Tell me about this one.”

“You g-got crushed by a m-massive stack of papers a-and Lord Diavolo was just laughing. I couldn’t move, I-I wanted to help, I just-” You sighed, “Th-Then a big stack of paperwork started falling toward me too a-and I woke up before I got squished. I know it’s silly and ch-childish but it was terrifying. I hope I didn’t mess up your schedule.”

“That would be rather upsetting, I’m sorry MC,” He murmured, getting up for the whistling kettle, “But don’t think like that, it’s normal. One moment please.”

You nod and sink deeper into the luxurious warm cocoon the butler had made for you. He hands you a teacup and settles down next to you once again.

“Is there anything I can do to make these dreams stop?” He asks softly, dabbing your face with a handkerchief, “The Demon Lord requested for your utmost contentment during your stay, so-”

“C-Can I stay with you?” You blurted out, quickly taking a gulp of hot tea and instantly regretting it.

Even in the dim light, your convulsing form noticed a light pink tint on his cheeks as he rushed to get you water.

Simeon

He’d only ever known Luke to have nightmares (since he is baby) so you can imagine… 

Deadass, when he wakes up to you writhing around and screaming at two in the morning, he almost called an exorcist

…

In the devildom

Does anyone else see the irony-

Nevermind

“LUKE, SOLOMON! WHAT’S WRONG WITH MC??? SHE’S CRYING AND SCREAMING ALL OF A SUDDEN, I THINK A DEAMON GOT HER-” *heavy scared boyfriend breathing*

Solomon was kicking Luke’s ass at Uno (yes, at two in the morning) so both of them follow the distressed angel back to his room

You’re awake, curled up in a little ball against the headboard, rocking back and forth and crying into Simeon’s pillow

“MC?” Luke asks, a little scared as he approaches the bed.

You lift your head just enough to see his pretty baby face and then reach for him, caressing his cheek to make sure the tiny angel was really there

“You ok?” He murmurs, resting one of his smaller hand on your own, “Bad dream I’m guessing?”

You nod, lip trembling with emotion and residual fear, “Don’t go-” You begged, “I don’t know where Simeon went…”

“I’m here love, right here.” The taller angel now knelt down next to where Luke was standing, took your other trembling hand, and pressed comforting kisses to your knuckles.

You whisper a soft ‘thank you’ to Luke and Solomon as they take their leave. As soon as the door shut behind them, Simeon slid under the blankets next to you and let you attach yourself to him like a koala while his pretty nose fell into your messy locks.

Gradually, your breathing went back to its normal, comforting tempo and you began to melt into his embrace. He seemed to radiate warmth to the very marrow of your bones and soon, everything was ok again.

“What’s troubling you so, love? What caused this?” He asks, running slender fingers through your tousled locks.

“I don’t know,” You sigh, breathing in his heavenly musk, “I guess I’ve been a lot more stressed than usual. Exams are coming up and it’s hard to study when I’m at the brother’s beck and call since they can’t get along for more than 3 seconds. Plus, these classes are a lot more difficult than the ones we have in the human world.”

The angel nods, giving you a squeeze and a reassuring kiss to the crown of your head, “I can see why. Unlike you, most humans are very simple minded and plain dumb. I’ve already learned this material because of my ranking as an angel, so if you need a tutor, I’m here to help, sweetheart.”

“I’d like that.” You smile, tender aquamarine orbs meeting your own before closing and lips meeting for a slow, sensual dance of your unbounded love for eachother. Your interlocked fingers gave a squeeze before he released you, panting.

“Anything for my seraph.”

[popolitiko]

Artificial intelligence

How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation

The company’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem

Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, a director of AI at Facebook, was apologizing to his audience.It was March 23, 2018, just days after the revelation that Cambridge Analytica, a consultancy that worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election campaign, had surreptitiously siphoned the personal data of tens of millions of Americans from their Facebook accounts in an attempt to influence how they voted. It was the biggest privacy breach in Facebook’s history, and Quiñonero had been previously scheduled to speak at a conference on, among other things, “the intersection of AI, ethics, and privacy” at the company. He considered canceling, but after debating it with his communications director, he’d kept his allotted time.

As he stepped up to face the room, he began with an admission. “I’ve just had the hardest five days in my tenure at Facebook,” he remembers saying. “If there’s criticism, I’ll accept it.”The Cambridge Analytica scandal would kick off Facebook’s largest publicity crisis ever. It compounded fears that the algorithms that determine what people see on the platform were amplifying fake news and hate speech, and that Russian hackers had weaponized them to try to sway the election in Trump’s favor. Millions began deleting the app; employees left in protest; the company’s market capitalization plunged by more than $100 billion after its July earnings call.

In the ensuing months, Mark Zuckerberg began his own apologizing. He apologized for not taking “a broad enough view” of Facebook’s responsibilities, and for his mistakes as a CEO. Internally, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, kicked off a two-year civil rights audit to recommend ways the company could prevent the use of its platform to undermine democracy.Finally, Mike Schroepfer, Facebook’s chief technology officer, asked Quiñonero to start a team with a directive that was a little vague: to examine the societal impact of the company’s algorithms. The group named itself the Society and AI Lab (SAIL); last year it combined with another team working on issues of data privacy to form Responsible AI.

Quiñonero was a natural pick for the job. He, as much as anybody, was the one responsible for Facebook’s position as an AI powerhouse. In his six years at Facebook, he’d created some of the first algorithms for targeting users with content precisely tailored to their interests, and then he’d diffused those algorithms across the company. Now his mandate would be to make them less harmful.Facebook has consistently pointed to the efforts by Quiñonero and others as it seeks to repair its reputation. It regularly trots out various leaders to speak to the media about the ongoing reforms. In May of 2019, it granted a series of interviews with Schroepfer to the New York Times, which rewarded the company with a humanizing profile of a sensitive, well-intentioned executive striving to overcome the technical challenges of filtering out misinformation and hate speech from a stream of content that amounted to billions of pieces a day. These challenges are so hard that it makes Schroepfer emotional, wrote the Times: “Sometimes that brings him to tears.”In the spring of 2020, it was apparently my turn. Ari Entin, Facebook’s AI communications director, asked in an email if I wanted to take a deeper look at the company’s AI work. After talking to several of its AI leaders, I decided to focus on Quiñonero. Entin happily obliged. As not only the leader of the Responsible AI team but also the man who had made Facebook into an AI-driven company, Quiñonero was a solid choice to use as a poster boy.

He seemed a natural choice of subject to me, too. In the years since he’d formed his team following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, concerns about the spread of lies and hate speech on Facebook had only grown. In late 2018 the company admitted that this activity had helped fuel a genocidal anti-Muslim campaign in Myanmar for several years. In 2020 Facebook started belatedly taking action against Holocaust deniers, anti-vaxxers, and the conspiracy movement QAnon. All these dangerous falsehoods were metastasizing thanks to the AI capabilities Quiñonero had helped build. The algorithms that underpin Facebook’s business weren’t created to filter out what was false or inflammatory; they were designed to make people share and engage with as much content as possible by showing them things they were most likely to be outraged or titillated by. Fixing this problem, to me, seemed like core Responsible AI territory.I began video-calling Quiñonero regularly. I also spoke to Facebook executives, current and former employees, industry peers, and external experts. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because they’d signed nondisclosure agreements or feared retaliation. I wanted to know: What was Quiñonero’s team doing to rein in the hate and lies on its platform?

But Entin and Quiñonero had a different agenda. Each time I tried to bring up these topics, my requests to speak about them were dropped or redirected. They only wanted to discuss the Responsible AI team’s plan to tackle one specific kind of problem: AI bias, in which algorithms discriminate against particular user groups. An example would be an ad-targeting algorithm that shows certain job or housing opportunities to white people but not to minorities.

By the time thousands of rioters stormed the US Capitol in January, organized in part on Facebook and fueled by the lies about a stolen election that had fanned out across the platform, it was clear from my conversations that the Responsible AI team had failed to make headway against misinformation and hate speech because it had never made those problems its main focus. More important, I realized, if it tried to, it would be set up for failure.The reason is simple. Everything the company does and chooses not to do flows from a single motivation: Zuckerberg’s relentless desire for growth. Quiñonero’s AI expertise supercharged that growth. His team got pigeonholed into targeting AI bias, as I learned in my reporting, because preventing such bias helps the company avoid proposed regulation that might, if passed, hamper that growth. Facebook leadership has also repeatedly weakened or halted many initiatives meant to clean up misinformation on the platform because doing so would undermine that growth.In other words, the Responsible AI team’s work—whatever its merits on the specific problem of tackling AI bias—is essentially irrelevant to fixing the bigger problems of misinformation, extremism, and political polarization. And it’s all of us who pay the price.“When you’re in the business of maximizing engagement, you’re not interested in truth. You’re not interested in harm, divisiveness, conspiracy. In fact, those are your friends,” says Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who collaborates with Facebook to understand image- and video-based misinformation on the platform.

“They always do just enough to be able to put the press release out. But with a few exceptions, I don’t think it’s actually translated into better policies. They’re never really dealing with the fundamental problems.” In March of 2012, Quiñonero visited a friend in the Bay Area. At the time, he was a manager in Microsoft Research’s UK office, leading a team using machine learning to get more visitors to click on ads displayed by the company’s search engine, Bing. His expertise was rare, and the team was less than a year old. Machine learning, a subset of AI, had yet to prove itself as a solution to large-scale industry problems. Few tech giants had invested in the technology.Quiñonero’s friend wanted to show off his new employer, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley: Facebook, then eight years old and already with close to a billion monthly active users (i.e., those who have logged in at least once in the past 30 days). As Quiñonero walked around its Menlo Park headquarters, he watched a lone engineer make a major update to the website, something that would have involved significant red tape at Microsoft. It was a memorable introduction to Zuckerberg’s “Move fast and break things” ethos. Quiñonero was awestruck by the possibilities. Within a week, he had been through interviews and signed an offer to join the company.His arrival couldn’t have been better timed. Facebook’s ads service was in the middle of a rapid expansion as the company was preparing for its May IPO. The goal was to increase revenue and take on Google, which had the lion’s share of the online advertising market. Machine learning, which could predict which ads would resonate best with which users and thus make them more effective, could be the perfect tool. Shortly after starting, Quiñonero was promoted to managing a team similar to the one he’d led at Microsoft.

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https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[letshaikyuu]

𝚞𝚔𝚒𝚢𝚘 // 𝚌𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙸𝙸𝙸

⇀ 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚋 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝 ↽ ⇀ 𝚞𝚔𝚒𝚢𝚘 - 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚏𝚕𝚘𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 ↽

𝚊/𝚗: I’m super grateful to be a part of this collab because this server is amazing and filled the most amazing people ever, and when this collab came to mind, I was so excited to see it grow and now we’re already on chapter III !

𝚠𝚊𝚛𝚗𝚒𝚗𝚐: none;  𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚔𝚢𝚞𝚞 𝚡 𝚐𝚗!𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛 

𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝: 𝟷.𝟻𝚔

Despite spending a full day in whatever scenario you were in and experiencing yesterday, you look around your ‘room’, still confused as ever. Were you really in a game? A game, like the ones you play on your phone for shits and giggles? That kind of game? Well, shit. You look around your room. It really looked like your typical otome game room – a pastel colored wall with posters of unknown anime and idol groups plastered on it, a simple window with a tiny plant and curtains that could hardly keep out the vibrant sunshine invading your room. It was already morning.

ding!

Flinching at the sudden noise, you look around and see your cellphone, the screen bright and colorful, indicating a new message on it. Looking closely, you see not one, but several new notifications on it. But, what caught your eye first were the large letters above all of them – Day 2. What?

“Are my days numbered or something?” You ask yourself, evident anxiety and fear lacing your voice. What would happen if you didn’t fulfill the tasks needed or don’t end up in a relationship with anyone of the possible characters? You closed your eyes, trying to remember the outcome of otome games you had played prior to this one, but it’s as if that information was nonexistent and unreachable.

Your hands shake as you open the next notification: new character! Oikawa Tooru.

And there, on your screen, was the same boy from yesterday. You could never forget a face like this one; curly brown hair that seemed to effortlessly fall and shine, dark brown eyes that are glinting with slight mischievousness, but keep pulling you in and making it hard not to get flustered at the mere sight of it – “was I this flustered when I stumbled upon him yesterday,” you ask yourself as you lay a hand on your heated cheek.

Clicking on his profile, you see a bar – a progress bar to be exact. Not even half full, but still shining brightly as it shows how much progress you’ve made with said character – 30%. Somewhere around the 80% mark there was a star and below the bar, an explanation:

‘Progress report! This page shows your progress with each met character. Your decisions affect your relationship with each character. Fill the bar to 80% and more to, ultimately end with said character! Remember – you cannot better one relationship without it having a bad effect on the other two!’

You sigh, throwing the phone on the bed and falling back onto it. Staring at the white ceiling above, you try to figure out why only Oikawa showed up. Wasn’t there a second person with him? Iwa-chan, ye, that was his name. Why isn’t he a potential love interest? Didn’t you interact with both of them enough to have a decent enough relationship with both and not just Oikawa? Yeah, game’s never let hot side characters be an option, and that has and always will suck.

ding!

Another notification? You think to yourself, grabbing the phone and seeing another new notification – but, this time, it was something completely new. Skip school or go to class?

“You have got to be kidding me,” you groan and glare at the screen, but the choices remain the same. Was this what they meant with the bolded lettering in the progress report? Neither option was completely perfect. Maybe focusing solely on Oikawa and progressing your relationship with him only would make things easier, but maybe the game didn’t want that. And, who knows, maybe you’re making the right decision with your final choice: skip school.

It happened suddenly. Transporting from your room to a crowded street. Where were you?

Looking around, you notice numerous shops and restaurants lining up on your left, but there was a blinding light in front of a specific coffee shop. You figured no one else could see it because they simply passed right over it, without giving it a single glance – am I supposed to go there?

You try opening the door to the shop on your immediate left, only to find it completely jammed. Same with the next shop, and the one after that. What made it even more confusing was the fact that other people could normally enter them, unlike you. “Sorry,” you mumble out your nth apology of the minute, moving to let other people pass and enter the shop. Your feet slowly moved to the coffee shop, stepping into the shining, bright light; and, suddenly, the door opened in front of you.

The interior of the coffee shop was anything but special. It looked like your everyday coffee shop, with a handful of customers circling around or chit chatting at the tables and counters. Were you supposed to buy some coffee? Your thoughts were rudely interrupted by some steaming hot content that happened to find its way onto your clothing. Oh boy, did it burn.

“Oh shit!” Well, there’s the culprit. “Nice going Bakageyama! Look what you’ve done!” And, there’s another one.

You swallow the stream of curse words threatening to spill out of your mouth and look up at the person who spilled their coffee all over you. Oh, oh.

In front of you was a very, very, handsome looking teen (he looks younger than that Oikawa dude from yesterday, you note down) and despite the fact that he was the one at fault here, having spilled his coffee on you, he looked way more irritated than you. There was a deep scowl decorating his features that seemed very sharp as it is, but the glare and scowl somehow, weirdly, suited him. What caught your eyes were the piercing blue pair looking at your own. Hello, Bakageyama.

“I’m so sorry! No, wait!” It was only then that you noticed his friend beside him, a lot shorter than this guy, but with very vibrant hair. He bowed at first, apologizing for what his friend did and then, as if realizing the inconsistency, shot up and roughly pushed the other guy’s back into a bow. “Hey-““We’re really sorry for ruining your shirt!”

“Uhm..,” you mutter out, not knowing exactly how to respond. “It’s okay. I, uhm, I wasn’t looking where I was going either, so it’s kind of my fault as well.” You rub the back of your neck, face flushed as the two teens straightened. The sticky, wet feeling of cold coffee damping your shit and sticking your shirt to your skin was everything but pleasant, but you felt the inability to go back home and change. What do you need to do here?

“Oh, shi- Kageyama, we’re so late for morning practice!” The bright, orange-haired guy exclaimed – rather loudly, if you might say so yourself – and made a quick dash towards the entrance. “Hurry it up!” „Hold on, dumbass,” the taller of the duo, still holding onto his only third-full coffee cup, snapped back and sighed, eyes glancing downwards to your soaked front. He placed the dirty cup on the nearest table and started unzipping and taking of his jacket, face sporting a fiery red blush.

“W-what are you doing?” You stutter out, face flaming as well. The guy shoves the jacket in front of you, waiting for you to take it. “Just...take this.” His eyes were everywhere yours weren’t, dancing across the whole interior of the coffee shop. “I’m...this is for me spilling coffee all over you, so just take it.” Now, it really did feel like your typical ‘this or that’. Take the jacket or don’t take the jacket.

“T-Thank you,” you shyly say as you take the black jacket from him. He runs off shortly after, leaving behind something between a grunt and a ‘hello’, but you’ll take it. You put on the jacket that was clearly tailored for someone of his size and built, but it did the job perfectly. The jacket smelt divine as well, there was no denying that and it was warm due to being worn for a while by the guy. Wait a minute? What was his name?

And, just like that, the coffee shop felt irrelevant. You, thankfully, remembered the way back to your house – or was it just a room? You didn’t really notice – and made your way into the bedroom. And, once plopping onto the bed, you receive a few, new notifications on your phone.

‘new message from: Oikawa Tooru’

-    Where were you at school today? The teachers were pretty upset with me for not paying more attention to you...I don’t know what their problem is sent 10:34pm

-   I’m sorry...didn’t feel well sent 10:36pm

‘Progress report! Relationship with Oikawa Tooru: 30% > 20%’

‘new character! Kageyama Tobio’

‘Progress report! Relationship with Kageyama Tobio: 30%’

You couldn’t stop the small smile dancing on your lips as you look through Kageyama’s character profile; he looked cute even on screen. Maybe skipping school was worth it, you did meet your ‘second option’.

“Now, we just wait for the third,” you murmur out, abruptly feeling drained as you snuggle under the bed covers. It didn’t feel long when your phone chimed again:

Day 3.

𝚝𝚊𝚐𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚝: @kingkageyamathegreat​, @sayakaaaaaa​, @tobubekida-yo​ @chigigami​, @sugacookiies​, @macaronnv, @cadekagi​, @raichijin​

𝚢𝚘𝚞'𝚛𝚎 𝚞𝚙 𝚗𝚎𝚡𝚝, 𝚋𝚊𝚋𝚎! @haikyuu-but-low-iq​ <3

[today-only-happens-once]

Exposure Therapy

Title: Exposure Therapy

Word Count: 3281

Summary: If Roman can practice enough scenarios, maybe the inevitable will hurt a little less. Hurt/Comfort Romantic Prinxiety. Ace!Roman.

Warnings: aphobia/internalized aphobia as a central focus, angst/hurt/comfort (heavy on all three), scenarios of rejection, crying, cursing, misunderstanding.

A/N: I wrote this in one sitting. One of those fics that comes from a personal space. An exploration of internalized aphobia—something that I’ve begun to learn does not go away after realizing you are ace. Edited by yours truly, so all mistakes are mine. <3 Love you all.

Tags: @creativenostalgiastuff, @helloisthisusernametaken, @ren-allen, @quoth-the-sparrow, @princelogical, @random-pianist, @ravenclawicecream, @erlenmeyertrash, @milomeepit, @at-least-seven-pretty-potatoes, @rileyfirstname, @pinkeasteregg, @sassy-in-glasses, @vigilantvirgil, @generalfandomfabulousness, @lacrimosathedark, @thepoolofthedead, @monikastec, @heir-of-the-founders, @yourworstnightmare999, @artistictaurean, @kanejandkruge , @cdragontogacotar, @damienswifeolicitydallysgirl, @angst-patton, @savingshae, @noneed4thistbh, @awesomelissawho, @unikornavenger, @bopthesnoz, @spiralofsilencetheory, @finger-gunsss, @crownswriter123, @swlotakulady34, @gaylotusthatexists, @analogical-mess, @dolphidragon

…

Roman stares unseeing at the carpet right in front of Virgil’s sock-clad feet. Most of the lights are off, leaving only the lamp by the couch to cast the room in a soft warm glow. Part of Roman wishes he could turn it off and disappear into the darkness. Anything to avoid the confused, hurt look in Virgil’s eyes that he can feel pressing down on his shoulders.

“You’re ace?” Virgil’s voice seems to echo with disgust.

“I’m sorry, Virgil—” Roman reaches a hand out blindly. Virgil takes a step back.

He shoves his hands harshly into the pocket of his hoodie. “So… So what, you were just leading me on? This entire time? I mean…” He waves an arm. “What the hell, Roman?”

Roman clenches his jaw as his eyes burn. He blinks hard to clear them. “That wasn’t my intention. I just… I was just scared—”

Virgil scoffs. “Scared? Grow up, Princey.”

“Virge, I—”

Virgil is crossing the room and for the briefest second, Roman thinks maybe he’s walking towards him. But the Anxious Side brushes past Roman and starts to head up the stairs. “Save it. I don’t think this is gonna work out.” Then he’s gone. He’s vanished up the stairs and the Prince stands in the Commons alone with the silence until he hears Virgil slam his door shut.

Roman breathes out shakily. He presses a hand to his mouth as it if might steady the air leaving his lungs.

“Again,” he says aloud once he’s sure the word won’t tremble. “The kitchen, this time.”

The scene blurs around him in a swirl of fragmenting color. Roman waits, closing his eyes and bringing clarity to the image in his mind as it takes shape around him. He takes a few slow breaths before he opens his eyes. The kitchen is a perfect recreation of the one in the Mindscape that mirrors Thomas’s apartment.

Sunlight streams in through the window beside the refrigerator. Roman frowns, willing the sun to start setting. He doesn’t think he’d have this conversation in the middle of the day. He’d wait until the evening at least. The bright light fades into a soft orange and pink.

Roman swallows, bracing himself as he hears quiet footsteps behind him. He forces a small smile as he turns around.

“Virgil,” he greets, perhaps a little too brightly. “How are you, darling?”

Virgil quirks a suspicious eyebrow as he shuffles into the kitchen and grabs a mug from the cabinet. “Fine,” he says slowly. “Why are you acting weird?”

Roman swallows, trying to ignore the part of him that suddenly feels like throwing up. “I was wondering if you had a moment to talk.”

Roman sees the slightly defensive curl of Virgil’s shoulders around himself. “That’s never a good sign.”

“No, it’s—It’s nothing, really,” Roman tells him. He doesn’t know if it’s a lie. It feels like one. “But… well, can we sit?”

“Sure,” Virgil says slowly again, eyeing Roman as he takes a seat at the kitchen table. “But I’ll be honest, Princey, you’re kinda worrying me.”

“I’m sorry.” Roman folds his hands on the table and stares at them. “I just… we’ve been dating for a while now, and… there’s something that I’ve been pushing off telling you. And by doing so… I’m… maybe not being fair to you.”

Roman pauses, glancing up at Virgil across the table from him. The Anxious Side doesn’t say anything, instead opting to quirk an eyebrow at him as a silent encouragement to continue. Roman takes a breath. He squeezes his hands together as if he might be able to ground himself and keep the sudden wave of nausea at bay.

“I am asexual.”

Silence. Roman waits, every muscle braced for the inevitable.

“You’re unbelievable, Roman.” The edge in Virgil’s voice makes Roman suddenly want to be anywhere else. He stays rooted to his seat instead. “I mean, you know as well as I do that ‘asexuality’ or whatever the hell you want to call it isn’t a real thing.”

The chair scraping against the floor sounds like a scream. Roman thinks he can feel something breaking inside of him. He opens his mouth to speak—to explain—but the lump in this throat hardens before he can even get out Virgil’s name.

Virgil continues, oblivious. “I mean, I know you like to stand out, but c’mon. You can drop the whole ‘special snowflake’ label.”

“I—” Roman tries, but Virgil is gone.

The Creative Side scrubs a hand against burning eyes, gritting his teeth. “Again.”

The scene blurs, then clears.

It’s a nighttime picnic this time: a stargazing date, tailored specifically to Virgil. It’s one of their go-to places in the Mindscape when they wanted to go on a date. The first time Roman had suggested it and Virgil had agreed, the Prince had consulted Logan for how to make it as accurate as possible.

It’s quiet between them. A soft breeze plays in Virgil’s long bangs as he stares up at the sky. He looks peaceful. Content. Happy.

“Virgil… I’m ace,” Roman blurts out before he can lose his nerve entirely.

Virgil turns an incredulous, disbelieving gaze onto him. “You’re what?”

Roman’s hands curl against the blanket beneath them. “I’m… asexual.”

Virgil snorts, and Roman suddenly wishes he could dissolve into the ground. The Anxious Side shakes his head. “No, you aren’t.”

The Creative Side gathers what courage he has left and straightens up slightly. “Yes. I am.”

“Roman, you’re the Romantic Side. You can’t have it both ways.” Virgil shakes his head dismissively, looking back up at the sky. “I mean… nobody would want that, realistically.”

“But—”

“Like, I can wait until you’re comfortable or whatever but… you’re going to be comfortable with it eventually.” He can feel Virgil’s suddenly piercing, demanding stare boring into him. “Right?”

“Right.” Roman’s voice sounds small even to his own ears.  

The world blurs. Then clears. A dinner date.

“Sex is like, a basic human need, Roman.”

“Again.”

A swirl of colors. The hallway.

“How do you know if you’ve never done it before? You’re just scared. You’ll come around eventually.”

“Again.”

Roman’s room.

“I need someone who can actually love me like an adult, Roman.”

“Again.”

Virgil’s room.

“You’ll be alone forever if you don’t get used to it.”

The voices start to overlap, all of them Virgil’s, each harsher than the last. The world is blurry and Roman doesn’t know when he fell to his knees but he can’t bring any clarity to the space around him. The images swirl and Roman has his eyes screwed shut but all he can picture is Virgil’s face.

He buries his fingertips in his hair and covers his ears with his palms. Anything to block out the overlapping, deafening voices that ricochet around him.

He thinks he can hear his name being called—it sounds a little different from the rest of the voices—but it’s all unmistakably Virgil and Roman can’t bring himself to do anything but stay still. His stomach is rolling. A sob is fighting to break through his chest but Roman fights it down.

The voices are right, after all.

Then Roman feels real, solid hands on him, covering his own hands on his head. His eyes fly open, jarred by the sudden contact that feels too real to be part of the Imagination. The confusion gives way to a caving feeling in his chest. It’s just Virgil, kneeling in front of him. Roman can’t see him that clearly—the world is blurry, but he could place that purple and black faltering image anywhere.

It makes sense, Roman supposes. He’d been picturing Virgil in his mind, after all.

He feels Virgil pull him against his chest. It somehow hurts more. The voices are still raging around him and the colors are swirling but Roman collapses a little into Virgil’s chest that feels so real and warm and solid. It’s not real, it can’t be, but it cracks something inside of Roman. The sob he’d been fighting releases in a sharp burst.

“Hey, hey, hey. I’ve got you,” says one of Virgil’s voices but it sounds softer than the rest of them. Closer somehow, too.

For a moment, Roman feels like his stomach drops suddenly. The feeling is followed immediately by a silence so sudden it leaves Roman’s ears ringing. The voices have stopped. And a moment later, Roman realizes that the warm, solid, tangible feeling of someone else didn’t disappear with the voices.

Roman sucks in a hiccupping, shaking breath. Then he opens his eyes. A purple shirt. A black and purple-plaid-patched hoodie sleeve. He breathes in and catches the scent of laundry detergent and something he couldn’t quite pinpoint but was nevertheless familiar. Virgil.

Just past Virgil, Roman can see his canopy bed with red and gold pillows. They’re in his room. Out of the Imagination.

Roman pulls away from Virgil, flushing bright red. He ducks his head when he can feel Virgil’s gaze on him. He feels small. He doesn’t know how much Virgil—the real Virgil—heard. Or what he’d think of Roman now.

Which is stupid, Roman thinks to himself. Because that was exactly why you were doing that in the first place, Princey.

“Hey,” Virgil says in a soft voice. In his peripheral, Roman sees Virgil reach a hand up towards him, then seems to think twice. Roman’s chest constricts impossibly tighter. “You okay?” he asks quietly instead.

“I’m fine,” Roman manages.

“Bullshit.”

“Then why’d you ask?” He can’t bring himself to look above Virgil’s chest. He can’t look him in the eyes. He can’t. Coward, a voice hisses in the back of his mind.

There’s a pause. Then a sigh. Roman feels a hand against his cheek. The pad of a thumb brushing at the wetness of Roman’s cheeks. “Because I thought it was a nicer way to ask what the hell you were doing,” Virgil replies.  

Roman swallows. “Practicing.” He stares at the pattern in the light hardwood floor beneath his knees.

“Practicing? For what?”

Roman opens his mouth to answer. Now’s your chance to tell him. Just come out and tell him you’re ace. The words get lost somewhere along the way up his throat. Roman closes his mouth and shakes his head and says something easier instead. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Roman,” Virgil says, more firmly this time. “Look at me.”

“It’s fine, Virgil. I’m fine—”

“Ro, please.”

Roman’s eyes flit up to latch onto Virgil’s. His brows are pulled together in concern, and his gaze bores into Roman’s like he’s searching for something he can’t find. He still has his hand against Roman’s cheek and the Prince wants to both lean into it and pull away. He stays still instead.

“I’m sorry,” Roman finds himself saying. He swallows down the urge to repeat those words again and again and again. As if this Virgil—the real one—had been the one he’d hurt over and over and over…

Virgil swallows. “What was I saying to you back there?”

The Creative Side freezes, then blinks quickly to recover. “Nothing of importance.”

“Stop doing that,” Virgil snaps, something sharp flashing through his eyes. “I know it was my voice, Roman. But I was a little… preoccupied to make out what I was saying.”

“It was my own fault, really,” Roman tells him in a whisper. He stops, then tries to clear his throat and speaks a little louder. “I just thought… maybe if I could… get used to all of the bad options, I’d be better prepared for the inevitable, you know?”

“Bad options?” Virgil shakes his head. “What does that mean?”

Roman averts his gaze. He feels suddenly very tired. “Nothing. Just… I was just… practicing a conversation.” He pulls away from Virgil’s hand against his jaw.

Virgil’s hand hovers in the air a moment before curling and falling into his lap. “A conversation with me?”

Roman sighs. “Yeah.”

“A conversation… about what?” There’s something off about Virgil’s voice, but it’s all Roman can do to keep talking and not run entirely.

He takes in a deep breath. It’s still a little shaky, and Roman curls his hands against his thighs. “About… me. About the fact that I’m…. asexual.”

There’s a beat—there’s always a beat, always a pause, always the calm right before the storm—and Roman wants to push off the inevitable anger, pain, hurt as long as he can so he lets the words spill past his lips.

“And I know I should have told you a long time ago, but it just never seemed like an okay time. But I know that’s stupid, and it wasn’t fair to you, and I totally led you on, but I just thought maybe eventually it would come up, or you would ask and I could just say ‘yes’ because that’s easier, I guess. It’s easier to confirm than to announce something like that, because if I announce it then it changes everything and I didn’t want anything to change, I didn’t want you to look at me differently because when you look at me I feel like I could do anything and—”

“You…” Virgil cuts in and Roman’s jaw snaps shut, cutting off the words with an almost audible snap. “You were… you were practicing coming out scenarios where I react badly, weren’t you?” The question is asked carefully. Measured. Like something sits just below the surface of it but Roman doesn’t know what lies beneath.

The prince carefully avoids Virgil’s gaze. He nods wordlessly.

“Why?” Roman doesn’t understand why Virgil’s voice sounds a little choked.

Roman laughs but it’s breathy and airy and humorless, tied carefully together with a thread of self-loathing. “Because… I thought it’d make it more bearable when it actually comes. Thought maybe I’d be less of a coward or something if I’ve already sat through it once.”

“Roman… listen...”

And here it comes. The storm is back, the calm abated. And Roman wonders if the practice actually helped because it is hard to imagine a feeling more painful than the one in his chest at this moment. He’s staring unseeing at the rips in Virgil’s jeans. He thinks maybe this is for the best after all. Virgil will find someone he can be happy with—maybe Logan, maybe Patton—and Roman is better off alone, anyway, right? He can go on adventures, avoid distractions and focus on creating—

“I’m so sorry,” Virgil says. His voice sounds thick.

Roman’s throat is tightening. “Don’t be,” he says hollowly because it’s all he has left. He just wants to go to sleep. He’s been through this scenario dozens of times now. This is just one more, he tells himself as if it will alleviate some of the crushing feeling. “I get it.”

“What?” Virgil’s confusion rings clear in his voice, but it’s shadowed a second later by realization. “Wait… shit, Roman, that’s not what I meant—”

“Virgil, I don’t really need a long speech or anything,” Roman tells him, scrubbing a hand down his face. “It’s okay. I’m not mad at you.”

“I am.”

Roman blinks, his gaze flitting up to meet Virgil’s. His brow creases in confusion at the bright, earnest look in Virgil’s eyes. “What?”

Virgil rakes a hand back through his hair. There’s something a little pained in Virgil’s eyes that makes Roman’s chest twist. Roman opens his mouth—he wants to apologize, he never wanted to be a source of pain for Virgil again—but Virgil holds up a hand to cut him off.

“I… You were so afraid to tell me that you’re ace, Roman. And I feel like that’s on me. I mean, you were calling my rejection of you—of who you are—‘inevitable’, for crying out loud. I never…” Virgil’s voice seems to die in his throat. He swallows, blinks hard, then tries again. “If I made it seem like you couldn’t come out to me, after everything… I mean, God, you were torturing yourself over it…”

“Not you,” Roman blurts out. Virgil stops suddenly, and Roman struggles to find the words again. “It wasn’t you. I just… I’ve heard some variation of all of it before. And I just… I was scared. Not because of anything you did or said, but just… rejection seems inevitable at this point.” Is he making sense? Roman doesn’t know. But he keeps talking because at this point, if he stops now, he thinks maybe he’ll never say it again.

“It’s… everywhere,” Roman presses on, silently begging Virgil to understand. “It’s supposed to be important to me, right? And sometimes I think life would be easier if it was, but…” Roman’s eyes are starting to burn a little again. “I don’t want it, and I don’t…” want to lose you. Roman can’t bring himself to voice it. He can’t have it both ways. That was really what being ace meant, right? Roman had come to accept that a long time ago. He shakes his head, wrapping his arms around himself. “But it’s not fair to you to keep lying. To keep you waiting for something I’m never going to want. You… deserve someone who can love you in all the ways you need—” Roman cuts himself off when Virgil cups his face in both of his hands.

Virgil’s dark gaze is searching his again, something imploring behind his irises. “I have that already.”

Wait… what?

Virgil reads the uncertainty on Roman’s face and softens, leaning his forehead against Roman’s . “You are ace, Roman. That’s part of who you are. It’s not something you should apologize for, and it’s sure as hell not something you should punish yourself for.”

“I… Virgil—”

“You love me,” Virgil continues with quiet, unwavering conviction. “You show me literally every single day. You make me coffee in the morning and know to sneak in two spoonfuls of sugar when nobody is watching. You check in on me when I’m having a bad day. You distract me with Disney theories when I’m getting overwhelmed. You listen when I need to vent or talk no matter how busy you are. You plan dates with me specifically in mind. You write me love letters on like, a weekly basis, and you let me fall asleep listening to your heartbeat when I’m having a bad night.”

Roman feels Virgil press soft lips to his forehead. “I love you,” Roman finds himself saying.

“I know,” Virgil replies softly. “That is all the love I need, Ro. I promise.” He touches his forehead to Roman’s again.

Roman swallows. “But—”

“Do you trust me?”

Roman manages a watery smile at the Disney reference. “What?”

He can hear the soft smile in the Anxious Side’s voice too. “Do you trust me?”

Roman nods a little and pulls back to look up at Virgil. “Yes.”

“Good.” Virgil looks straight into Roman’s eyes as he brushes his thumb along Roman’s cheek. “Then trust me when I say that you are enough. You will always be enough, just as you are.”

[mediarelations2021b]

Review of Cision Communications Cloud (CCC)

What is Cision Communications Cloud and what does it do?

Cision Communications Cloud helps you and your company with:

Online monitoring: Track your brand mentions in real time across the millions of online stories on the internet. Also be able to monitor millions of stories and breaking news happening daily across the web. Cision offers professionals services consultants teams that are in place to ensure best practices while setting up your monitoring account.

Print monitoring: Gain insights from tens of thousands of traditional print media sources, not readily available on the free web. Monitor national and local newspapers, magazines, trade magazines and more. 

Broadcast monitoring: Monitor your brand and competitor coverage around TV and Radio across all the top US markets. Monitor extensive coverage from thousands of hours of broadcast content streaming daily. Easily edit, and pull metrics on clips for easy reporting directly from the system.

Social monitoring: Identify the social conversations and influencers that are impacting your brand. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube monitoring capabilities track your brand mentions across all major social channels. Analyze results for social mentions or campaigns on the fly with easy to use reporting features. Information gathered from G2.com.

Here is a summary of the features CCC offers:

Webpage: CCC is a product from Cision which offers other products as well, such as database, distribution, monitoring, analytics, impact, insights, and government relations.

Main features on the webpage include information on their products, resources, solutions, and pricing. They also have their contact information and about them information. Additionally, Cision also has a blog that includes posts about their best practices, product news, executive insights, and a media blog.

Contact: Their client support is very nice. They answered my question of interest on their communication services in less than 24 hours. They asked me to let them know when I have time to schedule a call and get to know better my current communication goals and how they could help me. They also have a bot and support 24/7 which was very nice! They answer any questions right away.

Pricing: They don’t tell you right away in their website how much this service will cost. You can request a demo and/or ask for pricing by inserting your information and waiting for an email. Still, when they answer your email, they’ll ask to schedule a meeting. So there is no way of knowing a range of price without explaining your communications plans to them. Because I’m researching them and don’t have a communications plan, they were unable to give me a number. 

The only range their support could offer me is letting me know press releases can range from $355 -$850 for a newsline; the newslines can be catered towards where exactly you would like to target geographically. Other than that, they told me they had to look into my specific case and needs. So it is very tailored to each’s needs.

  CCC also has an app for their clients. Of course, I couldn’t log-in but this is how their page looks like. The first screenshots are how their app looks like once you are a client.

CCC PROS:

Very tailored to each company’s needs

24/7 Fast customer service

Offers a big range of services and features

Has an app for clients for easy access and use

CONS:

Webpage has a lot of options so it can get confusing sometimes

Doesn’t offer enough information on their webpage which makes you contact them if you need to know more

Inability to know a range of pricing from the webpage

If you don’t believe it from me, believe it from real users! Here are some reviews from clients online:

CLIENT #1

Q- What do you like best?

A- We have just used Cision as a distribution tool via PR Newswire but we really enjoyed the visibility report after the release as well as the large pool of journalists that received our release compared to other distribution sites.

Q- What do you dislike?

A- Our release needed to be sent quicker than the traditional process and along the way, each step of preparing for our release to be sent took a bit longer than the maximum time window given. This wasn't a huge deal but I did have to call and wait on hold for a while before assuring that each step moved along quickly.

Q- What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

A- Problems: lack of visibility, small personal network with which to share product releases

Benefits: extremely large database of journalists that press releases are distributed to, clear visibility report to advocate for the value of the cost to CEO.

CLIENT #2

Q- What do you like best?

A- Like other platforms, Cision is pretty easy to use and navigate once you get the hang of it. It's packed with valuable information about journalists and others, including a pitch profile. The database seems to be regularly updated and I don't think I've ever run into a problem with contact information that I've pulled from the platform. I like the media monitoring options as well.

Q- What do you dislike?

A- Some of the platform options are a little difficult to figure out at first. For example, when logging back on to the platform to change media monitoring preferences, it was difficult the first few times to find the area of the platform I needed to be on.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

As the VP of a PR firm, we need to stay on top of the news for our clients. Cision does a great job of alerting us to the stories that most impact our clients through a couple of simple clicks and entering a few keywords. We also need to make sure our media lists are up to date on a regular basis, and Cision helps to keep us on track with keeping our lists as fresh as possible.

The client reviews were collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Hope you learned more about CCC today!

[devasheesh12]

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