#Top Google Rankings in 2023

[joyandella-123]

Achieving Top Google Rankings in 2023

In the ever-evolving landscape of digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO), staying ahead of the curve is crucial to securing that coveted top spot on Google's search results. As we step into 2023, the SEO game continues to change, presenting new challenges and opportunities for website owners and marketers. If you're aiming to rank #1 on Google this year, you'll need to adapt your strategy to the latest trends and best practices. In this article, we'll explore the key strategies and tactics that can help you achieve top rankings on Google in 2023.

High-Quality Content is Still King:

One thing that hasn't changed over the years is the importance of high-quality content. Google's algorithms prioritize content that is informative, relevant, and valuable to users. Focus on creating content that answers users' questions, solves their problems, and engages them.

Mobile Optimization is Non-Negotiable:

With Google's mobile-first indexing, ensuring that your website is mobile-friendly is more critical than ever. A responsive design, fast loading times, and a seamless mobile user experience are essential for ranking well in 2023.

Voice Search Optimization:

As the adoption of voice-activated devices continues to rise, optimizing your content for voice search is a smart move. Consider the natural language and conversational queries users may make when voice searching. Creating FAQ-style content can help capture these voice-driven queries.

User Experience Matters:

Google now places a strong emphasis on user experience. Factors like page speed, site security (HTTPS), and easy navigation play a significant role in rankings. Investing in a fast and user-friendly website is an investment in SEO success.

E-A-T Principles:

Google continues to prioritize expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-A-T) when ranking websites, especially in areas related to health, finance, and YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics. Ensure that your content reflects these principles and consider using authoritative backlinks.

Schema Markup:

Implementing schema markup on your website can help search engines better understand your content and present it in rich snippets on the search results page. This can improve your click-through rates and overall visibility.

Video Content:

Video content is becoming increasingly popular, and Google loves to feature video results. Create engaging videos that complement your written content to attract a broader audience and improve your chances of ranking higher.

Featured Snippets:

Optimizing for featured snippets can give your content a prime spot at the top of Google's search results. To do this, provide concise answers to common questions and use structured data to make it easy for Google to display your content as a featured snippet.

Social Signals:

While not a direct ranking factor, social signals can indirectly impact your SEO. Engage with your audience on social media, share your content, and encourage others to do the same. Social signals can help increase brand visibility and traffic.

Regular SEO Audits:

Finally, don't forget to conduct regular SEO audits to identify and fix issues that may be holding your website back. Monitoring your rankings, analyzing website performance, and making necessary adjustments are key to maintaining and improving your position on Google.

Ranking #1 on Google in 2023 requires a multifaceted approach that incorporates high-quality content, mobile optimization, user experience enhancements, and a keen understanding of Google's evolving algorithms. By staying up-to-date with the latest SEO trends and consistently improving your website, you can increase your chances of securing that coveted top spot and driving more organic traffic to your site. Remember that SEO is an ongoing effort, and staying committed to best practices will yield long-term benefits for your online presence.

Mystic Web Designn is a Search Engine Optimization specialist located in San Diego.To get a free SEO audit for your website, reach out to mysticwebdesignn.com

[bakanokiwami]

[2023] TOP 20 PODCASTS ON AO3 FOUND IN FANDOMS > OTHER MEDIA

To make this ranking, all series titles in Other Media were copy-pasted to Google Sheets, rearranged according to number of fanworks, and then manually filtered since not all podcasts were marked as such.

The numbers under each rank indicate how much they rose/fell in the rankings based on last year's (Oct. 24, 2023) rankings, which can be found here. The gray numbers in parenthesis indicate how much fanworks it gained since last year.

The data for this year and last year's rankings were taken while logged in, so lcoked fanworks are included in the count.

A few web series like Critical Role and Dimensions 20 released audio-only versions of their works too, but I left them out since they were listed was a web series on ao3 and more known as one too.

Cabin Pressure has also been left off the list this time since its podcast format was only released in 2019, years after it aired on the radio.

All nonfiction podcasts have also been excluded (Not that there were many), because with RPFs, it’s hard to tell if the fic in question is just based on the podcast or because of the things the person has done outside of it. Last year, I accidentally included The Misfits in the list since I didn't realize from its description that it was nonfiction.

The Two Princes (Podcast) ranks 21st in the rankings this year, and actually ranked 20th last year when the rankings are adjusted to exclude Cabin Pressure and The Misfits.

The College Tapes is actually a spinoff of The Bright Sessions.

Thanks for understanding and hopefully I didn’t mess up anywhere! 🙏

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT in SALT LAKE CITY (Feb 21, Weller Book Works) and TOMORROW in SAN DIEGO (Feb 22, Mysterious Galaxy). After that, it's LA, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix and more!

A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/phone-numbers-airlines-listed-google-directed-scammers-rcna94766

But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren't hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They're the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they're running circles around Google:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Google search is empirically worsening. The SEO industry spends every hour that god sends trying to figure out how to sleaze their way to the top of the search results, and even if Google defeats 99% of these attempts, the 1% that squeak through end up dominating the results page for any consequential query:

https://downloads.webis.de/publications/papers/bevendorff_2024a.pdf

Google insists that this isn't true, and if it is true, it's not their fault because the bad guys out there are so numerous, dedicated and inventive that Google can't help but be overwhelmed by them:

https://searchengineland.com/is-google-search-getting-worse-389658

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Google has long maintained that its scale is the only thing that keeps us safe from the scammers and spammers who would otherwise overwhelm any lesser-resourced defender. That's why it was so imperative that they pursue such aggressive growth, buying up hundreds of companies and integrating their products with search so that every mobile device, every ad, every video, every website, had one of Google's tendrils in it.

This is the argument that Google's defenders have put forward in their messaging on the long-overdue antitrust case against Google, where we learned that Google is spending $26b/year to make sure you never try another search engine:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-10-27/google-paid-26-3-billion-to-be-default-search-engine-in-2021

Google, we were told, had achieved such intense scale that the normal laws of commercial and technological physics no longer applied. Take security: it's an iron law that "there is no security in obscurity." A system that is only secure when its adversaries don't understand how it works is not a secure system. As Bruce Schneier says, "anyone can design a security system that they themselves can't break. That doesn't mean it works – just that it works for people stupider than them."

And yet, Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

A viral post by Housefresh – who review air purifiers – describes how Google's algorithmic failures, which send the worst sites to the top of the heap, have made it impossible for high-quality review sites to compete:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

You've doubtless encountered these bad review sites. Search for "Best ______ 2024" and the results are a series of near-identical lists, strewn with Amazon affiliate links. Google has endlessly tinkered with its guidelines and algorithmic weights for review sites, and none of it has made a difference. For example, when Google instituted a policy that reviewers should "discuss the benefits and drawbacks of something, based on your own original research," sites that had previously regurgitated the same lists of the same top ten Amazon bestsellers "peppered their pages with references to a ‘rigorous testing process,’ their ‘lab team,’ subject matter experts ‘they collaborated with,’ and complicated methodologies that seem impressive at a cursory look."

But these grandiose claims – like the 67 air purifiers supposedly tested in Better Homes and Gardens's Des Moines lab – result in zero in-depth reviews and no published data. Moreover, these claims to rigorous testing materialized within a few days of Google changing its search ranking and said that high rankings would be reserved for sites that did testing.

Most damning of all is how the Better Homes and Gardens top air purifiers perform in comparison to the – extensively documented – tests performed by Housefresh: "plagued by high-priced and underperforming units, Amazon bestsellers with dubious origins (that also underperform), and even subpar devices from companies that market their products with phrases like ‘the Tesla of air purifiers.’"

One of the top ranked items on BH&G comes from Molekule, a company that filed for bankruptcy after being sued for false advertising. The model BH&G chose was ranked "the worst air purifier tested" by Wirecutter and "not living up to the hype" by Consumer Reports. Either BH&G's rigorous testing process is a fiction that they infused their site with in response to a Google policy change, or BH&G absolutely sucks at rigorous testing.

BH&G's competitors commit the same sins – literally, the exact same sins. Real Simple's reviews list the same photographer and the photos seem to have been taken in the same place. They also list the same person as their "expert." Real Simple has the same corporate parent as BH&G: Dotdash Meredith. As Housefresh shows, there's a lot of Dotdash Meredith review photos that seem to have been taken in the same place, by the same person.

But the competitors of these magazines are no better. Buzzfeed lists 22 air purifiers, including that crapgadget from Molekule. Their "methodology" is to include screenshots of Amazon reviews.

A lot of the top ranked sites for air purifiers are once-great magazines that have been bought and enshittified by private equity giants, like Popular Science, which began as a magazine in 1872 and became a shambling zombie in 2023, after its PE owners North Equity LLC decided its googlejuice was worth more than its integrity and turned it into a metastatic chumbox of shitty affiliate-link SEO-bait. As Housefresh points out, the marketing team that runs PopSci makes a lot of hay out of the 150 years of trust that went into the magazine, but the actual reviews are thin anaecdotes, unbacked by even the pretense of empiricism (oh, and they loooove Molekule).

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal.

Companies like CNET used to do real, rigorous product reviews. As Housefresh points out, CNET once bought an entire smart home and used it to test products. Then Red Ventures bought CNET and bet that they could sell the house, switch to vibes-based reviewing, and that Google wouldn't even notice. They were right.

https://www.cnet.com/home/smart-home/welcome-to-the-cnet-smart-home/

Google downranks sites that spend money and time on reviews like Housefresh and GearLab, and crams botshittened content mills like BH&G into our eyeballs instead.

In 1558, Thomas Gresham coined (ahem) Gresham's Law: "Bad money drives out good." When counterfeit money circulates in the economy, anyone who gets a dodgy coin spends it as quickly as they can, because the longer you hold it, the greater the likelihood that someone will detect the fraud and the coin will become worthless. Run this system long enough and all the money in circulation is funny money.

An internet run by Google has its own Gresham's Law: bad sites drive out good. It's not just that BH&G can "test" products at a fraction of the cost of Housefresh – through the simple expedient of doing inadequate tests or no tests at all – so they can put a lot more content up that Housefresh. But that alone wouldn't let them drive Housefresh off the front page of Google's search results. For that, BH&G has to mobilize some of their savings from the no test/bad test lab to do real rigorous science: science in defeating Google's security-through-obscurity system, which lets them command the front page despite publishing worse-than-useless nonsense.

Google has lost the spam wars. In response to the plague of botshit clogging Google search results, the company has invested in…making more botshit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Last year, Google did a $70b stock buyback. They also laid off 12,000 staffers (whose salaries could have been funded for 27 years by that stock buyback). They just laid off thousands more employees.

That wasn't the deal. The deal was that Google would get a monopoly, and they would spend their monopoly rents to be so good that you could just click "I'm feeling lucky" and be teleported to the very best response to your query. A company that can't figure out the difference between a scam like Better Homes and Gardens and a rigorous review site like Housefresh should be pouring every spare dime it brings in into fixing this problem. Not buying default search status on every platform so that we never try another search engine: they should be fixing their shit.

When Google admits that it's losing the war to these kack-handed spam-farmers, that's frustrating. When they light $26b/year on fire making sure you don't ever get to try anything else, that's very frustrating. When they vaporize seventy billion dollars on financial engineering and shoot one in ten engineers, that's outrageous.

Google's scale has transcended the laws of business physics: they can sell an ever-degrading product and command an ever-greater share of our economy, even as their incompetence dooms any decent, honest venture to obscurity while providing fertile ground – and endless temptation – for scammers.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

[heystephen]

2023 swiftie survey results!

first of all, i want to thank everybody who took part in this and helped spread it to increase sample size. i put this together expecting to get 200 or so responses, but at the time of closing the survey, it had received 1,009 responses! so that's really awesome. the survey posed the following questions:

which era did you become a fan?

which album is your favorite?

what are your top three songs from each album?

what is your absolute favorite song by taylor?

i asked those questions for a few reasons. one being, i wondered if nostalgia plays a factor in peoples' favorite albums, or if people tend to favor the album related to the era that they became a fan. i also wondered what the true fan favorites of the albums could be, and what are the 'underrated' or lower tiered tracks. lastly, every so often a publication comes out with their own rankings of 'the best taylor swift songs of all time' and we all lose our minds because they're always so!! wrong!!!! so i wanted to see what it would look like if there was a swiftie-sourced list of favorite songs by her. anyway intro aside, here's the results below the cut, and brace yourselves!

NOTE: i couldn't find a way on google doc to change the colors on the pie charts otherwise i would've made them album color coded. i will also provide small descriptions of the data for those who have trouble reading the data from the charts, or can't see the images.

so it looks like most people became fans during the fearless era, which is just nearly tied with the debut era. the 1989 era comes in third, followed by speak now, red, folklore/evermore, reputation, lover and then midnights in that order.

the most popularly voted album for the favorite albums was folklore. speak now came in second place, then reputation in third. the rest of the albums came out ranked as evermore, then 1989, then lover, then midnights, then fearless, then the debut. yes, the debut has a teeny tiny little pie slice between midnights and fearless, it's really there if you squint.

the top 3 debut tracks were our song, should’ve said no and picture to burn. the most unpopular debut track was the pop remix of teardrops on my guitar. not too surprising although i thought stay beautiful was more of a fan fave than that.

the top 3 fearless tracks were the way i loved you, fearless and you belong with me. the most unpopular fearless track was superstar. (☹️) but shout out to my sweet baby hey stephen for doing better than i hoped!

the top 3 speak now tracks were long live, haunted and enchanted. this was maybe the most surprising one because i expected last kiss to be in the top 3! the most unpopular speak now track was superman.

the top 3 tracks for red were all too well (ten minute version), holy ground and state of grace. the last time came out more popular than i anticipated, while sad beautiful tragic didn’t quite get as much love as i thought it would. the most unpopular red track was run feat. ed sheeran, with just 8 votes. but again, it just proves that every song is beloved by someone.

so for 1989, the top 3 tracks were clean, style and new romantics. the most unpopular track was bad blood. i think this was pretty expected, people tend to gravitate toward the remix rather than the album version. over all, this one came out fully as i’d expect.

oh, getaway car. you never let the rest of the tracks on this album stand a chance in the running. the top tracks for reputation were getaway car by a mile, call it what you want and delicate. again, another interesting one. has call it what you want always been this popular? and of course, the most unpopular track was end game feat. future and ed sheeran.

just like getaway car, cruel summer absolutely jumped in the lead and took off running. the top 3 tracks for lover were cruel summer, death by a thousand cute and cornelia street. the archer also came out very popular and i think the tour performance has lended enormously to that, which i love. the most unpopular track was me! feat. brendon urie.. which i feared would happen :/

just like james, you guys couldn’t choose between august and betty, ‘cause the top two tracks for folklore were august and cardigan! my tears ricochet came in third place. the most unpopular folklore track was epiphany.

CONT. IN PART TWO DUE TO IMAGE LIMIT

[summerlinenss]

out of curiosity, if Max doesn’t release its metrics, then what metrics are you actually using to make these statements about the show’s popularity? what does “it’s currently in the 99.7th percentile of the comedy genre, meaning it’s in higher demand than 99.7% of all comedy series in the u.s.” even mean? How are you measuring what’s “in demand” - by who? Where? It’s bold to claim that this show was wildly popular (despite the fact that I never hear about it outside of tumblr, tho that’s a personal anecdote) but cancelled just for being queer, so I would be really interested to know where you’re getting all these numbers from. Thanks!

hey anon! first of all i am so sorry for the delayed response. i started typing something up and then i got distracted with something else and totally forgot about this in my drafts.

sure, i have no problem citing sources. i probably should’ve linked some in my original post, that’s absolutely fair.

this ended up way longer than i planned so bear with me, but a quick overview of what i’ll be going over:

1) what are the stats/where did they come from?

2) how is the show so popular?

3) was it really cancelled for being queer?

(also just a disclaimer that this will contain spoilers for the show)

1) first, the numbers

you’re right that hbo doesn’t release metrics to the public. in fact, ceo casey bloys tried to justify the cancellation to the hollywood reporter by saying “the numbers weren’t there,” despite refusing to say what exactly those numbers were or where they came from.

however, there are websites dedicated to researching/analyzing the data of different media. one of those is parrot analytics, who focus on industry insights like audience demand, competitive analysis, and content valuations. they’re trusted as a reliable source by forbes, the new york times, reuters, the wall street journal, and more.

this is what we can learn from them about our flag means death from a basic google search (note that all of this data is relevant to the last 30 days as of january 26 2024):

audience demand for our flag means death is now 33.6x greater than the average tv series in the united states. as explained in the “about demand distribution” section, this means it’s one of only 0.2% of all u.s. shows to fall in the “exceptional” performance range compared to the “average” demand benchmark of 64.1%.

the change in demand for ofmd in the u.s. has increased by 7.5% compared to the average tv series.

ofmd now actually ranks at the 99.8th percentile in the comedy genre in the u.s. i’m not a math person, but in basic terms, this is like a scale of measuring and comparing performances to create an average score. essentially, ofmd is performing at the very top of all comedy series in the u.s.

ofmd has 100% home market travelability. as it says above, the market of origin is always 100%, so in fairness i included the graph of international markets for comparison. some of these aren't super high, however (as explained by parrot analytics themselves) one of the key issues with the international market is accessibility to content, which has been an ongoing struggle for international fans. many people (i guess fittingly) have resorted to pirating ofmd because they don’t have access to max or affiliate streaming services in their country.

there are more stats i could have and wanted to go more in-depth into but it would make this even longer than it already is, so i’ll just leave some links you can check out if you’re interested and move on:

• comparison of ofmd's success to shows like ted lasso, euphoria, and peacemaker

• ofmd's placement as #1 most in-demand breakout series in the u.s. for 8 weeks

• ofmd's impressive 94% critics score and 95% audience score on rotten tomatoes

• how ofmd evolved from sleeper hit to a flagship series at max

• a list of ofmd's past and present award nominations/wins

• praise and recognition from news/entertainment sites: the atlantic (2022); the new york times (2023); tv guide (2023); vulture (2023); forbes (2023); the los angeles times (2022); vanity fair (2023)

2) so why haven’t you (or others) really heard of the show outside of tumblr despite all this success? likely because max did a terrible job marketing it.

ofmd first aired on hbo max (pre-merger before it was “max”) in march 2022. the entire season aired over one month, every thursday at 12am pst. season 2 followed a similar release schedule in october 2023.

season 1’s marketing was almost non-existent, pretty much relying on taika waititi’s name being attached. there was one teaser and one full-length trailer, as well as a few clips on youtube of taika and rhys darby answering pirate-themed trivia, all painting the show as a “silly pirate workplace/buddy comedy.” but hbo max didn’t put any real effort in because they didn’t care. david zaslav and the other higher-ups had no faith in the show and expected it to fail.

most people weren’t aware it was actually a romance due to the poor marketing, and although there were many romantically charged scenes between them, many were still wary to believe it wasn’t queerbaiting until ed & stede confessed their feelings and kissed.

showrunner david jenkins has said in interviews that he had no idea how deeply queerbaiting had hurt audiences and impacted their ability to trust what’s on screen without feeling like they’re being ridiculed, despite the fact that he was calling it a love story the whole time. it wasn’t until people realized they weren’t being queerbaited and that it was a funny, sincere show with a compelling plot that word-of-mouth began to spread. by the time the season 1 finale aired, there was a decent-sized fandom that continued to grow as it received more praise.

it was a fight to even get the show renewed for season 2, and david jenkins and the cast have majorly credited that renewal to the unexpected and massive fan response to the show, which basically forced hbo’s hand.

max didn’t bother trying to properly promote the series until season 2, when they begrudgingly accepted that it was one of their most profitable and successful shows. ofmd had huge billboards in times square, downtown los angeles, and on the side of hbo headquarters. they started accurately marketing the show as not just a workplace comedy at sea, but a heartfelt romcom. max began selling long-demanded merch (which became best sellers) and spent money on an FYC campaign.

i will emphasize, whether they liked it or not, they knew ofmd was their new moneymaker (especially with the recent end of succession, which was obviously a cash cow for hbo).

photo credit: @/bookishtheo

3) now if it was that successful, was it really cancelled just for being queer?

i mean, i can’t say that definitively. no one can. there are several potential factors at play that we may never know, and there have been a lot of rumours and speculation (many of which i don’t feel comfortable discussing in case they aren’t true) since the cancellation.

but do i believe the fact that it’s a queer romcom was one of those factors, especially since max has a history of cancelling and scrapping its most diverse projects? absolutely.

first and foremost, i can’t stress enough that this isn’t just a show with a few characters thrown in for token representation. ofmd is built on a diverse, intersectional cast and narratives, including:

• lgbtq+ representation: 5 main couples are explicitly queer (including mlm, wlw, nblm, and nblw relationships). multiple characters are implied to be poly, and there’s a polycule forming in season 2 that was hinted to be developed more in season 3. beyond relationships, it’s confirmed that (similarly to the way wwdits depicts all vampires as being pansexual) all of the pirates are somewhere on the queer spectrum.

• bipoc representation: the majority of the main cast are people of colour. this includes david fane, joel fry, leslie jones, samson kayo, vico ortiz, anapela polataivao, madeleine sami, samba schutte, ruibo qian, and taika waititi, as well as many guest actors (like rachel house, simone kessell, and maaka pohatu) and extras.

• disability representation: multiple characters have physical disabilities, most notably amputated/prosthetic limbs and visual impairment. a lot (actually most) of the characters also deal with mental health issues, particularly coping with severe trauma and suicidal ideation/behaviour.

• the show has been praised for addressing difficult and serious themes like toxic masculinity, colonialism, and self-discovery, all while still managing to be a witty comedy and not come across as “preachy.”

• the diversity also extends off-screen, with a team of directors, writers, and additional crew comprised of numerous bipoc, women, queer people, and trans/non-binary people.

my point isn’t just the quantity of representation, but the quality. they take great care and respect into every marginalized group depicted on-screen. the actors would often be consulted about their characters’ costumes, hair, tattoos, and the kind of language they use. it’s not a world where discrimination magically doesn’t exist, they just have zero tolerance for it. if a character does something homophobic or racist, you can guarantee they’ll quickly (and often violently) be punished.

so okay, sure, it’s got great representation. what does that have to do max cancelling it?

because they’ve been interfering with production from the start.

i already mentioned the marketing issues so i won’t get into that. it was also revealed in interviews with david jenkins after season 2 that hbo cut their budget by 40%, which is why they had to do everything they could to save money. this included letting go of some of the original cast (and even still having episodes where some of them don’t appear at all) and moving the entire production to AoNZ. the budget cuts also meant two less episodes, so they had to rush to fit an entire season’s worth of plot into eight half-hour long episodes.

but one of the biggest frustrations is hbo’s (alleged) censorship of the show. samba schutte revealed that the entire plot of episode 2x06 was completely different in the original script. before it was rewritten as “calypso’s birthday,” the episode took place during lucius & pete’s wedding and focused on the crew getting sick of the sexual tension between ed & stede and trying to get them to hook up (this aligned with lucius & pete getting engaged and ed & stede deciding to take things slow in the previous episode).

vico ortiz and writer jes tom have also commented that many scenes between jim, oluwande, and archie establishing them as a polycule were cut, including one of the three of them emerging from a bedroom in their underwear. jes has mentioned other elements of season 2 that had to be cut out or rewritten, like the implication of other poly dynamics between the crew and more sexually explicit scenarios and jokes.

considering that ofmd is an extremely sex-positive show that isn’t afraid to be raunchy or taboo, it’s clear that either higher-ups at hbo forced them to cut these things out or they had no choice but to cut them out due to tight budget/time restraints.

in addition to this, a recent article citing an “anonymous insider” has alleged that hbo was uncomfortable with and was unsure how to market the “shock violence” in the show (the same network that aired game of thrones), which david jenkins outright called out as being bullshit. ofmd is rated TV-MA and the posters and trailers all show the audience that it contains violent content. there is literally nothing more graphic in ofmd than any other pirate show — it’s probably a lot tamer than most of them, actually.

violence on the show is most frequently used in a comedic context, in the sense that it’s not meant to be seen as scary or taken seriously. the few instances of serious graphic imagery on the show are meant to invoke a mood shift, like ed’s transformation into the kraken or ned low’s murder. it should also be noted that some of the most graphic deaths are reserved for bigots, like ed snapping the neck of a colonizer who was ridiculing stede’s love letter.

it’s also most often used in a sexual context — not sexual violence, but violence as a sexual metaphor. more specifically the act of stabbing as a metaphor for penetration, as seen with both ed & stede and anne & mary. bearing all this in mind, it seems like the real issue here isn’t executives struggling to market explicit violence to a mainstream audience, but rather explicit gay content.

as much as we joke and affectionately call it the “gay pirate show,” ofmd has always been nothing more than an opportunity for rainbow capitalism for hbo (e.g. the fact that they waited three months to announce season 2 just so they could do it on the first day of pride month). like other cancelled queer media, ofmd was a way for hbo executives to show how “inclusive” and “accepting” they are when it was convenient (aka profitable) for them, but they never actually respected the show or us as a community.

it’s impossible to be certain of what the exact reasoning for cancellation was, especially when they won’t give us a clear answer themselves. and maybe it had nothing to do with ofmd being a queer romcom at all. maybe that’s all a horrible coincidence. but for hbo/max to axe a critically acclaimed and beautifully inclusive show that’s successful by every metric, with an extremely devoted fanbase, especially after casey bloys just had the nerve to ask “gay twitter” to hype up the gilded age? it doesn’t exactly put them in the best light regardless.

in summary, i’ll leave you with this editorial, which details how the campaign to save ofmd isn’t just about one show, but a fight to save the future of all queer art.

[thatsdemko]

never too busy for you - k. mbappé

↳ I do not own this gif. this gif belongs to its rightful owner.

masterlist

v-day collection

requested: y

pairings: kylian mbappé x reader

warnings: established relationship + some google translate French + semi short + wee bit of fluff

a/n: remember if you want a Valentine’s Day imagine or blurb you need to submit it before February 28th, 2023! ps I don’t like the way this ends 😅

he was a busy man. football was his top priority and his love—even if he swore you ranked above the sport. so when February rolled around and you both sat down to look at your schedules, you already had planned that celebrating Valentine’s Day wasn’t going to be in the books.

it wasn’t anything you were super sad about. having been in a relationship with kylian for two years now, there were certain holidays and birthdays that he had to miss, but he always made it up to you. and it wasn’t like you weren’t spoiled or treated like a princess everyday, so you were fine missing out on one day.

so when Valentine’s Day rolled around you both were too occupied to even have noted the date. work was so consuming, you didn’t notice the few coworkers with flowers and candies from loved ones. and kylian was so consumed in football, he didn’t have time to listen in on the semi-romantic conversations his teammates were having.

when he finally got home from practice one evening, you were dead asleep on the couch when he looked at the calendar noticing Valentine’s Day had passed. it was two days ago.

“oh baise moi.” he looked over at you on the couch and then back at the calendar. his life was so busy and he hated that. he could only think of one thing that could make up for lost time together and for Valentine’s Day. (oh fuck me)

—

the next morning you woke up to the smell of sweet pancakes. it brought a smile to your face at the gesture, but it also confused you as to why kylian was still home. he was supposed to be training.

getting up you threw the covers off your body, rushing down the stairs to see your boyfriend shoving chocolate chips in his mouth while flipping pancakes. “aren’t you supposed to be working out?” you asked, noting the time on the clock he was supposed to have been long gone hours ago.

he looked over at you with a smile on his face, “not anymore, mon amour. taking a couple of days off to be with you.” he grabbed your waist pulling you closer to him to plant a kiss on your temple.

you pulled away, looking up with furrowed eyebrows, “why? what happened?”

he laughed, shaking his head “why does something always have to be bad? I just want to be with you.” it was a sweet gesture. but you couldn’t imagine him actually being able to spend a couple of days off from football to be with you. you knew by the end of today he would be itching to get back out there.

uneasy, you nodded along going to make yourself a cup of coffee to see he had already done so. it was done just the way you liked it. a little bit of cream and a little bit of sugar. he remembered.

you turned to face him, coffee in hand, “there has to be a reason why you’re taking a couple of days off, kylian. I don’t believe it’s just because.”

he sighed, you weren’t going to drop it until he actually told you the truth. because you both knew those words were only somewhat true. there was always more to it with him. “we didn’t get to spend Valentine’s Day together. so I want to make up for it.”

a smile formed on your lips. you could care less about missing Valentine’s Day, it hadn’t even occurred to you that the date had passed, but you were excited to spend some well rested time together. you felt like you hadn’t see much of kylian last month. “so what do you want to do today?” you asked and for the first time ever he was completely fine having nothing on his schedule or doing anything.

“whatever you want to do, I’m down.”

with nothing but a clear schedule, you went from movie marathons, to baking sweets, make out sessions, and taking naps. everyday off he had consisted of the same thing, a whole lot of nothing. you figured he’d have broke at some point and went for run or use the treadmill, but he stuck to his promise. he did anything you wanted to do and took some well needed time off. needless to say, he needed that time with you more than he thought.

“I think these past couple of days have been the best days with you.”

“same for me, mon amour. happy very late Valentine’s Day.”

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Bpp I'm dying to know your song rankings in chapter 2 now they've all debuted. What are your top picks this year? I miss your writing and hope I can coax you back with 'a fun ask'

***

Okay. :)

Since you asked...

Top 10 Non-BTS K-pop Songs in 2023

10 - Watch It - The Boyz (this song just dropped and it's already in my top ten, yes)

9 - Seoul - H1-key

8 - Ay-Yo - NCT 127

7 - Sweet Venom - ENHYPEN

6 - Neverland Farewell - TXT (Say whatever you like about BigHit, they know how to make good music. Soobin sounds incredible on this song. Beomgyu too. Really, they all do.)

5 - Cool With You - NewJeans

NewJeans isn't going anywhere, so everyone else really should get comfortable with the idea of seeing them at the top. That's all there is to say.

*

4 - Crying - BOYNEXTDOOR

I don't know where my head was at when I ranked this the worst song on the album. Clearly, I was wrong. This song was a pleasant companion during the autumn months, and I can't wait to see what else they come out with.

*

3 - Chaconne - ENHYPEN

Do you know what a chaconne is? That's not a rhetorical question btw. No shade either, I'm just curious. For those who don't know, a chaconne is a rhythmical and harmonic motif over a pronounced bass-line. That's my leftover understanding from music classes taken a lifetime ago. According to google, a chaconne is also "a slow, solemn dance in 3/4 time, of Spanish or Moorish origin, similar to the passacaglia." For a non-k-pop example, I recommend Hilary's rendition of Bach's chaconne (more leftover knowledge from a lifetime ago).

Anyway, this likely isn't important context. The use of "chaconne" in the song probably has more to do with how it sounds in the song, than what it means. In any case, Enhypen earned a gold star from me with this pantydropper anthem.

*

2 - Criminal Love - ENHYPEN

I'm not sure how many of you were here when Heartbeat and Dream Glow were released. What I remember was shock, pure incredulity that BigHit would release songs of that quality for game OSTs. From ARMYs and k-pop stans alike, this was the sentiment. It was like a flex that BTS had such a peerless discography they could make songs like this for a side gig.

That's immediately what I was reminded of when I first heard Criminal Love, released as the OST for Enhypen's webtoon. It's moody, vampy, seduction in a song. That's what that song is. Sad too, when you hear the lyrics. Watching the live performance only drives it home.

*

1 - Blind - ENHYPEN

This song has given me one of the best auditory experiences I've ever had in k-pop. Which is a bit odd because yes a lot happens in the production, but the switches are so subtle you almost don't notice it.

Heeseung, Ni-ki, Jay, Sunoo, Sunghoon, Jake, and Jungwon - all outdid themselves on this song. Vocally, they sound incredible. The writing, (again) is top notch. This is one of the only songs released this year that I genuinely struggle not to loop.

*

Top 5 BTS Solo Songs

5 - Yes or No - Jung Kook

This is one song I'm praying and begging that we get thousands of remixes of. HYBE, please work your magic and give us 10 remixes of Yes or No. I need it. This is the perfect pop song in that it makes you crave more. I know it's got a predictable, common almost, chord progression in VI -> V -> I -> IV, but it's perfect in that it's impossible to get sick of it. It just worms itself into your head and all you can think of is all the ways to sing all over those chords.

Jung Kook's vocal work on that song is irreproachable. He's really set himself apart with this album and I'm glad he did it.

*

4 - Snooze - AGUST D, ft. Ryuichi Sakamoto & Woosung

HUH?! should be here, as should Amygdala so consider this a triple entry: HUH + Snooze + Amygdala. The reason why is self-evident (I hope).

Anyway... I want to talk a bit about Snooze.

Yoongi loves using the piano. He likes the sound of it, and you can tell in songs like Snooze. He has such a profound love and respect for that musical instrument that it only makes sense a man like Ryuichi acknowledged Yoongi before he passed.

With everything that happened this year, remembering Moonbin, and knowing that Yoongi made this song for his juniors... the first time I heard this song it completely destroyed me. Anyone who hasn't paid attention to the lyrics yet should check it.

When I casually listen in to TXT, SVT, Enhypen, BoyNextDoor, and see the work they're doing, putting out easily some of the best music and performances in their generations, I hope and pray they develop a support system that genuinely values them, soon. I hope they survive this industry, and thrive in it.

*

3 - All Day - RM ft Tablo

Not to be that person (since he's canceled for reasons and it actually makes sense why), but when I first saw the song title All Day, I immediately remembered All Day by Kanye West - one of the sauciest and meanest songs he's ever made. I was worried, given the tone of the album to that point, that Namjoon was going to give us his take on Ye's original. Joon is more than capable of dropping a track just as mean if not more. I didn't put it past him to pay homage to the Kanye joint by taking a spin on it. But, thankfully, All Day is nothing like Kanye's song, and it's my favourite song on Indigo because it's the best.

Joon's diction on this track is *chef's kiss*. His voice.... that outro, and thank goodness, Tablo came through. He actually has a presence on the track and made it even more worth the listen.

It kills me that we don't even have a visualizer for this masterpiece.

*

2 - Set Me Free Pt 2 - Jimin

Thank you for giving me another chance to talk about Set Me Free Pt 2.

One reason all the anxiety and fear-mongering around Jimin seems insane to me is because Jimin dropped this song and ended k-pop in 2023. He literally has no real competition. He came in, showed out, and left. That song is the sexiest joint out of Korea this year. It's so nasty. He's absolutely disgusting on this song in how brutally he makes rubbish of everything beneath him. Like, he literally has people bowing down to him in the choreography. Bobbing their heads like Funko Pops, while he sings to be set free. I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but I want to say something. There's a cruelty in the way Jimin speaks. Whether to someone else or to himself. It's often (somewhat) restrained, born of the way he sees the world I think, and it was especially brutal in their early days, but he's toned it down significantly since 2016. It's virtually non-existent in his speech patterns and word choice now. Jimin of the last few years communicates gently, directly, tactfully, and at worst, bluntly. A lot of that cruelty is toned down but he unleashes a whisper of it on SMF Pt 2. Just listen to what he's saying on that song. That autotune effect on his voice was for our benefit and safety. Nothing can convince me otherwise. And we haven't even yet gotten into the full symbolism of the MV and his lyricism...

The moment I heard this song I knew I would bias Jimin. He's a man who knows what he's doing.

Jimin is a one of a kind wonder. Real magic in a person. An artist. He proves it on Set Me Free Pt 2. Kudos to PDogg too - the GOAT.

*

1 - On The Street - j-hope ft J. Cole

When it comes to song construction, I have to give credit where credit is due and the fact is Hoseok outdid himself with this song. It is perfect, my top pick for a k-pop song in 2023. Jermaine did good on it too. But, you know... Hoseok.

The whistle melody he came up with, the beat, the vocal layering, the mixing, the MV direction - all of it is perfect. If we were giving scores based on separate components, OTS would get 10s in every category.

Honestly, Hoseok coming out at number 1 is kind of expected of him lol.

[glowingvenus]

why you should read FENCE

dear followers, you may be thinking "what is this obscure comic that you're suddenly full throttle obsessed with. i don't even know you anymore. i'm scared." and so i'm here to tell you what FENCE is and why you should read it

i'm not normally into comics, or stories about gay teenage boys doing sports. i prefer books about adult lesbians who can't do ten jumping jacks without getting lightheaded. BUT this series is magical, i swear. it takes a lot of tropes that are common to the genre and plays with them in such interesting ways.

here's our hero, nicholas, who has nothing but $2 and a dream of becoming a great fencer:

and here's nicholas' father, who doesn't know he exists:

and here's seiji katayama, ranked second nationally:

and here's how it starts off for them:

and here's where they're headed:

and who's that blond guy? i hope it isn't jesse coste, top-ranked fencing royalty, nicholas' unknowing half-brother, and seiji's ex-"something"...

there's a diverse cast of other characters to love, more than i can list here (but special shout out to the adorably energetic bobby, sunshine captain harvard and campus heartbreaker aiden, his bff and secret admirer).

this story truly goes beyond what you'd expect from the genre. it's fun, funny and super cute, but it's also got a real sense of tension, of rivalry, of steadily simmering romantic potential that puts it in a league of its own. and, it's not explicitly stated (yet?) but this is def def def an ADHD/autism romance in the making.

we fence fans are a small community but we're really worried about this series not being able to continue if there's not enough interest. so i can't recommend enough that you check it out, and if you like it, buy it and show your support!

so far there are 5 volumes (each consisting of 4 single issues), and 3 out of 4 of the next volume (fence: redemption) have been released. the next issue is out on September 13, 2023 and it's gonna be a fucking juicy one.

where to buy: preferably your local comic shop, if not then bookshop.org to support local bookstores, or any retailer of your choice!

*if you can't buy it or find it in a library, you can find it online for free pretty easily via google, but please do buy it if you end up liking it.

i'm out of room for pics in this post but i'm also gonna link you to the special pride edition cover of fence: redemption #1 because it's really good. thank you for your time. *ungrips your shoulders*

[leiflitter]

Some of my favourite Felix quotes from the early chapters of YAH! because I love that idiot so much.

“It was two thousand and six. I wasn't about to start batting my eyes at the rugger lads, Ollie. And I'm lazy. Girls were easy.” - Chapter 4

“I won't be alone, I'll have Oliver with me. Gives us a chance to do some middle-aged man stuff- sit around and watch 1917 or Das Boot-” - Chapter 10

“So you do want to kiss me?” - Chapter 12

“Not to ruin the moment, Olls, but my knees are killing me. Reckon we could wriggle about a bit?” - Chapter 14

“He should be thanking you. Don't get me wrong, Olls, I'm not angry- but you should have crept into my room. I'd have tossed him out on his ear if you'd woken me up, gave me an impromptu handy and asked me nicely.” - Chapter 15

“Christ alive, if I had a monster like that I'd sack off the degree and go into adult entertainment.” - Chapter 16

“Oh, yeah. Firstly, I've learned- from much experience- that if you cum in hot water it gets a bit… sticky. Googled it once- something about the protein- it's just rather grim. It's why I try to float about a bit- not to ruin the mood, though, I know how you felt about runny eggs- tell me to shut up if I'm cockblocking myself, yeah?” - Chapter 17

“Well- you touch me, I touch you. Take positions, count down from three and off we go. One hand only, first to get their, erm, horse to the finish wins.” - Chapter 18

“Then at breakfast you can go oh, how's Sir Catton today? And I can go oh, ha-ha, raring to go- but do call me Felix. And nobody'd be any the wiser… Ooh, and I can send Fredders to come find you, and if he goes Sir Catton would appreciate your presence you know I'm up for it, eh?” - Chapter 19

“I was fed up with everyone going on about Wimbledon- Federer was everywhere in those shorts, Venetia and mum kept going on about his legs, and I just thought the whole look was pretty awful. So…Formal Tennis.” - Chapter 20

“You're driving me absolutely bonkers. I had to lie to Lu- told her I couldn't get off because I was sad about Venetia.” - Chapter 21

"It's you, Professor. I'm hopelessly in love with you and I just can't do anything except think about you.” - Chapter 22

“Christ on a bike. Runny eggs at mach fucking five." / “Olls? Your cock's out, mate.” - Chapter 23

“But indulge me a little- this sex with men business, Ollie, how do I hold up in the rankings? Top ten- top three- oh no, don't tell me-” - Chapter 24

“We can always do with another hand about the place- and you're already settled in at the house. You can cuddle Dozie in the Mornings, tutor Harry in the afternoons and we can be boring old men in the evenings. Sounds perfect to me.” - Chapter 25

[kpodcast]

Stray Kids

Here is the google form to decide rankings for Stray Kids' songs! The top 32 songs will become the bracket.

We are accepting responses for two weeks (through Wednesday, October 18th, 2023).

[bakanokiwami]

TOP 10 WEB VIDEO SERIES ON AO3 FOUND IN FANDOMS > OTHER MEDIA (2010-2023)

To make this ranking, all series titles in the Other Media category on November 29 (or the closest date to it) of every year were copy-pasted to Google Sheets, rearranged according to number of fanworks, and then manually filtered since not all web video series were marked as such.

Locked fanworks aren't included in the count because Wayback Machine can’t view those, only Ao3 users can.

Many authors started locking their works starting December 2022. It's most likely the reason the number of fanworks decreased or slowed down in 2023.

Bar chart starts at 2010 because there were no web series in Other Media in 2009.

The Dream SMP tag was only considered an Additional Tag in 2021-early 2022, which is why it's not listed in Other Media earlier than that.

Please refer to this post for more bar chart races.

Dedicating this post to @vsrobotjulie who requested this bar chart race.💕

Thanks for understanding and hopefully I didn’t mess up anywhere! 🙏

[mostlysignssomeportents]

AI is a WMD

I'm in TARTU, ESTONIA! AI, copyright and creative workers' labor rights (TOMORROW, May 10, 8AM: Science Fiction Research Association talk, Institute of Foreign Languages and Cultures building, Lossi 3, lobby). A talk for hackers on seizing the means of computation (TOMORROW, May 10, 3PM, University of Tartu Delta Centre, Narva 18, room 1037).

Fun fact: "The Tragedy Of the Commons" is a hoax created by the white nationalist Garrett Hardin to justify stealing land from colonized people and moving it from collective ownership, "rescuing" it from the inevitable tragedy by putting it in the hands of a private owner, who will care for it properly, thanks to "rational self-interest":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Get that? If control over a key resource is diffused among the people who rely on it, then (Garrett claims) those people will all behave like selfish assholes, overusing and undermaintaining the commons. It's only when we let someone own that commons and charge rent for its use that (Hardin says) we will get sound management.

By that logic, Google should be the internet's most competent and reliable manager. After all, the company used its access to the capital markets to buy control over the internet, spending billions every year to make sure that you never try a search-engine other than its own, thus guaranteeing it a 90% market share:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

Google seems to think it's got the problem of deciding what we see on the internet licked. Otherwise, why would the company flush $80b down the toilet with a giant stock-buyback, and then do multiple waves of mass layoffs, from last year's 12,000 person bloodbath to this year's deep cuts to the company's "core teams"?

https://qz.com/google-is-laying-off-hundreds-as-it-moves-core-jobs-abr-1851449528

And yet, Google is overrun with scams and spam, which find their way to the very top of the first page of its search results:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

The entire internet is shaped by Google's decisions about what shows up on that first page of listings. When Google decided to prioritize shopping site results over informative discussions and other possible matches, the entire internet shifted its focus to producing affiliate-link-strewn "reviews" that would show up on Google's front door:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

This was catnip to the kind of sociopath who a) owns a hedge-fund and b) hates journalists for being pain-in-the-ass, stick-in-the-mud sticklers for "truth" and "facts" and other impediments to the care and maintenance of a functional reality-distortion field. These dickheads started buying up beloved news sites and converting them to spam-farms, filled with garbage "reviews" and other Google-pleasing, affiliate-fee-generating nonsense.

(These news-sites were vulnerable to acquisition in large part thanks to Google, whose dominance of ad-tech lets it cream 51 cents off every ad dollar and whose mobile OS monopoly lets it steal 30 cents off every in-app subscriber dollar):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Now, the spam on these sites didn't write itself. Much to the chagrin of the tech/finance bros who bought up Sports Illustrated and other venerable news sites, they still needed to pay actual human writers to produce plausible word-salads. This was a waste of money that could be better spent on reverse-engineering Google's ranking algorithm and getting pride-of-place on search results pages:

https://housefresh.com/david-vs-digital-goliaths/

That's where AI comes in. Spicy autocomplete absolutely can't replace journalists. The planet-destroying, next-word-guessing programs from Openai and its competitors are incorrigible liars that require so much "supervision" that they cost more than they save in a newsroom:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/29/what-part-of-no/#dont-you-understand

But while a chatbot can't produce truthful and informative articles, it can produce bullshit – at unimaginable scale. Chatbots are the workers that hedge-fund wreckers dream of: tireless, uncomplaining, compliant and obedient producers of nonsense on demand.

That's why the capital class is so insatiably horny for chatbots. Chatbots aren't going to write Hollywood movies, but studio bosses hyperventilated at the prospect of a "writer" that would accept your brilliant idea and diligently turned it into a movie. You prompt an LLM in exactly the same way a studio exec gives writers notes. The difference is that the LLM won't roll its eyes and make sarcastic remarks about your brainwaves like "ET, but starring a dog, with a love plot in the second act and a big car-chase at the end":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/01/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship/

Similarly, chatbots are a dream come true for a hedge fundie who ends up running a beloved news site, only to have to fight with their own writers to get the profitable nonsense produced at a scale and velocity that will guarantee a high Google ranking and millions in "passive income" from affiliate links.

One of the premier profitable nonsense companies is Advon, which helped usher in an era in which sites from Forbes to Money to USA Today create semi-secret "review" sites that are stuffed full of badly researched top-ten lists for products from air purifiers to cat beds:

https://housefresh.com/how-google-decimated-housefresh/

Advon swears that it only uses living humans to produce nonsense, and not AI. This isn't just wildly implausible, it's also belied by easily uncovered evidence, like its own employees' Linkedin profiles, which boast of using AI to create "content":

https://housefresh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Advon-AI-LinkedIn.jpg

It's not true. Advon uses AI to produce its nonsense, at scale. In an excellent, deeply reported piece for Futurism, Maggie Harrison Dupré brings proof that Advon replaced its miserable human nonsense-writers with tireless chatbots:

https://futurism.com/advon-ai-content

Dupré describes how Advon's ability to create botshit at scale contributed to the enshittification of clients from Yoga Journal to the LA Times, "Us Weekly" to the Miami Herald.

All of this is very timely, because this is the week that Google finally bestirred itself to commence downranking publishers who engage in "site reputation abuse" – creating these SEO-stuffed fake reviews with the help of third parties like Advon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/03/keyword-swarming/#site-reputation-abuse

(Google's policy only forbids site reputation abuse with the help of third parties; if these publishers take their nonsense production in-house, Google may allow them to continue to dominate its search listings):

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies#site-reputation

There's a reason so many people believed Hardin's racist "Tragedy of the Commons" hoax. We have an intuitive understanding that commons are fragile. All it takes is one monster to start shitting in the well where the rest of us get our drinking water and we're all poisoned.

The financial markets love these monsters. Mark Zuckerberg's key insight was that he could make billions by assembling vast dossiers of compromising, sensitive personal information on half the world's population without their consent, but only if he kept his costs down by failing to safeguard that data and the systems for exploiting it. He's like a guy who figures out that if he accumulates enough oily rags, he can extract so much low-grade oil from them that he can grow rich, but only if he doesn't waste money on fire-suppression:

https://locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-doctorow-zucks-empire-of-oily-rags/

Now Zuckerberg and the wealthy, powerful monsters who seized control over our commons are getting a comeuppance. The weak countermeasures they created to maintain the minimum levels of quality to keep their platforms as viable, going concerns are being overwhelmed by AI. This was a totally foreseeable outcome: the history of the internet is a story of bad actors who upended the assumptions built into our security systems by automating their attacks, transforming an assault that wouldn't be economically viable into a global, high-speed crime wave:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/24/automation-is-magic/

But it is possible for a community to maintain a commons. This is something Hardin could have discovered by studying actual commons, instead of inventing imaginary histories in which commons turned tragic. As it happens, someone else did exactly that: Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons/

Ostrom described how commons can be wisely managed, over very long timescales, by communities that self-governed. Part of her work concerns how users of a commons must have the ability to exclude bad actors from their shared resources.

When that breaks down, commons can fail – because there's always someone who thinks it's fine to shit in the well rather than walk 100 yards to the outhouse.

Enshittification is the process by which control over the internet moved from self-governance by members of the commons to acts of wanton destruction committed by despicable, greedy assholes who shit in the well over and over again.

It's not just the spammers who take advantage of Google's lazy incompetence, either. Take "copyleft trolls," who post images using outdated Creative Commons licenses that allow them to terminate the CC license if a user makes minor errors in attributing the images they use:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/24/a-bug-in-early-creative-commons-licenses-has-enabled-a-new-breed-of-superpredator/

The first copyleft trolls were individuals, but these days, the racket is dominated by a company called Pixsy, which pretends to be a "rights protection" agency that helps photographers track down copyright infringers. In reality, the company is committed to helping copyleft trolls entrap innocent Creative Commons users into paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars to use images that are licensed for free use. Just as Advon upends the economics of spam and deception through automation, Pixsy has figured out how to send legal threats at scale, robolawyering demand letters that aren't signed by lawyers; the company refuses to say whether any lawyer ever reviews these threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/13/an-open-letter-to-pixsy-ceo-kain-jones-who-keeps-sending-me-legal-threats/

This is shitting in the well, at scale. It's an online WMD, designed to wipe out the commons. Creative Commons has allowed millions of creators to produce a commons with billions of works in it, and Pixsy exploits a minor error in the early versions of CC licenses to indiscriminately manufacture legal land-mines, wantonly blowing off innocent commons-users' legs and laughing all the way to the bank:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/02/commafuckers-versus-the-commons/

We can have an online commons, but only if it's run by and for its users. Google has shown us that any "benevolent dictator" who amasses power in the name of defending the open internet will eventually grow too big to care, and will allow our commons to be demolished by well-shitters:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/04/teach-me-how-to-shruggie/#kagi

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/09/shitting-in-the-well/#advon

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Catherine Poh Huay Tan (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/68166820@N08/49729911222/

Laia Balagueró (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/lbalaguero/6551235503/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[sewer-toridae]

Hello everyone, time for ✨Flight Rising Statistics✨

Not sure if anybody has done this before but I made a spreadsheet of every primary gene and how many dragons have what gene. Numbers are current as of March 30th, 2023. The link to my Google Sheet is here for all my work and data.

Of course, some genes have been out since launch and others are quite new, but I think it’s just fun to look at numbers. As of today, there are 40 primary genes, including Basic.

First off, let’s start off with the top 10 most numerous and least numerous genes! Numbers are of unexalted dragons.

Here are some charts to show off the data as well.

Of course older genes are going to be higher on the list and newer genes lower, but I was really surprised how many gem genes were in the top 10. Iridescent especially holy shit. Not only are gem genes the more expensive genes, but they have the highest breeding rarity.

Now let’s look at total exalted and unexalted dragons.

Similar rankings. To make it a little bit more interesting, I calculated the percentage of dragons for that gene that are exalted. For example, only 30.35% of all Tide dragons are exalted.

Despite having the most total dragons (and I have on my master spreadsheet that they have the most exalted dragons as well) Basic doesn’t even crack the top 10. They’re actually right in the middle at #20. I’m guessing that’s because of do many active progens, progen children, and gen 1s. I think this data makes sense. Older genes have the highest exalt ratio while newer genes have a lower exalt ratio. Genes that have been around for while have been fed to more dom battles, and people in general often want genes that are newer and more exciting (because they’re new.) I wanted to include Mosaic at #11 because despite it being at or near the bottom of dragons with the gene, it has a much higher percentage of exalted dragons than the other genes that are on the bottom with it.

I think that the most important metrics are how many active dragons there are and the ratio of exalted to unexalted. This isn’t a perfect grading system, but I ranked all genes from 1-40 in both active dragons and exalt ratio then averaged them out. The higher the score the better.

This isn’t a perfect ranking because some of them feel kind of off. My gut says that Basic should be #1 because it has a ton of active dragons and a great exalt ratio, and that Mosaic would be last. But it does makes sense in ways and worth a look at because genes I know to be well liked are ranked very high, and less popular and “cheaper” genes are still ranked lower.

So what does this all mean? Probably nothing! This is just the primary genes and also doesn’t factor in color. There’s tons of different qualities to dragons and various reasons why a dragon could be exalted. There’s plenty of dragons that have “unpopular” genes that are very loved and look great. Anywho, I’m no statistician but thought this was a fun look at statistics.

Feedback? Thoughts? Should I do secondary and tertiary? Or. I think it would be more beneficial to do an ancient species since most of their genes come out at once.

*uses this data to sell you gem genes* Did you know that if your dragon has a treasure gene it has a 40% higher chance of being exalted?? Buy my gem gene bundle for only $49.98 and stop your dragons from being exalted TODAY

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT SEO & MARKETING NEWS FOR ECOMMERCE, March 2024

Welcome to my roundup of SEO and marketing news and useful resources for ecommerce businesses, March edition. There is a lot going on with Google, and some really strong marketing pieces this time around, so let's get right to it.

SEO: GOOGLE & OTHER SEARCH ENGINES 

Google launched both a core algorithm update and spam updates on March 5, with the spam update ending on the 20th. Core updates now include the Helpful Content algorithm. In early observations, Etsy and Reddit both picked up visibility in the UK. 

The Helpful Content algorithm updates late last year destroyed a lot of sites’ Google traffic. Avoid the things they had in common.  You can read the full study here. 

Ecommerce sites were some of the biggest losers in Google visibility in 2023, with Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Etsy, Target and Best Buy in the top 10 of sites whose Google appearances slipped. 

New to Google SEO? They’ve revamped their SEO starter guide for people like you. And if you are more advanced and want to learn how to optimize your website product pages, this is a good overview. 

This lengthy article on backlinks for ecommerce websites covers pretty much all the angles, including the really difficult ones. 

Reminder that if you want to rank on Google for a search term, you need to look at what is already ranking, and make decisions based on that content. [video and transcript] This works for most search engines, not just Google. 

Yes, Google crawls “high quality” content more often. I used to refer to this as Google thinking the page is “interesting”, so I guess I will need to change my wording...

While Google sends the most traffic to websites, people spend a lot more of their online time elsewhere. Market where people are, not just where your stats say they came from. 

Sadly, Google has stopped providing caches of website pages in its search results. While you can still see the caches of some pages by using the Google search Cache:[page link] as in cache:https://cindylouwho-2.tumblr.com that will eventually stop working as well. Bing still provides caches, but unfortunately both it and the Wayback Machine do not crawl often enough to give really recent results most of the time. 

Missed Google news in February? Here’s your update. And just in case you are really behind, here is January. 

Not Google

Unsure if your website has enough good backlinks? Bing Webmaster Tools will now tell you if you don’t. 

Yandex - the top search engine in Russia - was sold by its Dutch ownership group to a consortium in Russia. 

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General

A US study of social media use found that the most popular site was YouTube, with 83% of adults using it. Two-thirds of American adults use Facebook, while TikTok is up to ⅓ of the US population. 

Because they do change periodically, here are the latest image and video sizes recommended for the top social media platforms. [infographic]

Bluesky is now open to everyone - it was previously invite-only. 

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta)

Meta has introduced several changes to its Ad options, applying to Facebook and Instagram. 

Meta had a great 4th quarter in 2023, with revenue, users, and earnings per share up. “Fast-growing upstarts Temu and Shein, which originated in China, have been pouring money into ads on Facebook and Instagram. Li said on Thursday that revenue from China-based advertisers accounted for 10% of sales for the year and 5 percentage points of growth.”

Instagram

An updated post on Instagram's algorithm and how it works. 

Instagram is still beta testing longer Reels for some users. 

If your account is a brand account, you can now run ads on Instagram with coupon codes right in them. (Some Facebook users can already do this.)

LinkedIn

Among other recent changes on LinkedIn, the algorithm is now looking to boost important content longer than just the first day or two after publication. 

Pinterest

Pinterest has its own stats package, called Pinterest Analytics, but only for “Business” accounts. They show how many people clicked on the outgoing links, how many people saw your pin on their screen, and much more. Here’s everything you need to know. 

Reddit

Reddit successfully launched on the stock market this past week, but questions remain about how this will change the site. 

Google is paying Reddit to scrape its content through the API instead of from the web. 

Snapchat

Snap was a little later than most tech companies doing layoffs recently, waiting until February 5 to let 10% off staff go. 

Threads

Threads is so new that the algorithm is bound to change a lot in the next year, but for right now, here is how it works. 

TikTok

There is an overwhelming amount of info out there on the US attempt to either ban TikTok or force its sale, and much of it is incomplete, so I will let you Google to your heart’s content if you want to learn more. If you are relying on TikTok to drive sales, this would be a good time to make sure you diversify your promotional strategy. 

You can now track trending terms on TikTok through the Creator Search Insights section. “Creator Search Insights will highlight frequently searched topics, which creators can organize by category (for example, tourism, sports, science) or tailor to their content type with the “For You” option. Additionally, creators can filter for “content gap” topics, which are highly searched but have relatively few videos on TikTok covering them.“

TikTok may be testing a photo app, which would obviously compete with Instagram. 

Twitter

What? Twitter may have lied about its Super Bowl ad performance? I’m so not shocked. 

Tumblr

Tumblr will be selling data access to AI companies. 

YouTube

This is a pretty decent article on YouTube SEO. 

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

Small and micro-businesses need an email list. An email list is:  

portable (unlike most social media followers or marketplace buyers) 

is available to almost everyone, as we all need at least one email address if we are online

less susceptible to the whims of algorithms (unlike SEO, marketplaces, social etc.)  

I keep seeing people argue that no one opens emails, but the chart in the article above is proof that is still wrong. (My blog email list averages close to a 70% open rate, depending on the topic and the time I send it. My jewellery email list - which I hardly ever send to - still has an over 30% open rate. My click rates are well above the industry averages, usually 30 to 40% of all recipients for the blog list. These are much better numbers than social, and astronomically better than my clickthrough rate on Google and other search engines.)

Gmail and Yahoo both changed how they handle bulk emails such as newsletters in February. Here’s what you need to know on the basics, including authenticating yourself so your email gets through. 

Find out how to get people to read all the way to the end of your content. 

Get ready for April marketing with 5 topical ideas. National Handmade Day is April 6. 

We should all think twice before deciding to use AI to create content. “Circa 2024, generative AI does not produce new ideas or even develop its own conclusions. Rather, it regurgitates information that it has indexed.” Not convinced? Here’s another article. “AI-generated content represents the literal “average of everything online.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (EXCEPT INDIVIDUAL SOCIAL MEDIA AND ECOMMERCE SITES) 

Google Ads can now be tracked in Google Analytics 4. 

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising were up in the 4th quarter of 2023. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google Analytics 4 tracks organic traffic differently than the previous version. Here’s how to figure it out. 

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

I’ve probably posted this specific article before, but it is worth another read: how to communicate with customers.  For example, “Mirroring your customer’s tone lets them know you’re on their side. If a customer is formal, for example, hold back on the LOLs. If they’re more casual, relax your tone.”

According to a US study, Generation Z is skewing the traditional marketing funnel. “Per Archrival’s data, 77 per cent of Gen Zs and 79 per cent of millennials in the US are actively seeking style inspiration at least monthly, with almost half of those looking for style inspiration on social media. When asked where they learn about new brands, products and experiences, video reigns supreme: YouTube is the most popular platform with Gen Zs, followed by TikTok, then Instagram.”

Trend alert: bag charms are back. 

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Almost all of these 12 video tools are free, and some can be used on your phone. 

MISCELLANEOUS

This is an older piece, but it checks out: IKEA Hacks for Craft Show Displays. A few of these could be done with non-IKEA items. 

Want to stay up-to-date on a nearly daily basis? Follow me on Bluesky or on LinkedIn, or become a member of my Patreon.

[endlessnine09]

Congratulations to Till The End of TheMoon for ranking 4th in Thailand (top Chinese drama after 3 Thai dramas) and topping in Malaysia for the 2023 Google TV Drama Annual List! 👏🤩

[the-fandom-crossroads]

Hoyofair Spring 2024 Creator Links!

Like last Hoyofair I'm making a post linking to the youtube channels of each project shared at hoyofair! Be sure to follow the creators and support their main channels so they can keep making amazing projects like these!

Galactic Abyss Chronicles - 神·潜行瞬杀 and others

I actually found the director, head animator, and head modeler on Bilibili! Here Real proud of myself because he has no accounts on the western internet. He hasn't posted the full short on his account yet but he does have a fananimation for the Apex Legends X FFVII Rebirth collab.

From what I can tell this is also the first Genshin related animation he's done which is cool. The rest of the creators seem to be from the CN fandom as well although I could not find their Bilibili's from a quick search

Ranked DayCare - by No_Tables

Their first Hoyo short was at Hoyofair 2023. So it's great to see them back with a new bit. Now with Klee!

Moonlit Bamboo Forest - Passion Paris

So this is apparently an Academy Award winning Animation studio!? Passion Pictures is the studios name and the Paris branch animated this short. We have legit 2D animation studios submitting Shorts to Hoyofair now. Wow!

Needless to say this was the short with the most unique animation style. And one of my top favorites this year.

Trial by Combat - ???

So this one seems to be just a collab of a bunch of animators. Like I can't find the project manager online (too generic a name for google). The head animator has a twitter but Twitter changed at somepoint where it won't let me view a direct link to someones profile without being logged in. I ain't creating a twitter for this rabbit hole. his username is rabbitoldman if you want to look him up. But he hasn't made any tweets with the word genshin as far as google's concerned.

I just can't find one sorry.

Progenitor: The Surface - dillongoo

Ex- RWBY animator returns with episode 3 of his "if genshin was a cyberpunk anime" series. The first two episodes hit so hard and the 3rd episode does not disappoint!

Realm of Faith: Live Actually - Type Zero Inc

Another legit animation studio for the animation. They don't have a youtube so i don't know if they'll ever upload the full version anywhere other than hoyofair.

But! The two songs have been posted on the singers youtubes with longer versions!

majiko(Furina), 4s4ki(Lumine), Wolpis Carter(Venti)

Chogakusei (Wriothesley), Amatsuki (Childe), 96Neko (Arlecchino)

Domain 404 - LucHD

Their first and only other Hoyofair short was shown over a year ago at hoyofair 2022. But Luc has returned with a full 4 minute short filled with Spiral Abyss and other meta in jokes. Diluc out here maining a C6 Bennett lol.

TitanSlayers: Edge of Oblivion - Kieru

Kieru once again turns in an amazing action packed animation. The last one was the Persona spoof with Lyney and Lynette. But my favorite of theirs is Cyno vs Anubis and the Gods

Shenhe Awaken - Rhinocore

They made a previous short for Hoyofair but that one was never posted to a youtube channel other than hoyofair. So I'm going to assume they don't have a youtube and this one is just going to say on Hoyofair as well.

---

And that's all the Creators from this Hoyofair! It was less creators than the winter one but I feel like that might be because multiple shorts are nearly 10 minutes.

But which one was your favorite? Do you like the change to less but longer shorts? Or do you wish they went back to more shorts 2-5 minutes long? Let me know in the tags! And be sure to follow all these guys on their youtube's so you can see the teaser trailers they post a few days before each Hoyofair.