#Influencer Marketing Media Release

[hsdigitalmedia]

Influencer Marketing Campaigns

HS Digital Media: Your Partner in Crafting Impactful Influencer Marketing Campaigns

In today’s digitally connected world, influencer marketing has emerged as a powerful tool for brands to connect with their target audience in authentic and engaging ways. As aninfluencer marketing agency committed to delivering exceptional results, understands the importance of leveraging influencers to drive brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately, ROI. Let’s explore some of the specialized influencer marketing services we offer:

Travel Influencers Mumbai: Inspiring Wanderlust and Exploration

Mumbai, with its bustling streets and vibrant culture, is a city of endless adventures waiting to be explored. Our travel influencer marketing services are designed to help travel brands, tourism boards, and hospitality businesses tap into Mumbai’s avid travelers and adventure seekers through captivating content created by local travel influencers. From breathtaking destination guides to immersive travel experiences, our team at HS Digital Media partners with Mumbai’s top travel influencers to showcase your brand’s offerings and inspire wanderlust among your target audience.

Influencer Marketing ROI: Maximizing Your Investment

At HS Digital Media, we understand that measuring ROI is essential for any successful influencer marketing campaign. That’s why our team employs advanced analytics tools and techniques to track and measure the performance of every influencer partnership we execute. From reach and engagement to website traffic and conversions, we provide our clients with comprehensive insights and reports that demonstrate the tangible impact of their investment in influencer marketing, enabling them to optimize strategies and drive maximum ROI.

Fitness Influencer Marketing: Motivating Audiences to Lead Healthy Lifestyles

In a city where fitness is not just a trend but a way of life, partnering with fitness influencers can be a powerful way for brands to connect with health-conscious consumers. Our fitness influencer marketing services are tailored to help fitness brands, wellness companies, and lifestyle brands leverage the influence of Mumbai’s top fitness influencers to inspire audiences to lead healthy and active lifestyles. Whether it’s promoting fitness apparel, health supplements, or wellness retreats, our team at HS Digital Media collaborates with fitness influencers to create inspiring and motivational content that resonates with your target audience.

Video Content Influencers: Harnessing the Power of Visual Storytelling

Video content has become increasingly popular across social media platforms, making video content influencers a valuable asset for brands looking to engage their audience through captivating visual storytelling. Our video content influencer marketing services are designed to help brands partner with Mumbai’s top video creators and YouTubers to create compelling video content that resonates with their target audience. Whether it’s product reviews, tutorials, or vlogs, our team at HS Digital Media works closely with video content influencers to create authentic and engaging content that drives engagement and builds brand affinity.

Influencer Marketing Tools: Streamlining Campaign Execution

Executing successful influencer marketing campaigns requires the right set of tools and resources. At HS Digital Media, we leverage a range of influencer marketing tools and platforms to streamline campaign execution and ensure seamless collaboration between brands and influencers. From influencer discovery and relationship management to campaign tracking and performance analytics, our team utilizes industry-leading tools to optimize campaign workflows and drive results for our clients.

Influencer Marketing Platforms: Connecting Brands with the Right Influencers

Navigating the vast landscape of influencers can be overwhelming, especially for brands new to influencer marketing. That’s where influencer marketing platforms come in. Our team at HS Digital Media leverages a variety of influencer marketing platforms to connect brands with the right influencers who align with their values, audience demographics, and marketing objectives. Whether it’s finding influencers for a specific niche or managing influencer partnerships and campaigns, we utilize these platforms to streamline the influencer marketing process and ensure successful collaborations.

Creative Social Media Collaborations: Fostering Authentic Connections

Influencer marketing is all about fostering authentic connections between brands and influencers that resonate with their audience. Our creative social media collaborations are designed to help brands partner with influencers to create unique and engaging content that drives brand awareness and engagement. Whether it’s Instagram takeovers, Snapchat challenges, or Facebook Live events, our team at HS Digital Media collaborates with influencers to develop creative social media campaigns that capture the attention of your target audience and leave a lasting impression.

Connect with HS Digital Media: Your Trusted Influencer Marketing Partner

At HS Digital Media, we’re passionate about helping brands harness the power of influencers to achieve their marketing goals and drive tangible results. Whether you’re looking to partner with travel influencers, maximize ROI, leverage fitness influencers, harness the power of video content, utilize influencer marketing tools and platforms, or create creative social media collaborations, our team has the expertise and industry insights to help you succeed. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our specialized influencer marketing services and how we can help you elevate your brand presence and drive meaningful engagement through strategic influencer partnerships. Let’s collaborate to create impactful influencer marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience and deliver real business outcomes.

[torgawl]

unpopular opinion but a ship being queer coded doesn't make it compelling

[steveyockey]

“Feel free to share your positive feelings about the film on Twitter after the screening,” said the usher introducing the London press preview screening of Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s Mattel-produced film. The embargo for reviews, however, would not be lifted until two days later, closer to the film’s release. The audience generally didn’t bat an eyelid and it wasn’t the first time my colleagues and I had heard such directives, yet we were left feeling censored: if they won’t allow for our negative reactions, why should they get our positive ones?

The purpose of this strategy barely needs specifying: in addition to the film’s omnipresent marketing campaign, positive reactions on social media were to seal the deal and ensure that the most dubious potential spectators would be persuaded to turn up to the cinema on the opening weekend, the most crucial days for a film’s box office success. The fact that the audience at this preview screening consisted mostly of influencers was another blatant marketing strategy, which would not have been as insulting were it not for the fact that it meant many film critics were unable to see the film before its release. The phenomenon occurred in other cities as well. A few days before the film’s release, Parisian writers were dumbfounded to see some colleagues sharing glowing takes on the film on Twitter, after being told there would be no advance screenings for any of the press. Moreover, what were presented as exclusive interviews with the cast turned out to be prerecorded and pre-approved by the studio. Ahead of its release, the film was to be seen only through pink-tinted glasses.

While it is customary for film studios to try to control the narrative by organising advance screenings if they believe in a film or avoiding them if they don’t, the methods employed for the release of Barbie were more extreme. They are symptomatic of a trend that has been evolving over the past few years and that concerns not only the film criticism profession, but culture at large. If all discussion of a film’s merits before release is left to influencers, whose driving ambition is to receive free merchandise by speaking well of the studio’s products, what can we expect the film landscape to look like? Where will engaging, challenging and, if not completely unbiased then at least impartial conversation about cinema take place, and how is the audience to think critically of what is being sold to it?

[fans4wga]

Writers Guild West Official: Era of Hollywood Mergers Hastened the Strike

August 10, 2023

Laura Blum-Smith, the Writers Guild of America West’s director of research and public policy, considers the strike a result of a tsunami of Hollywood mergers that has handed studios and streamers the power to its exploit workers.

“Harmful mergers and attempts to monopolize markets are a recurring theme in the history of media and entertainment, and they are a key part of what led 11,500 writers to go on strike more than 100 days ago against their employers,” Blum-Smith said on Thursday at an event with the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice over new merger guidelines unveiled in July.

She pointed to Disney, Amazon and Netflix as companies that “gained power through anticompetitive consolidation and vertical integration,” allowing them to impose “more and more precarious working conditions, increasingly short term employment and lower pay for writers and other workers across the industry.” But she sees revisions to the merger guidelines that address labor concerns a key part of the solution to prevent further mergers in the entertainment industry moving forward.

“The FTC and DOJ’s new draft merger guidelines are part of a deeply necessary effort to revive antitrust enforcement,” she added. “Compared with earlier guidelines, the new ones are much more skeptical of the idea that mergers are the natural way for companies to grow. And they focus more on the various ways mergers hurt competition, including how mergers impact workers.”

In July, the FTC and DOJ jointly released a new road map for regulatory review of mergers. They require companies to consider the impact of proposed transactions on labor, signaling that the agencies intend to review whether mergers could negatively impact wages and working conditions. FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya, who was joined by agency chair Lina Khan, said in a statement about the guidelines that “a merger that may substantially lessen competition for workers will not be immunized by a prediction that predicted savings from a merger will be passed on to consumers.” Historically, transactions have been considered mostly through the lens of benefits to consumers.

The guidelines lack the force of law but influence the way in which judges consider lawsuits to block proposed transactions. They also tell the public how competition enforcers will assess the potential for a merger’s harm to competition.

Antitrust enforcers have steadily been taking notice of negative impacts to labor as a result of industry consolidation. “We’ve heard concerns that a handful of companies may now again be controlling the bulk of the entertainment supply chain from content creation to distribution,” Khan said last year during a listening forum over revisions to the guidelines, in a nod to anticompetitive conduct by studios that led to the Paramount Decrees. “We’ve heard concerns that this type of consolidation and integration can enable firms to exert market power over creators and workers alike.”

Adam Conover, writer and WGA board member, said in that April 2022 forum that his show Adam Ruins Everything was killed by AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner in 2018 when TruTV’s parent company forced the network to cut costs. He stressed that a handful of companies “now control the production and distribution of almost all entertainment content available to the American public,” allowing them to “more easily hold down our wages and set onerous terms for our employment.” It’s not just writers that are impacted by an overly consolidated Hollywood either, he explained. After Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, he said that the studios pushed the industry into ending backend participation and trapping actors in exclusive contracts preventing them from pursuing other work.

Blum-Smith said that aggressive competition enforcement is necessary as “Wall Street continues to push for more consolidation among our employers despite the industry’s history of mergers that failed to deliver any of the consumer benefits they’ve claimed that left writers and audiences worse off with less diversity of content and fewer choices.”

“More mergers will leave writers with even fewer places to sell their work and tell their stories and the remaining companies will have even more power to lower pay and worsen working conditions,” she warned. “Strong enforcement against mergers is essential to protect workers in media and workers across the country and these guidelines are an important step in the right direction.”

[chaos0pikachu]

Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?

Short answer: No. anyways, in the following essay I will explain that James Cameron is a weeb...

(okay fine~~ lets actually do this)

TLDR: discussing what media globalization is, how fandom can distill it down to only American/European cinema, showcasing how a lot of current BL is influenced by countries within it's own proximity and NOT "the west" but each other, also James Cameron is still a weeb

I had seen a post that basically proposited that BL was being influenced by modern western romance tropes and had used things like omegaverse and mafia settings as an example. I found this, in a word, fucking annoying (oh, two words I guess) because it's micro-xenophobic to me.

It positions western - and really what we mean by this is American/European countries, we're not talking about South American countries are we? - cinema as the central breadbasket of all cinema in and of itself. Inherently, all following cinema must be in some way, shape, or form, influenced by American/European standards, and as such America/European countries are directly responsible for cinema everywhere else, and these places - namely non-white countries - do not influence each other, nor have their own histories in regards to storytelling or cinema and do not, in turn, also influence American/European film making either.

Now like, do I think all of that~~ is intentionally malicious thinking on behalf of folks in fandom? No, so chill out.

I do, however, think a lot of it is birthed from simple ignorance and growing up in an environment where ~The West~ is propagated to be central, individual, and exceptional as opposed to the monolith of "Asia" - by which we mean China, Korea, Japan don't we? How often in discussions of Asian countries is Iran, India, or Saudi Arabia brought up even tho they are all Asian countries? - or the monolith that is South America - in which some folks might believe regions like the Caribbean and/or Central America belong to, but nope there both North America.

Anyway, what we're talking about here is the concept of "media globalization":

"The production, distribution, and consumption of media products on a global scale, facilitating the exchange and diffusion of ideas cross-culturally." (source)

"The media industry is, in many ways, perfect for globalization, or the spread of global trade without regard for traditional political borders. [...] the low marginal costs of media mean that reaching a wider market creates much larger profit margins for media companies. [...] Media is largely a cultural product, and the transfer of such a product is likely to have an influence on the recipient’s culture." (source)

Typically when I see fandom discussing what falls under MG the topic is usually focused on how "the west" is influencing Thai/Korean/Chinese/Japanese media.

Enter, Pit Babe.

Surely Pit Babe was influenced by Supernatural right? Omegaverse is huge in the west - love it, hate it, meh it - it originated in the west - specifically via Supernatural after all.

Nah.

Omegaverse has been popular in Japan and China for almost a decade, if not longer. The earliest omegaverse manga I can think of is Pendulum: Juujin Omegaverse by Hana Hasumi which was released in 2015, almost a decade ago.

(what if you added furries into omegaverse? WHAT IF?? - Japan)

There's countless popular omegaverse manga too, and the dynamics only moderately resemble the ones we're familiar with in the west. Juujin is part omegaverse and part furry/beastmen - the alphas are all beastmen the omegas are humans - while something like Ookami-kun Is Not Scary only slightly resembles omegaverse dynamics as a hybrid series - beastmen are really popular in Japan in part b/c of historical mythology (you see the combination of romantic Beastmen and Japanese culture & folklore in Mamoru Hosoda's work The Boy and the Beast and Wolf Children).

Megumi & Tsugumi (2018) is so popular they're an official English edition published by VIZ's imprint SuBlime and that's a straight up omegaverse story.

(look at the omega symbol on the cover loud and proud baby)

So if Pit Babe was influenced by anything, it certainly wasn't "the west" it was Japan, Korea and China. Because those countries have a thriving omegaverse sub-genre going and have had such for 10 plus years now. Supernatural is popular in Japan, yes, and that may be where Japan and Japanese fans originally found omegaverse as a fictional sub-genre.

HOWEVER

Japanese fans took the sub-genre, bent it, played with it, and evolved it into their own thing. As such, other countries in their proximity, like Thailand, China, and Korea who read BL and GL manga, found it and were like "hey, we wanna play too!"

(is that an omegaverse yuri novel I spy?? yes, yes it is)

When I watched the Red Peafowl trailer, it had more in common with Kinnporsche, History: Trapped, along with films and shows like: Jet Li's The Enforcer, and Fist of Legend, Donnie Yen's Flash Point, Raging Fire, and Kung Fu Jungle, Han Dong-wook's The Worst of Evil, Kim Jin-Min's My Name, Lee Chung-hyeon's The Ballerina, Baik's Believer & Believer 2, Yoshie Kaoruhara's KeixYaku, popular Don Lee films The Gangster, the Cop and the Devil and Unstoppable alongside BL manga like Honto Yajuu and Bi No Isu (probably one of the most well known yazuka manga to date).

Like, we're seeing a rise in mafia based BLs and people think that's because of "western influence" and not the absolute insane success of kinnporsche??? Especially in countries like China, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines and other Asian countries???

Mafia films and gang shows aren't even that popular here in America/Europe; don't get me wrong, they still get made and exist, but the last full length film was The Irishman which did not make it's budget back, and while Power is still on-going it's not a smash hit either. The heyday of Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire, Goodfellas, and Scarface are long gone. And if you've watched any those shows or films they have very little in common with Kei x Yaku, Kinnporsche, or Red Peafowl in tone, or style.

(who knew martin just wanted to make his al pacino/robert de niro fanfic come to life all these years?)

Another example, The Sign, which is clearly taking inspiration from Chinese costume dramas: Ashes of Love, Fairy and Devil, White Snake (and it's many adaptions), Guardian, & Ying Yang Master Dream of Eternity. Alongside Hong Kong and Korean cop and romance shows like Tale of the Nine-Tailed, Hotel Del Luna, Director Who Buys Me Dinner, First Love, Again, and previously mentioned cop dramas.

Like, I know y'all don't think Twins is influenced by, what, American sports classic Angels in the Outfield?? Gridiron Gang?? Rocky?? Nah that shit is inspired by the popularity of sports manga like Haikyuu!!, Slam Dunk, Prince of Tennis (which even has a Chinese drama adaption), and the like. And also probably History 2, & Not Me but I'm like 87% sure Twins is just Haikyuu fanfic.

So like, does this mean that there's NO history in which American and European cinema influenced these countries? What, no, obviously that's not true, American/European totally have had media influence on countries like Korea, Japan, etc.

Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka considered "the father of manga" was inspired by Walt Disney's work on Bambi. Another more recent and prominent example is director Yeon Sang-ho and his film Train to Busan.

"And it was Snyder’s movie [Dawn of the Dead, 2004], not the 1978 original, that filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho recalled as his first encounter with the undead. “That was when I started my interest in zombies,” Yeon said, in an email interview through a translator from South Korea. Even today, he added, “it’s the most memorable and intense zombie movie I’ve ever seen.”" (source)

HOWEVER, the global influence doesn't stop there. It's not a one-way street. Yeon Sang-Ho was inspired by Zack Synder's Dawn of the Dead, a remake of George Romero's own work, but Yeon Sang-Ho's work has inspired countless Korean film makers to make their own zombie media; following Train to Busan there's been: Kingdom (2019 - current), All of Us Are Dead (2022), Zombie Detective (2020), Zombieverse (2023), Alive (2020), Rampant (2018).

And hey, wouldn't you know it now we're starting to see more zombie media coming out of places like Japan (Zom 100 the manga, movie, and anime) and High School of the Dead.

Do you know what Domundi's series Zombivor (2023, pilot trailer only) reminds me of? It's NOT The Walking Dead (which is the only relevant zombie media America has created in the last decade) it's Korea's All of Us Are Dead (2022). Comparing the trailers, the settings, the tone, it's clear where Zombivor is pulling inspiration from: Korean zombie cinema. NOT American zombie cinema.

In fact a lot of Domundi's shows - Cutie Pie, Middleman's Love, Naughty Babe, Bed Friend - are all very clearly inspired by Korean filmmaking, specifically that of romantic kdramas from the 2016 - 2020 era. Not always in story, but rather in technique.

This is media globalization. It's not simply ~The West~ influencing non-American/European countries but countries who are often more close in terms of: proximity, culture, and trade are going to have more influence on each other.

It is far more likely that Aoftion (Naughty Babe, Cutie Pie, Zombivor) was influenced by watching Train to Busan, All of Us Are Dead, and other Korean zombie shows and films than a single episode of Walking Dead.

My point isn't that this goes one way only, but rather it is very literally a global thing. This includes American and European film makers being influenced by non-American and European cinema.

Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, the Wachowski sisters, George Lucas and James Cameron have all been influenced by Japanese film making, especially the works of Akira Kurosawa, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Oshii.

John Wick's entire gun-fu sub-genre is heavily influenced by classic Hong Kong action films, specifically John Woo films. Legend of Korra, The Boondocks, Voltron, Young Justice, My Adventures with Superman are all obviously inspired by Japanese anime but animated by a Korean animation studio (Studio Mir). Beyond that, the rise in adult animated dramas like Castlevania, Critical Role Vox Machina, and Invincible to name a few are very clearly taking inspiration from anime in terms of style. The weebs that were watching Adult Swim's Inuyasha, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z have grown up and are now working in Hollywood.

Okay so like, what's the point of all this? What's the issue? Since American/European cinema does influence et all cinema does any of this really matter?

YES.

I take contention with this line of thinking because it centers "the west" and our supposed individual importance way to much. Declaring definitively that "BL is being influenced by western tropes" and then including tropes, narratives, and film making styles that aren't inherently western and actually have major roots in the cinema of various Asian countries, removes the existence of individual history these countries have which are rich, varied, and nuanced. It removes the "global" part of globalization by declaring "the globe" is really just America and Europe.

It distills these countries down to static places that only exist when American/European audiences discover them.

BL doesn't exist in a vacuum you can trace the development of Korean BL to the development of Korean het dramas almost to a T. You can also trace their development to the queer history of each country and how Thailand interacts culturally with China, Japan, Korea, etc and vice versa. It also ignores the history of these countries influencing American cinema as well. Don't mistake "the globe" for only your sphere of experience.

Anyway James Cameron is a damn weeb y'all have a good night.

Check out other posts in the series:

Film Making? In My BL? - The Sign ep01 Edition | Aspect Ratio in Love for Love's Sake | Cinematography in My BL - Our Skyy2 vs kinnporsche, 2gether vs semantic error, 1000 Stars vs The Sign | How The Sign Uses CGI | Is BL Being Overly Influenced by Modern Western Romance Tropes?

[like these posts? drop me a couple pennies on ko-fi]

[sharksupermacy]

expectation

expectation - chaewon x 6/7th member! reader

synopsis: you always had expectations

genre: be warned there is a kiss, angst, idk this timeline a bit weird, fluff at the end?, it's so long..., not very obvious pinning 1.9k words

money, power, and influence

3 most used words that everybody uses to describe you family. smart, blessed, and private were often the words that media would use to describe you parents. your three siblings all accomplished people in their field achieving the highest prestige of each field.

your eldest brother, a 26 year-old astronaut. he is the youngest person in asia to be sent up to space, having a masters in aeronautical engineering. before heading to space he was considered one of the best engineers making and fixing space ships.

followed by your second older brother, a 24 year-old surgeon who works with doctors without borders to help refugees in 3rd world countries to offer free health care. His public image is to seen as the perfect with his "dreamy visuals" and "charming" personality he was seen as the perfect son in law to many moms.

your older sister, a 22 year-old genius at business marketing and an well respected entrepreneur. she was dubbed with the title of "iconic", and "genius" as she made her way up the ranks of one of koreas billionaire without the help of her family money or name.

then there was you, a twenty year-old who had just finished their masters in biology engineering and a producer. but the difference between you and your sibling was that they were claimed by the 'choi' family once they had been successful. This insane drive to be able to receive validation from your parents had led down your siblings of trying to top each other.

when you had study abroad at MIT you had a chance to meet some awesome people realizing how unhealthy your family situation was you wanted to be able to pull away from it. so that's what you did, doing what your family hated the most becoming an idol. oddly enough, you were pretty competent at dancing due to your past in figure skating. passing the audition at source music and being added into a group in the works called 'le sserafim'. Getting along with the members well before the debut, filming the documentary hyping up the debut, and of course learning the choreo.

eventual, a year the time came where you were revealed to the public to as the final member of the le sserafim line up. to say your family was livid at you for becoming an idol, let alone one in a group. parents yelling at you over the phone just beside the room where the fimmies were celebrating the final member debut. multiple text flooded your phone with angry message from your siblings all but one oddly enough, your second eldest brother congratulating on your debut. those words were able to make you release the dam of tears you were holding from frustrations, wrecking every fiber of your being. you had responded with a calm text of 'thanks.'

soon falling asleep on your bed fimmies checking in on you seeing if you wanted to celebrate but was met with you sleeping. assuming that you were just tired from all the stress of debuting soon. closing the door quietly they headed over to the other dorm to celebrate.

it was a year after you debut where you had been last contacted by your family aside from your second brother. apparently, the last child of the esteemed 'choi' family not being claimed had started to make other people feel curious about the last member remaining identity. the hunt for the last child was on, each news outlets all clamoring to get any information about the last choi. searching through many choi who were extremely accomplished at anything eachtime getting repeatedly rejected. People even started claiming that they were the long lost choi. With rumors being shut down official by the statement of the family 'we will not be claiming our last child as they have done something to dishonor our family. until, she has properly return to the path that is right we will not be making any statement regarding our child.'

with that statement you had felt like all of the media eyes turned towards the celebrities because the choi family was well known to dislike the entertainment because of their cheap nature. The only people they liked in the entertainment industry was well established and talented people.

the media teared through the entertainment industry pass making sure they had fit the regulation of being born after 2000s, female, and choi as a last name. you saw as the number dwindled slowly winding down the guesses to lia (itzy) and you. Both companies were pestered to make statements regarding their artists but only jyp had made a statement denying that lia was not apart of that 'choi' family.

which had just left you, and you had not told the company about you being related to that 'choi' family. the issue had become so big that you were eventually called into a meeting with mr.bang about how to address the issue. you had came clean about being related to that 'choi' family but what you had never expect was bang si-hyuk agreeing with you to not say a word to the public business as usual they say.

now the other problem your family. All mad at you for choosing to go into a career path with fake prestige attached to it. Never caring or understanding enough to figure why you had did this. The constant insults of your members and yourself berating you from your family was slowly grinding away at your nerves.

“hey y/n? you good?” asked the korean a bit concerned as you haven’t been your usual self in the while. She dipped her tea bag in her cup wiping the tea bag at the edge of cup after she was done.

"yea," you huffed out not wanting to burden her with your family problems. the members knew aside from the youngest's that you always had family problems regarding becoming an idol but they would never understand how deep hatred ran. chaewon could never understand why you had isolated yourself, but she knew the only one you would open to would be yunjin. it was always the expectation that you would open up to her first as she was the leader, the backbone of the group. but for some odd reason you never did.

if chaewon could describe you with one word, it would be troubling. no matter what she did, even with other members help, you would never talk with her. when push came to shove, both chaewon and you kept shoving each other, always harder than the last. she couldn't put a word on you before; she always admired you from afar before debuting, noticing how you always trained constantly, always striving for perfection.

but this trait eventually became the downfall between the two of you because when you were confronted with your unhealthy training habits, you always shut her out. which had led you to almost shut her out of every aspect of your life she wanted to talk about: family, training progress, song progress, dancing, even the seemingly most random things. whenever, there was a conversation that was had between the two of you, one would always leave frustrated. she just couldn't understand your reluctance to take criticism from her, have a conversation about anything, and how you could never fit her expectations of how to take care of a member.

this led to chaewon talking the ear off of her former member and now soloist, kwon eunbi, about what to do with you. "she's just so closed off and frustrating," chaewon huffed out while punching a pillow beside her.

"have you ever considered why she wouldn't talk to you?" eunbi questioned the small figure huffing on her couch.

"no?? how am i supposed to even think about that when she doesn't even give me a chance to talk to her?" she complained as she finally stopped punching the poor pillow and laid down.

"phrase it this way. why do you have this expectation that she has to be open to you?" eunbi questioned the younger.

"when we were in iz*one, you helped everyone with their problems as a leader should. meaning ... that for me to be a good leader, i should also help the members with their problems, but she never let me do so," chaewon huffed out while hugging the pillow.

"first off, i didn't help everyone with their all problems. i allowed everyone to come to me at their own pace, never setting an expectation for anybody," eunbi explained to chaewon but was  interrupted.

"but-" chaewon said as she was about to refute each of her eunbi points but was cut off.

"doesn't mean that because you came to me with your problem, all the members did. we all have our way to cope, and it may be different from other people's, but as long as it's healthy, i see no reason why to intervene," eunbi said while sitting beside chaewon now holding her hand.

"fine, i'll let it be," chaewon huffed into the pillow while squeezing eunbi's hand.

slowly but surely, the more chaewon had backed off. the more you opened up to her, the fewer the yelling matches you both had every day, and slowly came the calm. it was odd for chaewon, she was never used to both of you coexisting peacefully, you on the other side of the kitchen buttering your toast for the morning before going to the gym. when practice came around, it took chaewon every single ounce of her being to not be critical of your every move and to allow the choreographer to point out mistakes, which allowed you to put more of a groove into the dance to fix the problem.

it was odd; it made the choreography more balanced, and you seemed happier with it and yourself. the nights where you had stayed back had lessened, and you were slowly opening up more to her, telling her about the little problems you had throughout the day. which led her to open up to you about the small problems she had throughout the day, and both of you slowly became closer to each other through the happy days.

she noticed a pattern with you. whenever you had expectations placed upon you, you always rebelled and defied those expectations. however, when you had zero expectations, you excelled and thrived in the environment.

until it was in the middle of promotion. you as a part of your family because your family had owed a favor to distract the public. the headline had said

 'the choi's family finally claims LE SSERAFIM CHOI Y/N as the last and final child. Hybe has yet to confirm the family's claim. do you think this is true?'

she noticed that you had run out of the room as soon as you saw that headline with a sick look on your face. all of your members except yunjin looked wide-eyed as her eyes darted around the room for you. chaewon slipped out of the room, walking to the washroom, where she knew where you had always gone to hide.

"it's ok." were the only consoling words. then, a minute later, she noticed that the tremors had settled down. you were looking down with your eyes red, biting the tip of your thumb. "hey," the word she mumbles up as she tilts your chin in her direction, "it's going to be okay." the next thing she knew, your lips were on hers, and she was kissing back.

you had defied every bit of her expectation.

a/n: bro i'm actually so addicted to rhythm hive its a problem. been playing super shy and unforgiven on it so much... unforgiven jp is so good stream it- (AND IT HAS ADO-)

[alpaca-clouds]

The History of Cyberpunk

Or why every other SciFi Genre is called [something]punk

You know what? Let's do this. Because I have seen the discussion on whether or not Solarpunk is "punk" over the last few days and... people really gotta learn their history.

The first time a genre took the "punk" name was Cyberpunk. And for context we gotta talk a bit about the history of the Cyberpunk genre.

While some books that we in hindsight call "Cyberpunk" were released as early as the 1960s, the start of Cyberpunk as a genre got its start in the late 70s and early 80s.

The term was invented by Bruce Bethke, who published a short story in 1983 with the name "Cyberpunk". His idea was to juxtapose the term "punk" for both the mentality and the punk protagonists in his short story with the term cyber, short for the cybernetics they were wearing. And while the cybernetics have become a main stay in the genre, the punk attitudes are not always carried through...

Well, the title Bethke invented stuck, though. When 1984 Neuromancer was published, one of the most influencial works in the early days of the genre, he called it "a Cyberpunk novel" in the marketing. And from there... Well, the genre was suddenly named like that.

The 80s were definitely the decade that had the most influence on the genre, given that a lot of the big novels and graphic novels of the genre were released here.

A big influence was, no doubt, that 1982 the Blade Runner movie had released and had inspired quite a few writers and artists. (And yes, this makes Blade Runner a movie that released not only before the term Cyberpunk was coined, but also before the genre had a chance to define itself.)

Given that the genre was defined in the 80s, there are a lot of 80s anxiety kept within it about the rise of the Japanese economy, that are these days rarely questioned within the western Cyberpunk movement.

When the genre was coined and developed, Japan was the fastest growing economy in the world, being so influencial that they got to buy out several things in America. Something that kinda jerked white people in the US a lot. This is, why Cyberpunk originally depicted not only a capitalist hellscape - but specifically a capitalist hellscape were everything was bought out by Japanese companies, with many of those early antagonists being Japanese companies. And yeah... there was a lot of both anti-japanese racism, but also cultural appropriation of Japanese things in early Cyberpunk, at time surviving to this day. (But that is a story for another day.)

The general sense that Western Cyberpunk had, was always the idea of: We have a capitalist hellscape where the world is slowly dying and people are exploited with no end, while we have those kinda punky protagonists, who stand outside of the society and try to work against it. This being where the punk comes from.

Now, I could talk for length about how a lot of that punky attitude has been lost in more modern Cyberpunk media, but that, too, is a story for another day.

So, let me just talk about what happened then.

The term Cyberpunk really is darn catchy, right? So just when that name took hold, writer K.W. Jeter retroactively called his 1979 novel Morlock Night "steampunk". And guess what: This stuck, too. Though while the 80s Cyberpunk still stuck to the punk attitude, a lot of Steampunk did not. While for certain there is quite a bit of Steampunk that has kinda punky characters go against the quasi Victorian society of steampunk books (something most common in the air pirate novels I have read), a lot of other stories are more focused on a general sense of adventure.

But never the less... The genre names stuck and gave a nice baseline for naming other genre. We got Dieselpunk, Atompunk, Nanopunk, Arcanepunk, Dustpunk, Silkpunk and of course also Solarpunk and Lunarpunk.

And for the most part... The "punk" names mostly communicate: "It is SciFi with this kinda aesthetic/twist going on". Which is just how it turned out.

Funnily enough Solarpunk is for once a genre that brings back the punk, as it tends to include a lot of the ideals aspired to by the Punk counter culture of the 1970s: Anarchism, anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism, anti-classism, anti-racism, anti-colonialism and so on. Though other than with Cyberpunk and the real world punk movement, Solarpunk for the most part imagines a place, where those things are culture instead of counter culture.

I personally find it kinda sad, how for the most part Cyberpunk kinda lost a lot of the counter-cultural, revolutionary mindset. And how fucking defeatist the genre often is.

But again, it is a story for another day. Just as the story of Japanese Cyberpunk is.

[sgiandubh]

The telling hashtag

So S is willfully disclosing his LHR location, with a story and a post to boot, as expected:

📌at Bourne Offices, 11 Richmond Buildings, in Soho:

Literally round the corner from Soho House, on Dean Street. Of course:

Also, this - very telling:

#gifted. Before *urv starts her demented Fitness at Dawn - The London Hyrox Edition fanfic, let's unpack:

S chose to wear, in this post, one of the sunglasses models from David Beckham's eyewear collection. Price tag is a bit steep (twice my Ray-Ban Wayfarers), but still democratic:

But why the #gifted hashtag? Before you think C or Scottish Xena lovingly picked those up the shelf for his birthday, you might like to check a bit around for context. You see, all dbeyewear collections are manufactured by a single Italian producer based in Padua, Safilo Group. Hashtagged accordingly in his post, by the way.

A couple of days ago, Safilo Group and dbeyewear's commercial partnership reached a new, very important milestone:

[Source: Safilo Group press release, https://assets.ctfassets.net/cmstik7jzbvm/2lwJmoKJR7x3ydijfpi7c6/9870e11fbb2c040a89a6d8acb4ed25ea/20240502_Safilo_firma_un_accordo_di_licenza_perpetua_per_l-eyewear_di_David_Beckham.pdf]

On May 2nd, Safilo Group and Authentic Brands Group (ABG), the corporate side of Eyewear by David Beckham signed a 'perpetual licensing agreement, replacing the current one that would have ended in 2030'. Authentic Brands Group and Safilo Group have been working together since 2019, when Beckham started to design his own eyewear collection. Now, they are taking their collaboration one step further, with ABG (or the licensor) granting Safilo Group (the licensee) perpetual (unlikely to be retired, unless something goes really, awfully wrong along the way: breach of contract, etc.) exclusive right to produce, use, advertise, sell its merchandise.

Something like this needs proper promotion, so Safilo Group and/or ABG graciously sent S those sunglasses, in the hope he will sport them in one of his posts with a potential 3+ million subscriber views.

A word on the UK pretty obscure regulations on promoter advertising and the use of the #gifted hashtag. There is not one, but two competent national regulatory authorities: the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The ASA is a bit more lenient in its approach and they clearly say that if the promoted product has been sent to the influencer on a no strings attached basis, then it is ok to use that #gifted hashtag. They will not pursue, based on the lack of #ad, however they will name and shame you - not a pretty picture, after all:

[Source, heh: ASA's Influencer Guide to making clear that ads are ads, https://www.asa.org.uk/static/uploaded/3af39c72-76e1-4a59-b2b47e81a034cd1d.pdf]

But the CMA is way more vigilant. They consider that any freebie can and must be monetized, based on its retail value and as such, must be clearly labeled as an #ad, when promoted on socials by an influencer. And yes, they can and might pursue, at any given moment: that must be proportional with the offence and in S's case, it might simply mean being served with a cease and desist notice or a removal and prohibition order. I'd rather not be in those shoes, mind you:

[Source: CMA's guide Hidden ads: Being clear with your audience, 2022; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-media-endorsements-guide-for-influencers/social-media-endorsements-being-transparent-with-your-followers]

If he wants no further headaches, he should simply edit that post and add the right hashtag. It will be interesting to see if and when he will do it.

As for Fitness at Dawn, well... not even sorry.

Gracias a ti, ❤️. Siempre.

[not-that-syndrigast]

F1 and independent content creation

Recently, especially on Tiktok, F1 content creators apparently got letters stating they have to change their branding, as in take ‘F1’ out of their username and stop using exclusive F1TV content. There has been quite an uproar around this happening, with many fans not understanding why liberty media would forbid free marketing for them and complaining about it, so i would like to explain the choices made and how this influences content creation way less than most assume.

First of all, I have not seen the apparent letters myself, thus i can only guess what exactly it states, but as far as i see it, it only states that content creators have to keep copyrighted content, like the name or content out of their videos. It is not forbidden to continue to post anything, although I could see that changing with the current behavior of a few people.

A lot of people on tik tok claim that F1 content creators were the reason why they got interested in F1 and that it’s a shame Liberty media has used this for years but now that they got all the fans try to keep the independent content creators down. In itself this claim explains liberty medias choices; F1 content creators have gotten big, with thousands of followers to the point that they make money of F1 content, which is a whole legal affair in itself but i’ll even skip that point (although i’d be very happy if someone that has more knowledge of the law would explain it closer). Liberty media cannot control what these accounts post, which sounds good in the first place, but can become really dangerous and annoying to F1 fast.

Let me give you an example; we are going to imagine a girl now, let's call her Katie (for legal reasons, this is not framing but an example. As of 18.08.2024, none of these accounts or people exist to my knowledge). Katie is a big F1 fan, so she decides to make a tik tok account called ‘F1UpToDate’. She quickly gains thousands of followers by making videos about grand prixs, silly season, you’ve all seen the videos. Well now Katie is not a saint, no one is, so she makes a video saying racist things. Said video gets millions of views and now liberty media has a problem; due to the account name, they are directly tied to anything problematic she posts or says and there are many people misunderstanding that Katie is independent from F1. It sounds outlandish, but currently, there are quite a few F1 content creators that are big enough to be confused with an official F1 account. Now liberty media has to put out press releases and talk about how they have nothing to do with the post,... Instead of waiting for the shoe to drop, they are currently preventing anything like this from happening, especially since no one can predict what bad things people could actually do.

Now I’ve seen quite a few people also confused, why not just employ F1 content creators? They are well loved by the fans and could attract more fans, but people underestimate how expensive that actually is. As far as I see it, there's only two ways that would work, and in both cases the content creators would lose the independence that makes their videos so fun. Either, they have to get every single video by PR managers of liberty media approved, which would mean less funny and spontaneous videos, or they would only be allowed to post by a script, which again, would make them dependent. 

In the end, if we go back to our example, had the account been called ‘MotorsportsUpToDate’, there would still be outrage if something bad was posted, but at least both the content creator would have been independent and liberty media not affected. People will still be able to find content creators and they’ll still be able to attract new fans, a new username won’t change that.

To be honest, I'm even surprised liberty media let them get away this long with getting money from their name. Again, I'm not well versed in law, but I am aware that money creates these situations too.

But like always, I'd like to know what other people think of this, if you agree or maybe know more about the law than I do in this case.

[cherrygirlystuff]

From Myspace to Spotify: The Journey of Indie Sleaze Music in the Digital Age 🌐

Hey there, indie dreamer! 🎸 Ready for a nostalgic trip through the evolution of indie sleaze music? From the early days of Myspace to the modern streaming era on Spotify, indie sleaze has undergone a wild transformation. Let's dive into how this raw, rebellious genre has adapted and thrived in the digital age, and why it’s still resonating with listeners today.

1. The Myspace Era: Indie Sleaze’s First Digital Playground

Back in the early 2000s, Myspace was the epicenter of indie music discovery. It was the place where bands could upload their tracks, connect with fans, and build a following without needing a major label. Indie sleaze artists were quick to embrace this new digital frontier, using Myspace as their stage and connecting with a global audience in ways that had never been possible before.

DIY Spirit: Myspace was a haven for the DIY ethos that indie sleaze embraced. Bands like The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Arctic Monkeys used the platform to share their music directly with fans, bypassing traditional media and labels. Their raw, unpolished sound fit perfectly with the unfiltered vibe of Myspace.

Visual Aesthetic: Bands and fans alike used Myspace’s customizable profiles to express their indie sleaze style. With an abundance of glittery backgrounds, band posters, and those iconic “Top 8” friend lists, the platform was a digital reflection of the era’s grungy, glamorous aesthetic.

2. From Downloads to Streams: The Shift to Digital Platforms

As the digital music landscape evolved, so did indie sleaze. The rise of platforms like iTunes and, later, streaming services like Spotify changed the way music was consumed and shared. This transition brought new opportunities and challenges for indie sleaze artists.

Digital Downloads: Platforms like iTunes allowed fans to buy and download individual tracks, making it easier for indie sleaze bands to reach new audiences. Artists could release singles and EPs without needing a full album, and fans could curate their own playlists of their favorite tracks.

Streaming Services: Enter Spotify, Apple Music, and other streaming platforms. The shift from downloads to streaming changed everything. Indie sleaze bands had to adapt to a world where music was less about owning tracks and more about playlist placement and algorithmic recommendations.

3. The Rise of Playlists and Algorithmic Discovery

One of the biggest changes in the music industry over the past decade has been the rise of playlists and algorithmic discovery. For indie sleaze artists, this new way of reaching listeners has both benefits and challenges.

Playlist Power: Playlists like Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” and “Release Radar” have become crucial for indie artists. Getting featured on a popular playlist can lead to a surge in streams and new fans. Indie sleaze tracks with their catchy hooks and raw energy often find a perfect home on these curated lists.

Algorithmic Challenges: While algorithms help discover new music, they also mean that artists need to navigate an ever-changing digital landscape. Standing out in a crowded field requires savvy marketing, consistent releases, and a strong online presence. Indie sleaze bands are learning to leverage social media and streaming data to connect with listeners and build their brand.

4. The Influence of Social Media: TikTok and Beyond

The rise of social media platforms like TikTok has brought a whole new dimension to music discovery. For indie sleaze, TikTok’s short-form video format and viral trends have become a new way to connect with fans and introduce their music to a wider audience.

Viral Hits: TikTok has the power to turn obscure indie tracks into viral sensations. Songs that capture the spirit of indie sleaze—whether through their raw lyrics, catchy beats, or nostalgic vibes—are finding new life on the platform. Creators use these tracks in videos, dance challenges, and memes, leading to a resurgence of interest in the genre.

Fan Engagement: Social media allows artists to interact directly with their fans, building a community around their music. Indie sleaze bands are using platforms like Instagram and Twitter to share behind-the-scenes content, engage with fans, and keep their audience updated on new releases.

5. The Revival of Indie Sleaze: A New Generation Embraces the Sound

Despite the changes in how music is consumed, indie sleaze is experiencing a revival. A new generation is discovering and embracing the genre, inspired by the nostalgia of the early 2000s and the raw, unfiltered energy that indie sleaze represents.

Nostalgic Resurgence: The early 2000s sound is making a comeback, with both new and old artists embracing the grunge pop aesthetic. The rise of vintage-inspired fashion and music is bringing indie sleaze back into the spotlight, with playlists and radio stations dedicated to the genre.

Cultural Impact: Indie sleaze’s influence is seen in modern fashion, film, and art. The grungy, carefree style of the early 2000s is being reinterpreted for today’s audience, blending nostalgia with contemporary creativity.

Final Thoughts, Babe: The Journey Continues

From the DIY spirit of Myspace to the streaming era of Spotify and the viral world of TikTok, indie sleaze has navigated a complex and ever-changing digital landscape. Despite the challenges, the genre remains as vibrant and relevant as ever, resonating with both old fans and a new generation discovering its raw, rebellious charm.

So next time you’re curating your playlist or scrolling through social media, remember the journey indie sleaze has taken to get here. Whether you’re rediscovering the classics or finding new favorites, the spirit of indie sleaze lives on—gritty, glamorous, and forever cool. 🎶✨

[hsdigitalmedia]

Social Media Influencer

HS Digital Media: Pioneering Mumbai’s Social Media Influencer SceneIn the vibrant digital landscape of Mumbai, where trends are set and lifestyles are celebrated, social media influencers hold immense power in shaping consumer behavior and driving brand engagement. As Mumbai’s premier influencer marketing agency, HS Digital Media is dedicated to helping brands harness the influence of social media influencers to amplify their brand presence, connect with their target audience, and achieve tangible results. Let’s delve into some of the specialized influencer marketing services we offer in Mumbai:Targeted Influencer Campaigns: Reaching the Right AudienceIn a city as diverse as Mumbai, understanding your target audience is crucial for the success of influencer marketing campaigns. At HS Digital Media, we specialize in crafting targeted influencer campaigns that resonate with Mumbai’s diverse audience demographics. Whether you’re targeting fashion-forward millennials, tech-savvy professionals, or food enthusiasts, our team leverages data-driven insights and industry expertise to identify the right influencers who can effectively reach and engage with your target audience.Creative Influencer Partnerships: Bringing Your Brand’s Story to LifeCreativity is at the heart of successful influencer partnerships. Our team at HS Digital Media collaborates with Mumbai’s top social media influencers to create compelling and authentic content that brings your brand’s story to life. From captivating Instagram posts and engaging YouTube videos to interactive TikTok challenges, we work closely with influencers to develop creative campaigns that resonate with their audience while staying true to your brand’s messaging and objectives.

Celebrity Influencer Marketing: Leveraging Star PowerIn a city known for its glitz and glamour, celebrity influencers wield significant influence over their followers. Our celebrity influencer marketing services are designed to help brands leverage the star power of Mumbai’s top celebrities to amplify their brand presence and reach a wider audience. Whether it’s a Bollywood actor, sports personality, or social media sensation, our team at HS Digital Media facilitates strategic partnerships with celebrity influencers to create impactful campaigns that generate buzz and drive engagement.

Connect with HS Digital Media: Your Trusted Mumbai Influencer Marketing PartnerAt HS Digital Media, we’re passionate about helping brands unlock the full potential of influencer marketing to achieve their business goals and make a lasting impact in Mumbai’s dynamic market. Whether you’re looking to launch targeted influencer campaigns, forge creative partnerships, collaborate with celebrity influencers, build authentic connections with influencers, or leverage the influence of beauty influencers, our team has the expertise and industry insights to help you succeed. Get in touch with us today to learn more about our specialized influencer marketing services and how we can help you elevate your brand presence, drive engagement, and achieve tangible results in Mumbai and beyond. Let’s create impactful influencer marketing campaigns that resonate with your audience and drive real business outcomes.

[coltrainbat]

All Worth It

Summary: Curvy!Reader (normal) and Chris Evans are about to go public with their relationship. Ends with a very cute trip. 

WARNING: Anxious gorl, Fluff 

A/N: This imagine wouldnt be possible without the encouraging bullying push from @royalwriteroftheuniverse​ 💕

You sat in the conference room and took a long gulp of the hot tea in your hand sighing at the taste. Readjusting your glasses as you scanned the agenda in front of you. 

��RELATIONSHIP LAUNCH

Chris Evans X Y/FN Y/LN

 “Jesus.” You thought to yourself, who’s the unlucky fucker who had to write this. You were familiar with meeting agendas and some of the terms; release dates, public statements, media releases, security personnel but the context of this being in regard to you going public with your relationship with a guy you met a work event and who just so happens to be a movie star was bizarre to you. 

 Before you second guessed your choices in men and how you ended up in a room with publicists, marketers and social media experts, said movie star pulled the chair out next to you, his hand automatically on your knee to stop it jiggling. He leaned in close, pushing a strand of hair past your ear, 

 “Relax we’ll be in and out in no time.” The words instantly calmed you as you caught his quick wink.

 You took a deep breath as everyone got settled around the table. 

 Chris honestly couldn’t give a shit about what anyone thought, and he found the whole thing equally annoying. Sure, it wasn’t his first time in this room, with a beautiful woman next to him. But in all those times before they were just as comfortable with it. 

 He knew you weren’t used to it, he hated this was needed but he wanted to use all the resources he had to make sure you were safe and didn’t see one single nasty comment. He didn’t want to lose you to the circus that was his life and he wanted this to be the last time he ever sat in one of these meetings.

 He was calm yet tense, you watched the way his jaw would tighten when his publicist mentioned backlash by fans, his hand would grab you a little tighter and he always made sure to give you a sympathetic smile. 

 He was constantly stealing gazes at you as you slipped your takeaway cup of tea, nodding and acknowledging the reality of the situation. 

 After the meeting a couple of things came out. 

 Every social media you ever had was cleaned of photos of you; drunk on a night out, heels in hand, throwing up into a public trashcan… for obvious reasons.

All social medias were private so only your closest friends and family could see – fine you had no ambition of being an influencer. 

Searching your name up on the internet is now banned – you could live with that.

 You didn’t really care about any of it you just wanted to go home. 

 You both wanted the launch to be somewhat organic so at Chris’s insistence he’d post a photo on his Instagram and twitter with a simple caption. You’d approve the photo of course. 

 You never thought an Instagram post would be given the same gravity as unleashing a missile but slowly you grew to understand the reach Chris had. 

 Chris prepared his statement. Simple yet straight to the point.

 I have been so lucky to find someone who makes me incredibly happy and challenges me every day to be a better person. For years, I have wanted and love like this and I’m happy to say I have found it. She’s amazing and brings out the best in me. I hope over time my fans can get to know and love her like I have.

For now, I ask that you give us privacy during this time as we navigate what life looks like now for both of us. I ask that you give her the respect and kindness she deserves. Thank you. 

 It was good. Really good. And it made you blush like crazy. 

 After he finished reading and put away his phone, he turned to you

 “Happy with that?”

 You nodded contently. 

 He leaned into your ear “If you want, I can put in the part about that thing you do with your tongue when you’re…” 

 “Stop. It.” You grabbed his chin and gave him a stern look. He poked his tongue out in jest. 

 ------------ ARRIVING HOME ------------------

You finally got through the front door and beamed as Dodger ran up to your feet. Chris dropped his keys in the bowl and turned to you pulling you close by your waist.

 “It’s done” he kissed your forehead, then rested his on yours. 

 “Did you take time off from work like I asked?”

 Y/N: “2 weeks from today” you beamed at him. 

 C: “Good. Pack for cold weather we have to be at the airport in 2 hours.” He pecked your forehead and turned away.

 “It’s a surprise you’ll see!” he called as he jogged up the stairs hoping that would prevent answering what was sure to be an onslaught of questions.

  You stood there, mouth agape, shaking your head with a scoff. Whatever, you needed a holiday. 

 ------------LEAVING THE PLANE ------------

 You followed Chris as his hand held yours tightly, you gripped your other on his forearm, trying to steal his warmth as you walked across the tarmac towards the car.  Dodger walked in front of you both, tail high just happy to be involved. You thanked the staff who loaded your bags into the trunk, Chris opened the passenger door guiding you onto the heated seat and placing a blanket on your lap for good measures, he smiled as he tucked the tartan under your thighs. Dodger hopped in and settled into a fluffy cocoon at your feet. 

 “Alright, ready to go?” Chris looked over at you as he got into the driver’s seat. 

 “You going to tell me where we are going?” 

 “No but I can guarantee you’ll love it.”

 You rolled your eyes as he grabbed your hand and kissed it.   

You travelled through the night on empty roads surrounded by trees. Both your voices filled the car as you sang along to your playlist, both laughing at your inability to sing, with his hand never leaving yours even when he held it in the air as a makeshift microphone. 

 Finally, you arrived along a gravel road up to a private modern home. 

 “We’re here.” Chris exclaimed as he pulled the key out of the ignition. You were speechless as you studied the house exterior. It was modern yet cozy, with not a single house in sight for miles. Exactly what you needed. 

 “It’s a rental, in case you were wondering, but if you really love it, I’ll buy it.” He smirked.

 You slapped his chest, “Don’t be stupid… it’s not even my birthday yet.” He chuckled at your response.

 You both were kidding but you didn’t doubt he’d buy it if you wanted him to. 

  You unpacked and headed towards the shower, letting the hot water fall over your curves. You dressed in your silk pyjama set and made your way to the living room. 

The fireplace crackled, its warmth filling the whole room with Dodger settled on his bed right beside it. 

 Chris was finishing pouring the glass of your favorite white, handing it to you as his arm snaked around your waist, placing a long kiss on your lips. 

 “God, you smell good.”

 “This.” You gestured your glass around you “Is perfect. Thank you… I mean it.”

 “It wouldn’t be perfect if I didn’t have you here.” He laid soft kisses on your lips, you wrapped your arms around his neck, pulling him closer. 

 “Hey” he pulled out of the kiss…

 “I’m sorry for earlier, I know it’s a funny way of making a relationship official and all. But you don’t have to get used to it. I just don’t know what I’d do if something happened, or you were able to see the cruel things people on the internet say. I promise you it’ll be the last time I just wanted everything in order to keep you safe.”

 “I’m a big girl Chris… literally.” You gestured to your protruding chest “I think I can take a couple of mean comments here and there… you forget I went to an all-girls High School! I won’t even look, its whatever, I’m just happy to be here with you” 

 Chris sighed and pulled on your waist a little tighter and bowed his head. 

 His eyes had darkened “I want you to know that whatever is said about you does not reflect how I feel about you in the slightest, because my god do I love these curves” He squeezed your ass for extra emphasis. 

 You giggled in response

 “But seriously, I don’t won’t you to ever doubt how I feel about you. To me, everything you are, is exactly what I want and need. I need you baby.” 

 “I know” you arched your neck to kiss his jaw ever so softly.

 “And right now, I need you to cuddle me on the couch.” 

 “Whatever you want.” He grabbed the now half empty glass from you and placed it on the table. Then quickly yanked you over his shoulder, you squealed at the sudden jerk of your body midair.

 “Chris! I can walk!”

 “Yeah, I know but this is more fun ya know.” He said, nonchalantly, not even breaking a sweat as he carried you one handedly towards the couch. 

 With one final slap of your ass, he threw you on the couch and you landed with a thump amongst the plush pillows, giggling still at the impromptu rollercoaster ride. 

 Chris grabbed the throw blanket to your side and settled next you, draping you both in the soft material. His arm went up onto the back of the couch and like instinct you snuggled up against him. 

 He pulled you close, as the Hallmark movie played, hand lazily stroking your back. You rested your head on his chest content with the sound of his heartbeat and faint smell of cologne. It really was perfect. 

 2 weeks of uninterrupted bliss.

 “Shit I almost forgot.” 

 “What” 

 “Our photo.”

You felt ill at the thought. Suddenly, the anxiety returned and wish you could hold it off as long as possible, you loved that your relationship was for you two and you two only. 

 Chris noticed your discomfort and pulled you in as close as possible. 

 “Hey baby, it’ll be fine, they said going in hard straight off the bat was a good strategy, allows people time to sink it in. No games. I’ll post this, the mags will approach my team for comment, they’ll give them my statement and that’ll be it.”

 You gave him a weary smile. You were in the room and knew the plan but the whole thing still felt icky. 

 “Come on… we’ll have fun with it! I’ll let you choose the photo…”

 “Fine, share the screen.”

 “That’s my girl.”

 Chris pulled out his phone from under the blanket, going through his favorites, you both skimmed through the thousands of photos of you and Dodger. 

 “This one would for sure create a stir.” Chris grinned as he clicked on the photo of you sunbaking topless in his backyard. Your boobs as always sagged slightly down, and you hated the way you stomach poked out from your bikini bottom. Shielding the sun with your forearm it only really showed your beaming smile. Chris LOVED this photo. 

 “Don’t be silly what else.” 

 He went to the one he took of you walking Dodger, you could only see the back of you. Your hair in a ponytail and your ass nicely shaped by those grey Amazon leggings that Chris bought for you after he saw an ad for them. Dodger was looking up towards you as you walked down the path. You remembered that day but didn’t know Chris was taking a photo. 

 “I like that one, but you need to stop using Dodger for clout.” 

 “What do you mean… he loves the spotlight! Besides you can’t even see your face in this one it’s no good.” 

 “I don’t even know if I want them to see my face.”

 “Oh, come on, you’re beautiful besides you’re not gonna be able to walk down the red carpet with a paper bag on your head baby.” 

 “Who says I can’t?!” you mocked a shocked face making Chris give a full belly laugh.

 “I know the photo.” Chris scrolled up past the endless Dodger sleeping positions until he found it. 

 It was both of you at his mom’s house. Watching the Patriot’s Game in matching jerseys, eyes focused on the TV. You sat similarly how you were now, with Chris’s arms wrapped around you tightly, you slouched up against him. It was a great photo and perfectly incapsulated you both. You loved football. 

“You approve?” Chris looked down at you.

 “Yeah, I approve.” You pecked his lips. 

 Chris went to post it on IG, captioning it, to your dismay

 “Couples who watch football together, stay together.” 

 You cringed but had to laugh at the truthfulness. 

 “Really… you’re going to caption it that?”

 “Yeah, isn’t that like a trendy thing to say?” 

 “You’re so out of touch with the youth” you laughed at him.

 “Ok fine what do I say… this is the love of my life please be nice she’s new?” He smirked at you

 “Just do a blue heart or something! I don’t know!”

 “Does blue heart scream serious relationship though?” 

 “They’re going to question it either way why does it matter?”

 “I just want people to know ya know? Like I’m making a statement here come on!”

 “I know you like me you don’t need to profess your love on Instagram, this is just to alert the masses nothing more.”

 “Yeah, but what if...” You cut him off 

 “You’re overthinking it Cap…” 

 You only ever called him Cap to tease him, but it always worked to soften him up. 

 “Ok ok, blue heart, that’s good, you’re good at this. Ok posting in… 3… 2… 2 and a half”

 ‘Oh my God… Chris just post it already!” You groaned.

 “1!” He then quickly turned off his phone and threw it at the couch next to you. 

 You both ended up in a fit of laughter at what was probably the most thrilling Instagram you’ve ever posted. 

[smute]

honestly the problem with booktok (and bookstagram) is not YA lit. it's not about people enjoying books that some might consider "low-brow" or whatever.

imo booktok is the culmination of several problems:

firstly, there's the homogeneity of algorithmic recommendations and the enormous influence those recommendations have on the publishing market. booktok recs tend to be of a very similar style and subject matter. they're easily digestible, easily bingeable titles that arent overly complex. booktok favors stories written by white women, often featuring characters with traumatic backstories and focusing on themes like overcoming adversity and the pursuit of romantic love. they are also usually very anglo-/americentric. none of this is necessarily bad, and none of it is by design, but it's not a coincidence either. it's the result of the constraints of short-form content on the one hand, and on the other, of an algorithm that amplifies, in broad strokes, the preferences of the core demographic of any given group of users.

secondly, it's about the commodification, not of reading, but of being Someone Who Reads Books (TM), which i think is just a particularly obvious symptom of online peer pressure and social-media-driven self-presentation. booktok doesn't encourage you to read, for example, sally rooney. it encourages the cultivation of one's own identity as someone who reads sally rooney. the problem here is not that sally rooney is a shit writer whose work has nothing of note to say. quite the opposite. sally rooney's work is relevant and interesting. in fact, it's being studied by scholars, and even if it wasn't, people can and should be allowed to enjoy some light reading, and yes, even Problematic (TM) fictional characters.

the real problem is the fact that the very nature of how booktok works actively discourages the critical discussion of the stories that it circulates. the problem is not millions of teenagers reading colleen hoover's slop (i love me some slop) – it's millions of teenagers encouraging each other to read and internalize – UNCRITICALLY – hoover's particularly romanticized depiction of abuse. tiktok's algorithm does not foster diversity of opinion. it doesn't foster diversity PERIOD. it doesn't foster slow, in-depth discussion. its only function is *make line go up* – line go up = clicks, views, engagement, money.

due to tiktok's popularity, booktok also has an enormous influence on marketing-related and (apparently, to some extent) editorial decision-making in the publishing industry. this is not just the fault of booktok, goodreads is part of the same problem. i mean, booktok has managed to turn colleen hoover's 'it ends with us' into a bestseller FIVE YEARS after it was originally published. it has also led to publishers dropping authors or DELAYING THE RELEASE of new titles after booktokers flooded the goodreads pages of unpublished books with one star reviews.

as i said, the underlying issue here is not unique to booktok. it's the same homogenization that plagues the movie industry, the tv industry, streaming services, etc. the publishing industry is just particularly vulnerable to such manipulations of public opinion. in the end, tiktok is not a social media app. it's an entertainment app and its content is focused on brevity. the biggest booktokers aren't simply avid readers. they don't post actual reviews of books they enjoyed. they're influencers who receive boxes of books from publishing houses to show off in haul videos like "have you guys heard of squarespace?" and that's it. the level of engagement with the texts themselves is like reading a blurb on the dustjacket, and unfortunately that is reflected in the selection of titles that become popular. if it can't be sold to you in 3 sentences, the algorithm will bury it.

[mariacallous]

In 2023, the fast-fashion giant Shein was everywhere. Crisscrossing the globe, airplanes ferried small packages of its ultra-cheap clothing from thousands of suppliers to tens of millions of customer mailboxes in 150 countries. Influencers’ “#sheinhaul” videos advertised the company’s trendy styles on social media, garnering billions of views.

At every step, data was created, collected, and analyzed. To manage all this information, the fast fashion industry has begun embracing emerging AI technologies. Shein uses proprietary machine-learning applications — essentially, pattern-identification algorithms — to measure customer preferences in real time and predict demand, which it then services with an ultra-fast supply chain.

As AI makes the business of churning out affordable, on-trend clothing faster than ever, Shein is among the brands under increasing pressure to become more sustainable, too. The company has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 25 percent by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions no later than 2050.

But climate advocates and researchers say the company’s lightning-fast manufacturing practices and online-only business model are inherently emissions-heavy — and that the use of AI software to catalyze these operations could be cranking up its emissions. Those concerns were amplified by Shein’s third annual sustainability report, released late last month, which showed the company nearly doubled its carbon dioxide emissions between 2022 and 2023.

“AI enables fast fashion to become the ultra-fast fashion industry, Shein and Temu being the fore-leaders of this,” said Sage Lenier, the executive director of Sustainable and Just Future, a climate nonprofit. “They quite literally could not exist without AI.” (Temu is a rapidly rising ecommerce titan, with a marketplace of goods that rival Shein’s in variety, price, and sales.)

In the 12 years since Shein was founded, it has become known for its uniquely prolific manufacturing, which reportedly generated over $30 billion of revenue for the company in 2023. Although estimates vary, a new Shein design may take as little as 10 days to become a garment, and up to 10,000 items are added to the site each day. The company reportedly offers as many as 600,000 items for sale at any given time with an average price tag of roughly $10. (Shein declined to confirm or deny these reported numbers.) One market analysis found that 44 percent of Gen Zers in the United States buy at least one item from Shein every month.

That scale translates into massive environmental impacts. According to the company’s sustainability report, Shein emitted 16.7 million total metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2023 — more than what four coal power plants spew out in a year. The company has also come under fire for textile waste, high levels of microplastic pollution, and exploitative labor practices. According to the report, polyester — a synthetic textile known for shedding microplastics into the environment — makes up 76 percent of its total fabrics, and only 6 percent of that polyester is recycled.

And a recent investigation found that factory workers at Shein suppliers regularly work 75-hour weeks, over a year after the company pledged to improve working conditions within its supply chain. Although Shein’s sustainability report indicates that labor conditions are improving, it also shows that in third-party audits of over 3,000 suppliers and subcontractors, 71 percent received a score of C or lower on the company’s grade scale of A to E — mediocre at best.

Machine learning plays an important role in Shein’s business model. Although Peter Pernot-Day, Shein’s head of global strategy and corporate affairs, told Business Insider last August that AI was not central to its operations, he indicated otherwise during a presentation at a retail conference at the beginning of this year.

“We are using machine-learning technologies to accurately predict demand in a way that we think is cutting edge,” he said. Pernot-Day told the audience that all of Shein’s 5,400 suppliers have access to an AI software platform that gives them updates on customer preferences, and they change what they’re producing to match it in real time.

“This means we can produce very few copies of each garment,” he said. “It means we waste very little and have very little inventory waste.” On average, the company says it stocks between 100 to 200 copies of each item — a stark contrast with more conventional fast-fashion brands, which typically produce thousands of each item per season, and try to anticipate trends months in advance. Shein calls its model “on-demand,” while a technology analyst who spoke to Vox in 2021 called it “real-time” retail.

At the conference, Pernot-Day also indicated that the technology helps the company pick up on “micro trends” that customers want to wear. “We can detect that, and we can act on that in a way that I think we’ve really pioneered,” he said. A designer who filed a recent class action lawsuit in a New York District Court alleges that the company’s AI market analysis tools are used in an “industrial-scale scheme of systematic, digital copyright infringement of the work of small designers and artists,” that scrapes designs off the internet and sends them directly to factories for production.

In an emailed statement to Grist, a Shein spokesperson reiterated Peter Pernot-Day’s assertion that technology allows the company to reduce waste and increase efficiency and suggested that the company’s increased emissions in 2023 were attributable to booming business. “We do not see growth as antithetical to sustainability,” the spokesperson said.

An analysis of Shein’s sustainability report by the Business of Fashion, a trade publication, found that last year, the company’s emissions rose at almost double the rate of its revenue — making Shein the highest-emitting company in the fashion industry. By comparison, Zara’s emissions rose half as much as its revenue. For other industry titans, such as H&M and Nike, sales grew while emissions fell from the year before.

Shein’s emissions are especially high because of its reliance on air shipping, said Sheng Lu, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware. “AI has wide applications in the fashion industry. It’s not necessarily that AI is bad,” Lu said. “The problem is the essence of Shein’s particular business model.”

Other major brands ship items overseas in bulk, prefer ocean shipping for its lower cost, and have suppliers and warehouses in a large number of countries, which cuts down on the distances that items need to travel to consumers.

According to the company’s sustainability report, 38 percent of Shein’s climate footprint comes from transportation between its facilities and to customers, and another 61 percent come from other parts of its supply chain. Although the company is based in Singapore and has suppliers in a handful of countries, the majority of its garments are produced in China and are mailed out by air in individually addressed packages to customers. In July, the company sent about 900,000 of these to the US every day.

Shein’s spokesperson told Grist that the company is developing a decarbonization road map to address the footprint of its supply chain. Recently, the company has increased the amount of inventory it stores in US warehouses, allowing it to offer American customers quicker delivery times, and increased its use of cargo ships, which are more carbon-efficient than cargo planes.

“Controlling the carbon emissions in the fashion industry is a really complex process,” Lu said, adding that many brands use AI to make their operations more efficient. “It really depends on how you use AI.”

There is research that indicates using certain AI technologies could help companies become more sustainable. “It’s the missing piece,” said Shahriar Akter, an associate dean of business and law at the University of Wollongong in Australia. In May, Akter and his colleagues published a study finding that when fast-fashion suppliers used AI data management software to comply with big brands’ sustainability goals, those companies were more profitable and emitted less. A key use of this technology, Atker says, is to closely monitor environmental impacts, such as pollution and emissions. “This kind of tracking was not available before AI-based tools,” he said.

Shein told Grist it does not use machine-learning data management software to track emissions, which is one of the uses of AI included in Akter’s study. But the company’s much-touted usage of machine-learning software to predict demand and reduce waste is another of the uses of AI included in the research.

Regardless, the company has a long way to go before meeting its goals. Grist calculated that the emissions Shein reportedly saved in 2023 — with measures such as providing its suppliers with solar panels and opting for ocean shipping — amounted to about 3 percent of the company’s total carbon emissions for the year.

Lenier, from Sustainable and Just Future, believes there is no ethical use of AI in the fast-fashion industry. She said that the largely unregulated technology allows brands to intensify their harmful impacts on workers and the environment. “The folks who work in fast-fashion factories are now under an incredible amount of pressure to turn out even more, even faster,” she said.

Lenier and Lu both believe that the key to a more sustainable fashion industry is convincing customers to buy less. Lu said if companies use AI to boost their sales without changing their unsustainable practices, their climate footprints will also grow accordingly. “It’s the overall effect of being able to offer more market-popular items and encourage consumers to purchase more than in the past,” he said. “Of course, the overall carbon impact will be higher.”

[fans4wga]

Hi, I don't know if you've answered this yet but as fans can we post about new shows here or is that considered scabbing?

That's not considered scabbing, unless you're an influencer doing promotion work for the studios. (Unfortunately there is currently a lot of confusion about the line between an influencer and a fan/hobbyist, so hopefully SAG-AFTRA releases more guidelines that show a better understanding of fans and fan spaces in the future!)

For now it seems your run-of-the-mill fan talking about or posting about shows/films is fine. The only place we'd urge caution and to step back is if you find yourself contributing to studio advertisement about new releases, for instance joining in on any sort of studio-led campaign or social media post that's advertising for its products. Primarily, remember that what SAG-AFTRA is trying to limit right now is the studios replacing celebrity/actor marketing with influencer account marketing, which harms the cause. But since there's no call for a boycott, normal conversation and posting generated by watching stuff is still perfectly acceptable.