#Viral News Stories 2017

[midnightsslut]

So was taylor really cancelled in 2016 or was it more that she wasn't as popular as she was/would like to be?

oh she was absolutely canceled. buckle up because I have a lot of thoughts on this djsjsj.

if you were around in the fandom at all, you knew. things were BAD. that level of hate towards a celebrity is honestly rare these days. i would say the only thing that comes close in recent memory is like… idk, it’s actually hard to think of any because it was a combination of a few factors. it’s not that the general public decided to quietly boycott her and stop consuming her music. it’s that there were viral tweets hating on her pretty much every week. if she did anything in 2016-18, it was met with an absolutely asinine amount of criticism. twitter had a field day with things as innocent as her september cover and her post about having a good year in 2017. a lot of celebrities decided to distance themselves and take kanye’s side. there were numerous articles written about how she was finally going down and should apologize for being problematic. people were famously convinced the tour would flop and absolutely celebrated it. people literally told her she was dead. it’s genuinely difficult to explain the scope of this hate train to people who weren’t around at the time, especially because the news cycle is very different now. people get over news stories a lot quicker than they used to.

now, the main argument people use to prove that she wasn’t canceled is the first-week sales of reputation, which is sort of funny to me because all the coverage in 2017 focused on how its performance was lackluster compared to 1989. of course it still sold well compared to other artists’ albums in the first week, because there was still hype around her comeback, and most importantly, she has a huge fan base. none of the singles had longevity except delicate, which fans genuinely worked their asses off to campaign for. the radio did not play her singles like it used to, though this is due to other factors as well. sure, rep was not actually a flop, but it was nowhere near how TS6, the follow-up to one of the biggest pop eras of the decade, could’ve performed without the cancellation. it also got the worst reviews of her career, most of which generally didn’t focus on the music or the lyricism and were just mad at her as a person. yes, this sounds dramatic, considering the fact that it still got a lot of glowing reviews. the media made sure to focus on a lot of the negative stuff, although they were surprised that critics generally seemed to like it.

what’s funny is that, when she spoke about the kanye controversy in interviews in 2019, no one told her she wasn’t ‘really’ canceled, because a lot of people still hated her. they just told her to get over it. the level of hate was nowhere near pre-rep tour levels anymore, but she was still one of the most criticized celebrities, and it was widely believed that her peak had passed (people love to write revisionist history about the lover album and its performance that does not actually reflect the numbers, but that’s another story). now that more time has passed, and she’s even higher than she was pre-2016, people want to convince her that she’s actually wrong.

it’s almost insane to me to chalk up that level of hate to anything other than a cancellation. seeing articles like ‘was taylor swift REALLY canceled?’ and essays on why that’s just in her head will infuriate ANYONE who was online and didn’t hate her. none of the articles I linked here really convey the scope of that hate. taylor really played the long game and came out the other side of it, but she WAS canceled.

[jealousmartini]

KPOP DR INTRODUCTION

Old opening intro:

" Don't freak out! We are O.M.G! "

New opening intro:

" 6 friends and a dream! We are O.M.G "

╭╔═════════════♱═════════════╗

[ # 000 :: O.M.G's ORIGIN STORY ] small print

O.M.G, is an originally animated six-member girl group created in late 2013 by Lucia Martinez, or better known as "Keisha" from her character in O.M.G, under her youtube channel "Envious Martini" accompanied by her 5 other girlfriends for fun. They would post a lot of vlogs, grwm (get ready with me's), mukbangs, reaction/commentary, and livestreams, of course, none of these posts were ever serious. And a lot of their videos would be clipped to be used as memes that would instantly catch fire, and their faces would soon be very recognisable. In fact It wouldnt even take long for O.M.G to earn a lot of attention from Korean and Western K-POP fans when "Molly (claimed song!! playboi carti)", which is a scrap unreleased track by the way, would randomly go viral at 2.3 million views on youtube and Envious martini would begin to grow a humble following of 430K followers for their music, art and shitposts.

All music production, concepts, and choreography were created by Keisha with the help of the 5 girls behind the scenes. For example, in order for Keisha to be able to animate the choreography, the girls would make dance routines together, figuring out positions and record it for Keisha to take as reference. This also went for vocals and rapping. All girls played their parts accordingly to how they felt comfortable and were suitable to each member. And then it would be in mid-June of 2014 that the girls would decide to bring Keisha's art to life and replace the characters of O.M.G with themselves.

And in 2015, after being invited to many interviews and talk shows and entering many survival shows and competitions, it would be one competition show in particular, held by JYP which O.M.G would win, where they would officially be adopted under JYP entertainment and debut as a JYP girl group in the same year. But it wasn't until 2016 after much debate surrounding the group that O.M.G. was finally recognised and accepted as a KPOP group.

[ # 001 :: ALBUMS ]

[ disclaimer!! claimed songs are highlighted, and said songs most likely sound slightly different in my dr because of personal taste.]

Core genres :: KPOP, EDM, JERSEY CLUB, POP-ROCK, SYNTH, ELECTRO-POP, CONTEMPORARY R&B

Core aesthetics/concepts :: GIRL CRUSH, Chaotic academia core, Y2K, Girl-next-door

Themes :: Teenage years/Nostalgia, Self discovery, Love/self love, Random stuff

(2013) Mini album 1 :: Superstitious

Tracklist :: "track no.1", "track no.2", "track no.3"

(2014) Mini album 2 :: Lawfully Wedded Wives

Tracklist :: "What's your number", "Molly", "Greedy hearts", "girls never die", "heaven sent", "kinda miss you rn"

(2015) Debut Album :: Oh My Gosh

Tracklist :: "OMG", "Magnetic", "Ditto", "Lucky girl syndrome", "Dalla Dalla", "Woo! Ah!", "ETA"

Debut song :: Ditto

(2016) 1st Single :: Princess Sickness

(2017) 2nd Album :: New Region

Tracklist :: "La di da", "Supernova", "Crush", "life on Mars" , "JOYRIDE",

(2017) 3rd Album :: GINXED

Tracklist :: "Girls on wings", "LOOP", "Serotonin", "WOW", "Bitternes, the disease", "Yes, and?", "Charmed", "LOVE DIVE", "Accendio"

(2019) 4th Album :: Hopscotch

Tracklist :: "Six of em", "1 on 1", "Now what", "Super mario", "Jersey Girls", "Sir mix a lot", more to come...

(2019) 5th Album :: Joyride

Tracklist :: "Insidious", "It's my turn now", "Trance", "met her on the internet", more to come...

(2021) 6th Album :: TOTALLY MAXED OUT

Tracklist :: "I'm your magical girl", more to more...

[ # 002 :: SOLO PROJECTS ]

(2019) Debut Solo Single :: "Make way"

(2021) 1st Solo mini Collection :: Come again?

Tracklist :: "It's my turn now", "He ate my heart", "WTF?"

(2023) 4th Solo Single :: "My Chemical Romance feat. Megan the Stallion"

(2024) 5th Solo Single :: "ABCD feat. NAYEON"

(2024) 6th Solo Single :: "Boohoo"

(2024) 7th Solo Single :: "New Woman feat. CHAE KYUNG"

╰╚═════════════♱═════════════╝

╭╔═════════════♱═════════════╗

[ # 000 :: BASIC INFO ]

Date of DR :: ??/04/2017

Name :: Lucia R. Martinez

korean birthname :: Hwang Chae-Kyung

adopted name :: Lovely adopted surname

nicknames :: Kyu, Kyungie, Keish/Keesh, Chae-Bae, Vivi

Stage name :: Keisha/Kyu

Title names :: THAT girl, Mother Rabbit, Millionaire Maknae, KPOP's Princess, KPOP's Darling, KPOP's first Black Idol, KPOP'S secret ACE, KPOP's curly head, KPOP's BEYONCE

Positions :: Producer, Main/lead singer, main dancer, sub rapper, visuals, maknae, center maybe??

Date of birth : 20 / 06 / 1997

Age :: 19

Hobbies :: Music production, drawing, dancing, singing, baking, gaming

Languages :: English, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin Chinese

Ethnicity :: half puerto rican, half korean

Representative animal :: red panda / puppy / Bunny (I can't choose rn guys)

Representative colour :: orange

Representative dessert :: cookies and brownies

Fanbase name :: charmings

Training period :: ?? months

Company :: JYP

Group representative colours :: Blue and Pink

Brands :: Vivian Westwood, Diesel, Juicy Couture

[ # 001 :: FUN FACTS ]

She is older than Jungkook by 4 months. He knows this but still chooses to not use honorifics sometimes.

She is close friends with NAYEON, Sana, Chaeyoung, YOONGI, JIMIN, JUNGKOOK, Namjoon, J-hope, TAEHYUNG, Jin, BANGCHAN, Felix, Hyunjin, YUNA, Jennie, Jisoo, Tsuyu, WONYOUNG, YUJIN,

No one knows this yet but she has a crush on 6 of the idols listed and 2 of the highlighted names are part of the six, the other 4 are not

The red panda is her animal representative because there was a video circulating of her dressed up as a mascot for her highschool as a red panda and break-dancing

Speaking of dancing, she has mastered multiple dancing styles like house, vogue, street dancing, belly dancing, Jazz, Latin, Club, Jersey and Freestyle. She's got her own signature groove 💃🏾 🕺

She is the first kpop idol to be the ambassador for Vivian Westwood, Juicy Couture and Diesel

[ # 002 :: CONTROVERSIES AND SCANDALS ]

Next post...

∘₊ ✧───────────────────✧₊∘

[38sr]

How did you get where you are now? Job wise I mean? Were you a college student before doing this or did you go looking for jobs in the art industry straight away?

Oh, well it's been quite a journey for me in terms of how I got to where I am right now but here's the full timeline (?):

August 1996 - BIRTH

April 2007 - I watch Brave Story at Tribeca Film Festival, life is changed and I decide to purse animation

June 2014 - Graduate high school and accepted into Montserrat College of Art for Animation & Interactive Media

Summer of 2016 - Studied abroad in Japan attending Niigata School of Art & Design

Summer of 2017 - First animation job as an animation intern for Sesame Street (yes that Sesame Street)

December 2017 - Graduated from college (yes I graduated early due to having college credits in high school), did not have a job lined up

2018 to 2019 - Living back in NY with my parents, working on indie animation productions, creating emotes and animated intros for content creators, applying and getting rejected from many job listings, received and fail multiple storyboard tests, developing my own projects and story ideas after years of not being able to for school work

July 2019 - Fly to California for the first time, made the decision to move in order to further pursue a career in animation, at this time the Nickelodeon Artist Program were accepting submissions so I busted out boards for a personal project in 3 days and submitted it (please do not be like me, take your time haha)

September 2019 - I receive a call from Nickelodeon and I go through a series of interviews for 2 months straight

Thanksgiving 2019 - I receive news I was selected as a trainee for the Nickelodeon Artist Program

January 2020 - Move to California and begin work as a trainee at Nickelodeon (specifically for Rugrats reboot)

March 2020 - The pandemic

July 2020 - I leave Nickelodeon and move onto Titmouse as a storyboard revisionist for Star Trek Lower Decks

November 2020 - My Supervising Director for Lower Decks recommends me to the first Critical Role show Legend of Vox Machina

December 2020 - I do freelance boards for Vox Machina and get hired as a full time revisionist for season 2

January 2021 - I receive a interview request for a job on WondLa at SkyDance due to one of the directors finding my work online, I heavily consider the job

May 2021 - My Adventures of Superman is announced, I draw a piece of fanart that goes viral

July 2021 - Vox Machina season 2 wraps, I receive an offer to return to Lower Decks season 3 as well to work on X-Men 97 (I said yes to Lower Decks)

August 2021 - Spiderman Freshmen Year (now known as Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman) asks if I be interested to do boards, I decline not knowing what it was for

September 2021 - Showrunner for Spiderman contacts me personally for interview, my Superman fanart from May 2021 finds it way in front of the eyes of one of the creators for MAWS, still currently doing revisions for Lower Decks S3

October 2021 - Accept job offer as board artist for Spiderman, freelancing on MAWS as a character designer (first time doing this job), turn down SkyDance job offer

December 2021 - Wrapped on Lower Decks S3

January 2022 - Launch as board artist for Spiderman at Marvel Studios, still been developing my own personal projects at this point

February 2022 - Studio Shaft offers layout and genga work for Madoka Magia Record after seeing animation work of my personal projects, I accept

April 2022 - My episode of Madoka Magia Record airs, Studio Pierrot sends offer for work on Boruto

May 2022 - After my first episode on Boruto I am offered to work on Bleach Thousand Year Blood War, I accept and continue to on Bleach as of this post (3 seasons in total), Studio Mir offers me animation work for XMen 97 (I accept but only work on the first episode)

Summer of 2022 - Working on Spiderman, animating on animes, I think at some point this is when I was offered to do animation work for Castlevania Nocturne

November 2022 - Complete season 1 of Spiderman, Marvel/Disney lays me off for *reasons*, I receive an email about potential work on an unannounced show at Nickelodeon, I'm unemployed at this point

January 2023 - Collecting unemployment, freelancing on animes, trying to survive in general, also approached by Colosso to create my own course

February 2023 - Land a short gig on Big City Greens movie over at Disney TVA, Studio Mir once again offer me work but this time for second animated Witcher film

March 2023 - Land an interview as a character designer for that unannounced Nick show, didn't get the job

May 2023 - Wrap up on Big City Greens and Witcher, fly to Japan to relax (I failed)

July 2023 - Land a layout artist position at A24 (no it's not for Hazbin Hotel), Studio Mappa offer me work on Jujutsu Kaisen Shibuya Arc

September 2023 - Land another interview with Nickelodeon (this time for storyboard artist), freelancing on layouts and animation for Castlevania Nocturne S2, A24 job is stressing me out way too much so I decide to leave, MAWS hits me up for retakes on season 2

October 2023 - Wrap up at A24, I land the board artist job at Nick, I am also drowning in Jujutsu Kaisen production meltdown, complete my online course for Colosso, wrap up on MAWS S2

November 2023 - I start at Nick as a board artist, Colosso course release, I am still dying by the hands of Studio Mappa

January 2024 till now - Still boarding over at Nick and still animating on animes (I am VERY selective now about it though after JJK), I am also in therapy now Yeah so that's like, a real rough timeline over everything from school till now (and even then I am missing a lot of work details like video games and development projects due to NDAs). But pretty much what carried me was putting myself and my art out there on social media along with building relationships with people in the studios (outside of just my production) and that's how I've been able to maintain a steady work flow even when I was unemployed. Also not being afraid to develop my own ideas and share them since most of the times that gives the leadership a pretty good idea what sensibilities I have (and they just happen to match). I hope that answered your question!

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

A Rick Rolls a Nation — a timeline of the JD Vance couch joke

July 15th, 2024: "can't say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an Inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181)." — @ rickrudescalves (the now deleted tweet)

Arguably, this ground zero tweet overly complicates things. Soon, the "latex glove" element will be completely forgotten and JD will *only* be fucking couches "raw dog style" in almost all subsequent variations on the joke.

July 15th, 2024 - Present: The joke goes absolutely bonkers viral. Comedian Kathy Griffin, who famously overstepped in 2017 by posing for a photo with a model of Trump's bloodied, disembodied head, believes the joke to be true, boosts it as if it is.

July 24th, 2024: The Associated Press publishes a fact check of the "claim," which is inherently hilarious.

July 25th, 2024: The Associated Press retracts the piece, causing fans of the Vance/couch meme to go wild with delight, the joke being that they retracted it because there's actually something to it. “The story, which did not go out on the wire to our customers, didn’t go through our standard editing process. We are looking into how that happened" — AP spokesperson Nicole Meir

July 30th, 2024: Business Insider tracks down the originator of the joke and interviews him --->

"@ rickrudescalves hid the post within a week of publishing it, but the couch joke had already left an impression."

He says he was uncomfortable with the attention the joke received, and is mildly worried about being accused of election interference, but has no regrets.

Rick cites Werner Herzog, Jorge Luis Borges, John Fowles, and Hunter S. Thompson in explaining precedents for the form and details of the joke.

July 31st, 2024: JD Vance either intentionally makes a lame joke embracing (or trying to claim ownership of) the couch meme, or does so accidentally via free association. Either way, it falls totally flat and the man continues to dazzle America with his complete lack of charisma and his disgusting views on women's rights.

August 6th, 2024: Tim Walz is selected as Kamala Harris's Vice Presidential running mate. That night, in Philadelphia, Walz kills with a Vance/Couch joke.

August 7-8th-ish, 2024: The far right, led by Laura Loomer and Don Jr, makes an unfunny, clumsy, intentional attempt to do the same kind of joke with Walz by claiming...he...drinks horse cum? Because this is so...just gross—a classic over-escalation, you might say—and completely manufactured, this attempt seems to be dead on arrival.

August 9th, 2024: The non-GOP backlash officially begins. New York Magazine pubishes:

"Besides the tiresome-but-correct moral case, leaning on fake memes also just isn’t necessary, much as it may delight Democrats’ online base. Good political candidates have always known how to get vicious while staying within the lines of accuracy. This means homing in on opponents’ real weaknesses, a task the Harris campaign has thus far excelled at."

To which there was an excellent Twitter response:

Right. Who owns the joke? Is it democrats? Is it officials or citizens? The answer is no one, and therefore the idea it can be policed is itself a kind of joke, I think.

Where will it go from here? We shall see.

I wonder if we'll ever learn the identity of Rick, because, I agree, I think a joke made in mid-July may have altered history.

[fayoftheforest]

human kite & antisemitism

In the notes of my recent meta on Vampire Kyle AUs, a user reflected on how similar antisemitic stereotypes might overlap with his TFBW character as well. Since I also have some thoughts on this and enjoyed putting together the last lil post I thought I’d do another on this subject too :) 

South Park Fandom Wiki states that Human Kite is heavily inspired by Superman, “being a faraway alien with the ability to fly and to shoot lasers out of his eyes, even wearing a costume with the color red, yellow, and blue and a symbol in his chest to match.”  I think this is pretty cool! Superman was created by Jewish immigrants and is very Jewish-coded in his origin story, being “a refugee with the Hebrew-inspired name ‘Kal-El’ who escaped a dying world and fought Nazis during World War II” (JewishUnpacked). I don’t know if Tratt were aware of these roots, but either way, I think it’s pretty neat :)

South Park Fandom Wiki also claims that Kyle playing an alien character “may be a reference to how Adolf Hitler did not consider Jews ‘human.’" This is. Uh. Less neat.

Similarly upsetting is the name itself, Human Kite, which is a play on words with the horrific ethnic slur “kike.” American Jewish Committee posits that the term “is derived from the Yiddish word for circle, ‘kikel,’ a reference to how Jewish immigrants at Ellis Island signed their entry forms: a circle as opposed to an X, which Jews associated with the cross of Christianity. Immigration officers described those who signed forms with a circle as ‘kikel,’ eventually being shortened to ‘kike.’”

Did Matt and Trey really create his entire character just so that Cartman could call him Human Kike that one time? I can’t say for certain, just in the same way I don’t have a direct quote from them confirming the reasoning behind their selections of names for Kyle and Ike. But I can tell you that if you put ‘em together and you get… yeah. Yep. “Kike” again. Thank you, Tratt, very cool 👍Get a new joke maybe :/

Now, let’s talk specifically about his laser powers. Up until researching for this meta, I had presumed that Kyle’s ability to shoot lasers from his eyes was a direct reference to the Jewish Space Laser conspiracy popularised to the public by terrifyingly influential political figure Marjorie Taylor Greene. In 2018, Greene wrote a Facebook rant speculating that the California wildfires were caused by a giant laser floating in space, owned by the Jews. Very normal thing to believe :|

However, during my research, I realised that these timelines did not match up. As mentioned, Greene’s rant was shared in 2018, but didn’t go viral until 2021. Meanwhile, South Park’s The Fractured But Whole was released way back in 2017! What I had initially assumed was another antisemitic reference is in fact just a dreadful and ridiculous coincidence. Nonetheless, It’s still a commonality that’s worth pointing out, I think.

Just as an aside, I’d like to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to cousin Kyle’s version of Human Kite. Everything about him is an egregious Jewish caricature, from his irritating, snivelling voice to his long list of health issues. It’s not my fault that the limited Jewish gene pool has fucked me over, Tratt! Leave me alone! A meta about antisemitism within Cousin’s Kyle characterisation would be a mile long, so I’ll spare you that for now.

Anyway, what does this all mean when we’re creating fan content around TFBW? Must we just chuck the Human Kite persona into a blender and never speak of it again? Not necessarily. Speaking as a Jewish fandom member, I quite enjoy reading and writing Human Kite. It’s a fun character to play around with! Despite his unfortunate roots, I don’t believe including him is innately antisemitic. It just depends on how you go about doing it! If he’s not secretly running the world, controlling the banks and Hollywood, or consuming the blood of innocent Christians, you’re on the right track. 

You could even go for a little meta-commentary and acknowledge the antisemitic coding within the text! Here’s an example of how I did that in my upcoming TFBW reality swap fic (don’t question why there’s two of everyone, it makes sense within the text lmao)

“Wait, you’re telling me in an alternate reality we’re all aliens?” Kyle gawks at this funhouse-mirror version of himself, who’s busy gawking right back. “No, Kyle, just—just you,” Kenny says. “Oh.” Kyle narrows his eyes. “You know, it’s difficult not to interpret this with antisemitic undertones.” “What, like the Jewish Space Laser conspiracy?” Cartman asks. Mysterion frowns. “Jewish people have space lasers in your universe?” “No,” Cartman sighs and shakes his head forlornly, before muttering, “it’s a made-up rumour to perpetuate mistrust and hatred towards the Jewish community.” “Alright, don’t sound so disappointed,” Kyle huffs. “Guys!” Stan says. “Can we not start this argument again?” “I never said it was a cool rumour, Kyle!” Cartman snaps defensively. “Obviously it’s super harmful and whatever. All I meant was that it would have been cool if it were real. Because, like, space lasers are awesome! Right?” He looks to Kite, apparently presuming that they’re an authority on the matter. “Um.” Kite blinks, then says hesitantly, “I can shoot lasers… from my eyes. And once I did sort of fly up into space and magnify the lasers to destroy Chaos’s tin foil factory. So, uh. Does that help?” Cartman’s face lights up and is split in half by an enthusiastic grin. “It helps a lot, actually.” Kyle groans and pinches his nose. “You have no idea how much education you’ve just undone, dude.” He opens his eyes to glower at Kite. Kenny glances at Chaos. “Tin foil factory?” Chaos waves a hand dismissively. “Outsourcing proved more efficient.”

There we go! A lighthearted little nod, which acknowledges potential antisemitic readings of Human Kite, without justifying or excusing it. It’s not at all necessary when creating fan content around Human Kite, but just know that that’s an option to you, if you so choose. Just make sure antisemites are the butt of your joke, and not Jewish people, lmao.

I’ll finish up by returning to my general sentiment that I held in my Vamp!Kyle post. If you conduct your creations with a basic level of awareness and self-reflection, you’ll probably be alright. Just stay in the know, and you’re all good to go 😎

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Timeline: Part 9 - December 1-10 2017

For earlier timeline posts: click here or here.

December starts out strong with a daily bombardment of tons of stories about Meghan and/or Harry. Their PR backs off in the middle of the month, but only barely. Luckily for us, there is salvation: Meghan gets her first, second, third, and fourth dose of royal criticism.

Like I mentioned in the November 2017 timeline, this month sees Meghan pulling her support from Star Magazine, US Weekly, and E Online. People Magazine begins to earn her loyalty instead.

Ok, apparently I exceeded the limit of links that can be in a Tumblr post. the December edition is going to be split up into smaller segments. I've got a solution for how to fix this going forward, but it's going to take some time to figure out how to implement it.

12/1/2017: Fleet Street has a fever and the solution is more Harkle coverage.

Doria is papped at a laundromat in California.

Another story about Ninaki's photos of Meghan.

Can Kate cope with Meghan Mania?

Harry and Meghan make their first appearance together at a royal engagement.

Meghan and Pippa look alike.

Meghan and Harry's engagement is straight from Love Actually.

Meghan's old men's magazine photoshoot resurfaces.

Replica of Meghan's ring is an instant bestseller.

Meghan merches her outfit.

Meghan's 1993 Nick at Nite appearance reserfaces.

Meghan is Best Dressed of the Week.

Meghan's resume will seriously surprise us.

Anything Kate can do, Meghan can do better: First Royal Engagement edition.

Meghan's royal style vs her old Suits style.

Meghan leaks intent to visit US and Canada after the wedding in her first official foreign royal tour.

12/2/2017: Meghan's "draw your own box" essay goes viral again, as does her old Larry King Show interview. The Markles sell more pictures of Meghan, Meghan once tried to hook up with Ashley Cole but failed, and she makes a dig at William and Kate with a story about her and Harry holding hands.

12/3/2017: Meghan merches the Botswana camp again. The Times writes about Meghan's old instagram account and Bogart and leads speculation about bridesmaids and pageboys. Et tu, Times?!

Note: December 2 is a Saturday and December 3 is a Sunday. How nice Meghan's PR gave us a break for the weekend. But don't worry...the bombardment is back!

12/4/2017: Harkle Mania continues

About Meghan's ring

Meghan once auditioned for Shakira

All about Thomas Markle

Meghan leaks her expectations of marital bliss.

Meghan leaks that Harry has asked William to his best man. (Note, in Spare, Harry argues that this leak came from Kensington Palace but the source is US Weekly...Meghan's magazine.)

Wedding dress designer predictions

Meghan Markle Under Fire: Why is the Future Princess the Subject of So Much Scrutiny? (From E News, a Meghan affiliate)

Let the Misogynistic Public Shaming of Meghan Markle Now Commence (From Vogue, part of the CondeNast empire, to which People Magazine also belongs...Meghan affiliate)

Meghan Markle the garden influencer

Meghan's photoshoot charity work in Rwanda resurfaces.

What's with Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and Bananas? (I kid you not, that's the title of the article.)

Will Meghan's wedding be like Pippas?

Meghan and Harry love bananas some more - they merch a banana cake.

12/5/2017: New day, same shit. Senior royals attend the Diplomatic Reception at Buckingham Palace but Meghan and Harry skip it to attend the Henry van Straubenzee Memorial Fund carol concert (pssh...like they were even invited to the Diplomatic Reception in the first place).

Daily Mail promotes Suits

Meghan's style inspiration is Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.

Meghan merches clothes from when she was a teenager.

Harry appears on Top Gear.

Meet Meghan's celebrity doppelganger.

Meghan wants to wear the Spencer tiara for the wedding.

Meghan merches her engagement ring again.

Meghan the beauty icon.

12/6/2017: (le sigh...)

Who does Meghan curtsey to?

Meghan manifests The Lover's Knots Tiara for the wedding.

Nobody told Meghan she was pretty as a kid. (But did they ask her if she was OK?)

Meghan leaks about Ninaki's betrayal.

Harry attends the London Fire Brigade Carol Service alone, and so does his ex, Cressida. Meghan is upset and leaks that she is in LA visiting her mother.

Meghan merches Strathberry.

Can Meghan rewrite the royal fairytale?

Meghan the fashion influencer

12/7/2017: Another story about Misha Nonoo being the royal matchmaker. Thomas Markle does a papwalk. Meghan merches a pilates workout and is "incredibly moved" by how much people love her.

12/8/2017: The Crown Season 2 is released on Netflix

Meghan's old home video of her driving around LA resurfaces.

How Meghan won over Harry's friends.

Doria gets papped in LA.

Meghan leaks that she and Harry are staying with William and Kate at Anmer Hall for Sandringham Christmas.

Meghan leaks that William is planning Harry's stag party.

Meghan manifests for Selena Gomez to play her on The Crown.

World Vision promotes Meghan's charity work again.

All about Nottingham Cottage and Meghan's interior design style

Kate takes style inspiration from Meghan

12/9/2017: Meghan merches her Toronto rental. Harry quits smoking.

12/10/2017:

Meghan's old Tig article waxing poetic on Ivanka Trump resurfaces.

Harry goes to Germany with friends for a hunting party.

Doria does a papwalk.

Kensington Palace announces that Meghan will attend Sandringham Christmas and that she is expected to attend the Windsor Christmas luncheon at Buckingham Palace.

Old photos from a 2009 TV appearance Meghan did resurface.

William and Harry choose a sculptor for Diana's Kensington Palace statue.

Meghan hailed as a royal fashion asset.

[pupphe-additions]

✬Evie’s Ships/Dating History✬

Unknown Male Trainee (2016-2018)

Evie had a secret relationship with another trainee. The public does not know about this relationship. Not much is known by the boys.

Only Stray Kids knows that this relationship even happened as she told them.

The only thing SKZ knows is that Evie said the relationship was extremely toxic after a while. She didn't know how to get out of the relationship until one day she caught him cheating and that's what made her break up with him.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Unknown Female (2020-2021)

Nothing is really known about this relationship, Evie was in an 8 month relationship with a female as she’s outwardly talked about it one time.

Evie mentioned to SKZ that they only broke up because the other person was scared of getting caught as they weren’t ready to come out at the time and Stray Kids was growing in popularity so she was scared that they’d be found out.

Evie has stated she’d take her back if she ever wanted to try again in the future to the other members.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

The Boyz's New (February 2023-August 2023)

Evie's first public relationship got outted through a dating scandal.

After it was outted though she did post cute photos with him.

Evie is extremely thankful for her relationship with New as it showed her that love could be gentle and free and that it didn't have to be scary or hidden.

After about 6 months of dating Evie and New broke up mutually after they both felt they couldn't give each other what they needed due to being busy.

Evie and New are still friends.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Ship: NCT’s Johnny

Ship Name: JohnLyn/NaHo When/What Started the Ship?: It started in 2019 after Evie admitted to being close friends with Johnny. It skyrocketed in popularity after Evie posted on her then private Instagram story a video of the two goofing off and flirting in 2021 and someone screen recorded it and it went viral. This sparked a dating rumor between the two idols as well. Popularity: 85%

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Ship: Stray Kids’ Lee Know

Ship Name: MinRi When/What Started the Ship?: It started in 2017/2018 during the Stray Kids show. Lee Know and Evie has openly been flirty and so it’s always been a rather popular ship. Popularity: 95%

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Ship: Stray Kids’ Hyunjin

Ship Name: HyunRi When/What Started the Ship?: Started in 2019. After Stay saw how lovey these two were together the ship skyrocketed. The compilations that have been made of the two have gotten millions of views and it’s gotten to a point where even non-stays ship them. After Evie posted a photo of her laying on his chest on Instagram it caused a major influx of HyunRi stans and it also sparked another dating rumor between the two. Popularity: 100%

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Ship: Ateez’s Wooyoung

Ship Name: WooRi When/What Started the Ship?: Started in 2021 after Wooyoung called Evie during a vLive. Evie was in a bad mood and was about to end the live stream after some rude comments she read. Wooyoung called and her mood instantly brightened and they talked for like thirty minutes and they ended with saying “I love you.” as always and it let to the ship going viral on different social medias. Popularity: 100%

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Ship: TWICE’s Momo

Ship Name: MoNa When/What Started the Ship?: Started in 2020 after Momo and Evie did a dance together. After the dance they hugged each other and kissed each other on the cheeks happily proud of each other after the performance. Because of that it skyrocketed in popularity. Also due to the two idols constantly flirting outwardly and posting photos of them holding hands and stuff it made the ship become popular even outside of the KPop community. Popularity: 96%

[annabelle--cane]

pls I need episode sources for the true ones in the wtnv polls

this is about my "which of these is a fake fact about welcome to night vale" poll and ideally one should take that before reading these answers. having said that, let's go:

NVlians have to fill out triplicate sex paperwork with all potential partners: canon in the novel it devours! a few paragraphs from chapter 13,

2. cecil is an avid tiktok user and regularly records dances at the radio station: this is the false one, it's actually carlos who is the wannabe tiktok star. from episode "218 - the sitter cancelled,"

I tried to get Carlos to take Esteban to the lab, but apparently today they’re doing a dangerous experiment and he doesn’t want our son to get hurt. I’m not sure I believe that. I think Carlos might just want some time alone to work on his Tiktok dances. He’s obsessed these days with getting one to go viral, and he’s putting a few too many hours into choreographing and filming these things. 

3. k[h]oshekh the floating cat is a misogynist: from 195 and 196, silas the thief parts 1 & 2. these episodes are told from the perspective of silas, a former successful art thief who used to work with a partner called sandrine whom he never got on with, largely due to his self-centeredness and misogyny never letting him see her as a full person. it all came to a head when sandrine, as an act of revenge, cursed him to be an immobile mutant cat for the rest of his days, and this is the cat we have known all along as khoshekh gershwin-palmer. however he has mellowed since then and his misogyny has kind of cooled, having kids really changed him.

4. cecil turns a recurring nightmare of his into an nft: I feel the need to say he turned the nightmare itself into an nft, not an artistic representation or anything. from "199 - guidelines for retrieval,"

And thus ends the new Guidelines for Retrieval. Aw, that’s such a nice offer from the Sanitation Department! A little long winded maybe, but I don’t want to be too critical. I know their public communications department has had a lot of turnover lately. Anyway, I definitely will be taking them up on that offer this week. There’s a super vivid recurring nightmare I used to have that would make a great NFT.

5. cecil doesn’t know what fridges are: this one comes from the 2017 live show "ghost stories,"

Cecil: Oh yeah! Carlos and I have one of those humming closets, and when I open it up, there’s a light inside and cool air washes over me and I’m just like – what is this thing? Earl: Well, that’s just your refrigerator, Cecil. Cecil: Wait, that’s a refrigerator?! Earl: What have you been using as a fridge? Cecil: [beat] So tell us more about this master class um, Earl.

6. carlos climaxes in person in voice on podcast: from the patreon bonus episode "holiday." thinking or talking about science at too great length has a long canonical track record of getting carlos hot and bothered, and in one passage of the episode he starts talking about how much he loves doing science with a romantic partner, and, well. I'll just link the clip.

7. a big villain is defeated by getting squashed under a falling cow: major spoilers for very recent content here. in episode "230 - carlos explained," right as dr janet lubelle is giving her big villain monologue, this happens,

DR. LUBELLE: Now you’re starting to understand. There is no defeating me. No trick to wriggling out under my thumb. I’ve gamed out every gambit. Foreseen every fumbling, sweaty strategy. You have lost. And now…now Carlos, I will explain you away. You, Dr. Carlos Robles, were the son of [WHISTLING SOUND OF SOMETHING FALLING FROM THE SKY. LOUD SPLAT] [LONG PAUSE] CECIL: And that’s when the Glow Cloud dropped a dead cow on Dr. Lubelle. I sure hope she wasn’t injured. We should definitely check on her at some point, you know, eventually.

8. joseph fink, irl writer of the podcast, has been a NV radio intern twice: once, in the live show "the investigators," an intern played by joseph fink introduces himself as intern joseph fink. in all fairness, he could just be playing a character with his exact name, I mean, that's what maureen johnson does. however, from episode "188 - listener questions" onward, our world has in-universe been merging with the night vale world, and the actual writer joseph fink has been trapped in the town of night vale for over two years, at one point doing a stint as an intern.

9. a big villain is offered “an extra hour in the ball pit” as a bribe to go away: this one's about dr janet lubelle, again. in the last couple of seasons, tamika flynn has been feeling like she's outgrowing using violence as a tool to solve her problems, so in "228 - diplomacy," she tries the following,

Frustrations have swelled to a new high in Night Vale after Councilmember Tamika Flynn’s failed diplomatic attempts with the University of What It Is. Tamika tried offering them everything from limitless use of the scrublands to a coupon book full of cute tasks like free backrubs. She even offered an extra hour in the ball pit at the Night Vale Convention Center. But Dr. Lubelle and all of her henchmen will not budge.

[whatmathgodwrought]

Salad Bar Theory of Popular Culture

This is going to be a long post. It will discuss "The Salad Bar Theory of Popular Culture," and why Tumblr dot com is the ideal, overgrown petri dish on the web for this phenomenon.

It's a bit of lark, but I do hope you'll laugh at least once if you read to the end.

Imagine you're dining at an all-you-can-eat restaurant. The restaurant is massive. The self-serve food bar has every kind of dish imaginable, and what's more, there is a construction crew adding more space, and new chefs are constantly adding new entrees, remaking old favorites, and sometimes they even invent new cuisines altogether. All of your friends and acquaintances are there. Sometimes you eat together, sometimes you talk about what you ate, sometimes someone excitedly comes to your table raving and telling you to try something new or an old favorite. There is more than you could ever possibly eat in several lifetimes, and it only keeps growing.

This metaphor is the current state of entertainment in the 21st century for all forms of media: music, movies, books, TV shows, ebooks, audiobooks, podcasts, talk radio, art, comics, graphic novels, manga, webcomics, cartoons, anime, newspapers, infotainment, online journalism, live-streaming, plays/dramas, console gaming, PC gaming, smartphone gaming and more. Thanks to the internet, streaming, global-shipping, viral-meme-culture, commodification-of-the-invidivual-via-the-social-media-grind, (and let's be honest, piracy and archival culture), people have access to and are exposed to more entertainment than they could ever hope to consume in several lifetimes.

So, where does leave the typical diner at this restaurant? Well, as the next paragraphs will show, there is no such thing as a "typical diner." There are no gourmets, no gourmands. There is just the Cornucopia and groups of people wandering the endless salad bar. You can be first in line and pay a premium to experience the brand new dish. You can go back to the same section and reload your plate with the same thing as many times as you want, and people will ask if you don't ever get tired of the same thing. You can be a vegetarian. You can eat only meat. You can eat a bit of everything. You can brave the sneers and jeers of the gatekeepers as you sample something--with tastebuds aglow--for the first time and rave about it to all your friends.

So what kind of dining experiences are there in this cultural canteen, this pop-culture pizzeria, this taverna theatre? What do you see there?

Popularity is the Objective Word Here

When something is popular, it spreads like wildfire. This has always been true of popular culture even before the internet. Humans are social, they tell stories and they share. This may seem obvious, but it's also bedrock for the other observations.

Originality is Dead: Long Live Reboots and Remixes.

Show of hands to three questions:

How many people recognize the reference of a gorilla carrying a woman, climbing the Empire State Building while bi-planes shoot at it?

King Kong right? A cultural icon for many years.

How many people have actually seen the original King Kong (1933) starring Fay Wray and directed by Cooper and Schoedsack?

Not as many right? Maybe you only saw one of the many remakes in 2021, 2017, 2005, 1986, 1976, 1967 or 1962.

How many people are alive today that saw King Kong (1933) in the cinema?

Not many I'll bet.

I'd wager the number of hands goes down with each question. And yet the staying power of the original story remains burned into film history and memory. The point is this. Humans retell stories. This is not a bug. It's a feature. "Tell me the story again of…" There is joy (and profit) in the retelling.

Derivative Reference is Often the Primary Way of Experiencing Pop Culture

OK, so people are sharing things left and right. They're retelling, remixing, rebooting, writing fan-fics, etc. All of this creative effort means that your first-time encountering something new may be a reference, rather than experiencing the original. People rarely experience the true original firsthand anymore. They're going to experience things second-hand.

This is especially true with older media. A first experience with something will often be a derivative reference. An example: Back in the day, in school, we watched Planet of the Apes in class. (I don't know, probably the teacher was hung over.) Want to know how I figured out before the big reveal that the Planet of the Apes was really Earth?

Troy McClure spoiled it for me. In Season 7 Episode 9 of the Simpsons, "A Fish Called Selma," McClure takes an acting gig in a musical adaptation of Planet of the Apes, and he sings the following lines:

Oh my God, I was wrong It was earth all along Yes you finally made a monkey out of me.

So there I am, watching Planet of the Apes for the first time, and Troy McClure's big number starts playing in my head. I sit there in disbelief, remembering the Simpsons, and then practically crying into my desk with laughter.

Probably the teacher thought that "kids these days" don't appreciate cinema, but it was just so absurd to have the movie spoiled by a bit in the Simpsons.

Want to know something else? In doing research for this essay, I discovered that Planet of the Apes film isn't even the original. The original story was a French language novel "La Planète des Singes" by Pierre Boulle. So again, people love retelling, often in different forms of media.

Point is, the longer something has been out, the more it tends to be referenced in other forms. TV talk shows will make jokes referencing the new popular thing. Popular phrases quickly become part of the everyday lexicon. People talk at the water cooler. A tech mogul names their new software after one iconic word in Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi novel.

Any piece of popular culture could be "spoiled" for you at any moment, which brings us to....

Spoilers are Everywhere but Do They Just Act as Adverts?

King Kong dies in the end. Dumbledore Dies. Both of these are spoiler memes (and I'm not sorry), but consider the amount of time passed between the original release of both. How long is the statute of limitations on spoilers? How long before a popular piece of media saturates public awareness so much that it becomes unavoidable? Is this ultimately unavoidable because of the viral nature of advertising, marketing and sharing?

In the modern day, it's increasingly hard to avoid spoilers. I've heard of people going off social media for weeks before a major film release so it doesn't get spoiled for them.

People seem divided on the topic of spoilers, but it's a very good question: Would you still enjoy a story if it was spoiled for you? Shakespeare spoils Romeo & Juliet in the first 14 lines:

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. From forth the fatal loins of these two foes A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Do with their death bury their parents' strife. The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, And the continuance of their parents' rage, Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; The which if you with patient ears attend, What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.

Do you still want to see the rest of the play? What if it had Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo, Claire Danes as Juliet and Harold Perrineau as Mercutio? There is something to be said for knowing where the story goes, yet still enjoying the teling of the tale.

I'll go on record and say I don't really care about spoilers. They've become adverts to me, hooks of interest into things I might not have discovered otherwise. I have to encounter new media somehow, and I try to take a positive outlook on it, saying, "I was meant to discover this." If I like something, I'm going to like it unabashedly and still find a way to enjoy it.

Delayed Gratification

If you are PC gamer, let me ask a question: How many unplayed games do you have in your Steam library? Games you haven't even downloaded and opened for the first time. What about unfinished games? Played-once-and-dropped-it games? Now ask yourself: Did you buy this game when it first came out? Did you pay for early access? Would you have still enjoyed it, even if you had to wait a while? Consider the Reddit community r/PatientGamers. They don't care to line up and pay a premium for a brand new release. They know it will still be the same game (often less buggy), and they will even be able to get it on sale. They know the salad bar is vast. There's lots of content, and there's no hurry. They let it come to them when the time is right.

I Don't Want to Hear It

Similar to r/PatientGamers, there is also the phenomona when it seems like everyone is raving about something, to the point where you begin to actively block it out. It doesn't seem to matter what it is; even if it's something good that you would ultimately enjoy. Something about the repetition or the messaging rubs you wrong, and you innoculate yourself against it. You avoid that part of the salad bar at all costs, even if you might like it.

Interpreting the Rules: Remixing as Fan Behavior.

How dooes your social circle play the game Uno? Fandom has a tendency to take what's been created and modify it, remix it according to their own rules, according to fanon's own internal logic. Sometimes it's seen as an act of repair, sometimes a love letter to canon. Sometimes it's shipping characters. Sometimes it is a what-if. What if all these different characters from different properties got together in a story?

Dismay at Media Conglomerate Strip Mining

Has one of the five mega media conglomerates "ruined your childhood" by making a live-adaptation of your favorite childhood cartoon? Well, buckle up, because they aren't going to stop. The big five are hungry for content, and they are actively strip-mining your childhood favorites. It doesn't matter if it's a live action remake of Avatar the Last Airbender or CATS the musical, eventually some studio exec is going to see dollar signs, and your favorite thing is going to get a bad remake. It's best to just accept this.

Further Dismay at AI Strip Mining

If you don't like what the big five are doing, you will hate what AI is doing, and if you're an artist you probably already know you are getting robbed by AI companies. Large language models (also known as Plausible Sentence Generators) and text-to-artwork tools like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney are getting more sophisticated.

They're still scraping the web, and more sites seem to be selling user-generated content to these places, prompting artists to use Glaze and Nightshade to protect their work and poison AI data-models.

People are selling their likeness for permanent use in perpetuity for use in crowds. Lord of the Rings used AI-enabled CGI units in some of the battles, and that was over 20 years ago. How long before they don't hire extras for movies anymore?

The year is 2100. You put on a vid. It is the usual cast, starring: Tu-Pac Shakur's avatar, Hatsune Miku, the latest Disney princess avatar, and the disembodied voice of James Earl Jones. All of the original flesh and blood actors are long dead, but their AI avatars and copyright ramain. Some were never were alive in the first place. It's all necrotainment. You turn off the TV.

Back to the present year, James Earl Jones's voice is now in an AI model, so Disney can give us the same Darth Vader forever. The year 2100 seems not so far away.

On the plus side, there seems to be a growing backlack against AI-generated content. People consider it cheap, shoddily-made and flimsy, and the quickest way to associate a brand as cheap garbage. At the Glasgow Willy Wonka's Chocolate experience event, the organizer used AI generated visuals for the marketing, and people arrived disappointed at the "dirty old warehouse." According to Paul Connell, the actor who played Wonka, the script was "15 pages of AI-generated gibberish."

"I never knew I would have liked this"

OK this is getting a bit grim, so here's something fun: People are getting exposed to other cultures' entertainment, and they like it! Netflix reports that 60% of their users have watched a Korean drama, and they plan to invest USD $2.5 billion in future Korean drama for the platform. Like anime booming outside of Japan in the 80s and 90s, or the British Invasion in the 1960s, people try out other parts of the salad bar, and discover they quite like it.

Archival Behavior

Abraham Lincoln once said, "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet." This is why screencapping and archiving things has become more important. Tweets get deleted, accounts get banned, and users deactivate. Capturing and archiving things here at least preserves some of the conversation.

In the Art of War, Sun Tzu wrote, "If you know yourself and you know your enemy -- and let's be clear the enemy are techbros, who are fundamentally lazy and want to cut corners for the sake of a quick buck and flashy, fake-innovation. Even their own mothers don't love them. They stole this content from Tumblr username whatmathgodwrought, original posting date 2024/03/03, and this should be used as evidence in the lawsuit against the responsible parties -- you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."

If the internet is just 4 websites containing screenshots of the other ones, many are doing the good work of archiving for posterity.

Wasn't this Post also about Tumblr?

Yeah, yeah, we're taking the scenic route. (If you actually read this far, thank you. Send whatmathgodwrought a message and I'll read your blog, maybe reblog some of your stuff, maybe even follow you.)

Let's recap: pop culture spreads like wildfire. It gets retold/remixed/rebooted. Reference and spoilers are everywhere. You can delay and still enjoy a thing anytime, or you can resolutely choose to avoid a thing completely. You can remix, recreate, and fan-theorize canon ideas to their natural conclusion. The big five entertainment corps and AIs are strip-mining the heck out of it. People loves to try out things they never would have had access to before. So, after having some of these kind of experiences, you can post your fandom thoughts on Tumblr, add tags and watch it blow up (or not) or don't add tags (and watch it somehow blow up anyway?). Posts with "10k note energy" have slept for years before someone fired a reblog chain heard round the world. So what makes this environment the Galapagos Island or Cambrian period of websites for this Salad Bar idea?

Repeat and Resurgence

So the thing about a recurring joke is that it keep recurring. People will often write: "I will always reblog this." There are also seasonal examples. King Taejong falls from his horse, Feb 8, 1404. Julius Casear's assassaination on the Ides of March. Voyager's "Threshold" season-2, episode 15, Jan 29th. The clay tablet to Ea-nāṣir complaining about inferior quality copper. People like retelling, and reblogging with scheduling or queue contributes to the seasonal nature of repeat themes.

Tag You're It

Tags kind of help with the spreads-like-wildfire aspect. I've always liked tags as a general concept, because they're a flat, non-hierarchical, multi-category way of organizing information. In the Dewey Decimal system, your number is the category, and that's it; no nuance, no second-guessing, no argument. With tags, you add as many as you want, and then off it goes--haphazardly careening about the Tumblr ecosystem. Tagging is also broken, but whatever.

Goncharov

my favourite thing about the goncharov nonsense is that it relies on the tumblr culture of watching ur mutual posting about something but not really paying attention to it. the reason it slips so easily under the radar is we’re all used to seeing people’s random sudden fixations on our dashes and then just letting them do their thing - you don’t unfollow, you often don’t even filter it out, you just think ‘hey, glad they’re having fun’ and scroll past. i went like two days before realising it was a mass joke because i assumed one of my mutuals was just Really Into some old mafia film from the 70s all of a sudden. because why wouldn’t they be

User @watchmakermori hits the nail on the head. Tumblr's ecosystem exposes the user to random fandoms, which they might like, might look at later, or might actively avoid. It is within that space of ambiguity that the Goncharov phenomena thrived.

Trending By Organic Pollination

On this hellsite, it's possible to completely overwhelm the tags and get something trending, but at least this is mostly driven by human interest. In this case, Tumblr's lack of an algorithm is actually a feature. When a mutual reblogs something, at least I know that a human did it, unlike algorithm-based, auto-served content. We've seen what algorithms have done to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and even Google search. Algorithms drive "engagement", endless scrolling, and are likely contributing to Dead Internet Theory. At least Tumblr users are continuously blocking bots, trying to inoculate against AI-generated content, and are reblogging human content.

Parallel Play

Tumblr users' tendency to engage in parallel play also contributes to the remix factor as users reblog, retag and recontextulize. A shitpost becomes educational. Two isolated fandoms collide accidentally because of a poll. Someone makes a spelling error and it goes viral. Users play with JPEGs like dolls. Everyone is just out there doing their own thing in the big sandbox, and emergent behaviors result.

In Conclusion?

This post ended up more Tumblr-positive than I intended, even though that wasn't the original idea. The idea was to be more dispassionate, more objective, a casual observer. But like any participant-observer, I've gotten a bit caught up in the phenomenon.

So let's call this a Love Letter (academically aggravated) to Tumblr. Suffice it to say, I hope y'all keep blocking bots, reblogging humans, spiting the great AI content harvest, and keep enjoying the Salad Bar.

[kangamommynow]

A History of Mifflin Street Block Party in Madison

This coming weekend is the annual block party in downtown Madison. It’s an interesting local “tradition” that lots of folks are looking at with a new lens. (Article is from Madison Minutes)

Picture this: It’s springtime 1969. Richard Nixon is president and the Vietnam War is at its peak. Anti-war protests at universities across the nation have heightened the tension between students and law enforcement and UW-Madison is no exception.

While tales have been told that the original Mifflin Street Block Party was born out of such a protest, that’s not the whole story. On May 3, 1969, students and members of the Mifflin Street Community Co-op just wanted to let loose, smoke weed, and dance in the street. The party-goers were met with resistance from police that led to a multi-night standoff and devolved into an all out riot.

Dozens of people were injured and arrested, including the 20-something alderman who represented the Mifflin Street area at the time, future Madison mayor Paul Soglin.

The Mifflin Street Block Party continued annually for the duration of the war and beyond. As the years progressed, the counter-culture themes of the event faded away and the debaucherous rancor of it all continued to elevate.

Panoramic view of the Mifflin Street Block Party in 2009

At its peak, Mifflin drew crowds of nearly 20,000 people. (Nickclarson / Wikimedia Commons)

Mifflin drew crowds of more than 10,000 people each year. In an attempt to better control the event, the city allowed sponsors for the party, bringing food vendors and live music. By 2009, attendance grew to 15,000 and arrests had dropped from previous years.

But stabbings, riots, sexual assaults and other bad behavior ultimately led to the city disavowing the event. By the 2010s, the city and university actively tried to cancel the party.

“That’s my goal precisely, to keep downsizing it every year to get to the point where there will be no block party,” Soglin said in 2012. (The irony!)

That same year, former UW Dean of Students Lori Berquam released a video urging students not to attend Mifflin. The video went viral after it was remixed with club music.

In 2013, the university tried to actively dissuade students from attending Mifflin by hosting the Revelry music festival. The festival brought a few big names to town like Chance the Rapper, G-Eazy, and the Chainsmokers but nevertheless, Mifflin persisted. Revelry, facing a lack of funds and declining interest, got the ax in 2017.

The Mifflin Street Block Party continued annually, though to a lesser extent, drawing smaller crowds. In 2020 for the first time in 50 years, the streets of Mifflin went quiet on the would-have-been party weekend because of COVID-19 restrictions on group gatherings.

The party returned the following year and continues to live on, though these days with much less protest and more alcohol.

[notsocheezy]

A Messy Attempt at a Writeblr Intro

This is way overdue, but as my one-hundred-and-first post on the hellsite, I'll go ahead and tell you a little about me. Too much, perhaps. No matter - that's what I always do.

I'm Cassandra Erica, local girlish-shaped thing carrying she/they pronouns under each arm (despite how much more difficult it makes grocery shopping). I'm traumatized and so are mostly all of my characters, and they deserved it just as much as I did (none) but that's the cards they're dealt. By me. I swear, I tried to stop writing about childhood trauma, it just didn't work.

"So," you're wondering, "what have you written so far? What are you working on? Are you going to keep up this weird reflexive second-person perspective?" To answer back-to-front: no, many things, and not quite as many things. Here are some lists!

~~~

RELEASED ON NOTSOCHEEZY.COM!

The Real Me (2022, Short Story)

There's something a bit off about businessman Mr. Shirley Jones. What's he hiding?

Three Takes on Death (2022, Short Story)

What might happen when we die?

Pink Bow (2022, Novella)

Who knew trying on one dress at the mall could change a person's entire life? Chris - or, uh, Kris - certainly didn't. Was it just a dress inside that box with the pink bow, or was it something more?

Plus some other things, don't worry about it.

~~~

BRAIN CURDS

Brain Curds are lightly edited flash fiction - practically first drafts - posted daily and sometimes written with the express intention of being terrible… but, you know, in an endearing way. Here are some of the greatest hits!

Three. Two. One. (#31)

The Characters V The Author (#28)

The Heart Wants What It Wants (#39)

The Frank Program (Series)

Frank hosts a podcast with high profile guests, and he's not afraid to tell you "what the media doesn't want you to know."

Passable. (Series)

Four trans besties live in the city and do things that are not strictly ethical... or smart. Basically gay Seinfeld.

Government Man (Series)

Government Man is from the government.

Dominic of the Darkness (Series)

The antichrist is about to celebrate his sweet 666th birthday by breaking hell - that is, going to live on Earth for a week.

~~~

WIP!

Anthill Theory (Short Film) Finished - Waiting for Soundtrack

An exploration of free will through a time loop that the protagonist doesn't know he's in.

Blue Rabbit (Short Story) Pre-Final

Sequel to A Covenant of Rust (see below). I keep telling myself I'm going to finally finish this one.

Passable. Episode One - The Virgin Fermenting

Revised from several Brain Curds, this is the pilot episode of sorts for my trans sitcom.

One Late Night Easter Morning (Short Story) First Draft

A chance encounter at a bar leads to late-night musings about humanity.

The Order of the Degenerati (Novel) Outlining

A secret society was formed after the tragedy of the holocaust to make sure it never happened again. Unfortunately, nowadays the most they can do is make YouTube videos go viral.

It Goes Up (Never Never NEVER NEVER NEVER) Complete

You will never read it.

Memories Retained (Novella?) Outlining

Ever had a dream where you were back in high school, before it all went to shit, and you decided to do something differently? Ever woke up and found out it really happened?

Seeing Other People (Novel?) Brain Curding

A story of love, polyamory, Dissociative Identity Disorder, and heartbreak. Gee, I wonder why I feel compelled to write this one?

And MORE! THERE IS ALWAYS MORE!

~~~

MY BOOK!(?)

Publishers don't seem super interested in collections of short stories, and I'm afraid a collection of short stories and novellas may make a literary agent's head explode, so expect to see Tales from Starved Childhoods as a self-published debut! It includes a fully rewritten new version of Everyone Has Their Price (2017); newly revised versions of Next Day Delivery (2017), The Real Me (2022), Three Takes on Death (2022) and Pink Bow (2022); and all-new stories such as:

A Covenant of Rust (2023, Novella)

A newlywed couple moves into a 1950s prefab home in early 2020, but finds more hidden beneath the surface than the floor plan could reveal. Will forgotten secrets and isolation bring them together, or tear them apart?

AND SOME OF THOSE WIPs UP THERE! THEY'RE WHY THIS ISN'T OUT YET!

Tales from Starved Childhoods is set to be the physical manifestation of my early career as a writer, so stay tuned and look for it someplace books are sold!

~~~

If you'd like to be one of my readers or vice versa, don't hesitate to reach out! I'm shy but I'm friendly.

I'm always happy to have more eyes on what I'm making and I'm always happy to read something new. It helps with the burnout. I'm open to most any genre - I don't really think much about labels when coming up with ideas.

If you work for a publisher and you see something you like, send an email to publishing@notsocheezy.com with the subject line, "Business Factory."

[the-rewatch-rewind]

I love Poe Party too much to feel like any words will do it justice, but I keep trying.

Script below the break.

Hello and welcome back to the Rewatch Rewind! My name is Jane, and this is the podcast where I count down my top 40 most frequently rewatched movies of the last 20 years. And today I will be discussing number 13 on my list: Shipwrecked Comedy and American Black Market’s 2016 mystery comedy Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, directed by William J Stribling, written by Sean Persaud and Sinéad Persaud, starring Sean Persaud, Sinéad Persaud, Mary Kate Wiles, Sarah Grace Hart, Joey Richter, Lauren Lopez, Ashley Clements, Tom de Trinis, Blake Silver, and a whole bunch of other incredibly talented and underrated actors.

Edgar Allan Poe (Sean Persaud) wishes to impress the beautiful Annabel Lee (Mary Kate Wiles), so he enlists the help of his ghost roommate Lenore (Sinéad Persaud) to throw a murder mystery party for Annabel and a group of famous authors. But then guests start actually being murdered.

So, first of all, I realize that this isn’t technically a movie; it’s an 11-episode webseries available to watch for free on YouTube, which you should absolutely pause this podcast to do if you haven’t seen it yet (link in the show notes). But there is a feature cut that’s about an hour and 45 minutes long, and that’s what I counted as a movie. If I’d kept track of the number of times I watched each episode, I’m sure that even my least-watched episode would easily beat number one on this list. But as for the feature cut, I watched it 12 times in 2017, three times in 2018, four times in 2019, twice in 2020, and three times in 2021. To a certain extent, every movie on the Rewatch Rewind has changed my life in some way, but this one has changed my life to a degree that I would never have believed possible. Every single day of the last seven plus years of my life would have looked different if not for Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party. All of the guests I have had on this podcast who are not my siblings, I met either directly or indirectly because of this show. So fasten your seatbelts: this episode is going to be a ride.

My journey to Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, or Poe Party for short, or Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Invite-Only Casual Dinner Party/Gala for Friends Potluck for long, began years before the project itself was even written. In the late 2000s-early 2010s, my sister was relatively plugged into the YouTube scene, at least compared to me, and she first introduced me to a group called Team Starkid around 2009-2010-ish. At the time, they were a bunch of college theater kids who had put together a Harry Potter parody musical and on a whim posted it to YouTube, where it went viral, so they started making and posting other musicals – which they are still doing. I feel like I might still have discovered Poe Party if I hadn’t been a Starkid fan, but that definitely helped. A more crucial step on my road to Poe Party started on April 9, 2012, when my sister posted a link to a new YouTube video on my Facebook wall, with the message, “Fictional vlogs by Lizzie Bennet. (actually Hank Green.) There’s only one so far, but I’m kind of crazily excited for this!” Hank Green, of course, along with his brother John, is basically one of the fathers of YouTube. I don’t think I’d seen a ton of their videos at that point, but I was familiar with and liked them. And of course, I knew Lizzie Bennet was the main character in Pride and Prejudice, a story that I loved very much – more on that in a future episode. So I was also very excited for this new show, called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, but I could not have imagined the intense emotional journey it would take me on, through two short episodes a week (plus spinoffs) for almost a year. There had never been a TV show that I was more invested in than LBD. I was double majoring in college and working part time, but the main thing I cared about was these modern Pride and Prejudice characters. The show was clearly very low-budget, but I was blown away by the writing and acting. I was particularly impressed by the person playing Lizzie, Ashley Clements, and the person playing Lydia, Mary Kate Wiles. And, like, it wasn’t just me – LBD had a huge following for what it was. Not, like, millions of fans, but hundreds of thousands by the end. As the finale approached, the producers launched a Kickstarter to release the show on DVD and – ostensibly – pay significantly more to the cast and crew who had been incredibly underpaid. If you’re at all interested in hearing more about that, I highly recommend checking out The Look Back Diaries on Ashley Clements’s YouTube channel; she just did a whole deep dive into the show and its aftermath in honor of its 10th anniversary that I found fascinating. But anyway, coincidentally, right around that same time, Starkid also launched their first Kickstarter, since most of them had graduated from college and no longer had access to the same resources but wanted to keep making more musicals. So they were raising money for Twisted, a Wicked-style villain redemption retelling of Aladdin, which sounded interesting. I had never pledged to a Kickstarter before, but I backed both the LBD DVDs and Twisted on the same day: March 25, 2013, according to my emails.

After that, I kept following Starkid and some of the cast members of LBD, but not particularly closely. In early 2014, Mary Kate Wiles was in a webseries called Kissing in the Rain that I think I watched part of at the time, and I thought it was fine, but I wasn’t particularly into it (imagine, me, an aromantic, not particularly into a show about kissing!) and there was a lot of other stuff going on in my life so I honestly can’t remember if I saw all of it when it was first coming out. I definitely couldn’t have told you that it was on a channel called Shipwrecked, or even the name of the actor she was kissing. But in May of 2014, a new Kickstarter launched for a series called Muzzled the Musical, which was going to feature several cast members from LBD as well as Joey Richter from Team Starkid (Lauren Lopez also ended up being in it but I don’t think that was known during the Kickstarter). And I thought, whoa, cool, worlds colliding, and backed it. And promptly all but forgot about it.

A lot of strange, confusing, and rather upsetting things happened in 2015 that I don’t really want to get too deep into here, but I will say that in hindsight most of them had to do with a combination of amatonormativity and heteronormativity, and I started feeling pretty bad about myself. Before then I had managed to convince myself that I was too young to seriously fall in love anyway, but suddenly I was 25 years old and had never had any interest in dating anyone, and I felt like there was definitely something wrong with me. I didn’t exactly want to change, since I liked not dating, but I had always thought that that would just automatically change when I got older, and facing the fact that it wasn’t changing meant facing the fact that I didn’t know what the point of my life was. I liked my job but I didn’t want it to be my sole purpose. I loved movies, but that didn’t feel like it mattered. All my life I had taken in the message that finding a spouse and creating a family was what made the struggle of life worth it, and I felt lazy for not even trying to pursue that. I remember hearing at some point in my late teens that if you didn’t find your significant other in college, you needed to look online, but I didn’t even know what I would be looking for. And I truly don’t know where this line of thinking would have ended up if it had gone on much longer uninterrupted – I may have discovered my identity a bit sooner, or I may have ended up hurting someone by trying to pursue a relationship I ultimately didn’t want, or I may have just continued to spiral – but what actually happened was I got an email in late October that that random fantasy musical series I had backed on Kickstarter a year and a half earlier was being released on YouTube.

So I watched Muzzled, and it was very fun and silly, but the main thing I got out of it was, man I miss the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. So I finally opened that DVD set I’d gotten from the Kickstarter, and I binge-watched the whole show (I didn’t count it as a movie because there’s no feature cut, and also it is very long). And then I re-watched the whole thing with the DVD-exclusive commentary. And then I thought, I wonder what this cast has been up to lately, so I started searching for them on YouTube. And that’s when I learned that Mary Kate Wiles had been posting two videos per week on her channel for years, and I had been missing it. As I got caught up on her videos, I learned that I had just missed a Kickstarter for a musical she was going to be in called Spies are Forever, made by the Tin Can Brothers, which were a group of people who were also involved with Starkid, and that she seemed to be getting ready for a new Kickstarter with a group called Shipwrecked Comedy, the same people who had made that kissing show. They had also made a show called A Tell Tale Vlog about Edgar Allan Poe and the valley girl ghost Lenore who was haunting him, in which Poe had been played by Sean Persaud (the guy from Kissing in the Rain, who was apparently dating Mary Kate in real life) and his sister Sinéad (who was in the second half of Kissing in the Rain, which I definitely hadn’t watched before). Mary Kate had made a brief appearance in A Tell Tale Vlog as Annabel Lee, and this new show was going to be related to that, but bigger. I was so intrigued by this new project that I started supporting Mary Kate on Patreon to ensure that I didn’t miss any updates about it.

The Poe Party Kickstarter launched on February 2, 2016. By then, I had watched and enjoyed everything on Shipwrecked’s YouTube channel, but that Kickstarter video was my favorite thing they had made. I initially pledged the same amount that I had given to the Lizzie Bennet DVDs, thinking that would be my final pledge, but I ended up giving almost six times that much by the end of the campaign. Every $5,000 they raised, they revealed a new character and cast member with a poster, and each reveal made me more excited. Joey Richter was playing Ernest Hemingway?! Ashley Clements was playing Charlotte Brontë?! Lauren Lopez, who frequently played male characters, was playing George Eliot, a woman with a male pen name?! They got Jim O’Heir from Parks & Rec?! And then, as if the reveals weren’t enough, they had weekly 4-hour livestreams that I found incredibly entertaining. It had become clear that Shipwrecked Comedy now consisted of four people: Sean, Sinéad, Mary Kate, and Sarah Grace Hart, who had played Emily Dickinson in a stand-alone video and would be reprising that role in Poe Party. Various other cast members showed up in the streams with the Core Four, and I distinctly remember thinking, if these people are this entertaining to watch when they’re just hanging out, this show is going to be so amazing! In the second livestream of the campaign, they started writing people’s names on papers to stick on the wall if they pledged or raised their pledge during the streams, which was an excellent incentive, but I would have kept raising mine anyway, because I was desperate for this show to get made. Apart from a few weird troll messages, the stream chat was full of lovely conversations between people who seemed like my kindred spirits. I had never felt more at home in a community. And I had never been more excited than when the Kickstarter exceeded its goal.

And I’m telling you all of this because I need you to understand how astronomically high my hopes and expectations for Poe Party were. Some of the movies I’ve talked about so far ended up in my top 40 partly because I had fairly low expectations going into them and was pleasantly surprised, but that was absolutely not the case here. I had seen excellent work from several of the people involved before, and they seemed particularly dedicated to this project, and I knew they were going to make something incredible. I also desperately needed something in my life to go really well, and this seemed like it might be it, although I knew it wasn’t fair to put that kind of pressure on these independent filmmakers. I tried to temper my expectations, reminding myself that they had only raised a little over $72,000, and Kickstarter was going to take a chunk of that, and some of it had to go to perk fulfillment, so they weren’t going to have nearly enough to make anything super fancy. They released some prologue videos that were very fun but also very small, and I tried to tell myself that the actual show was also going to be small. And I kept reminding myself how long Muzzled had taken to come out, and that I was probably going to have to wait a while for Poe Party too, so I needed to chill. But then in late July – only four and a half months after the Kickstarter had ended – Shipwrecked released a trailer for Poe Party, which said it was starting in less than a month, and there was no tempering my expectations after that. The trailer looked fabulous. It was witty and clever and dramatic and intriguing, the music was perfection, and, shockingly, it looked like an actual studio movie. Not like a super high-budget one, but like they had at least a million dollars. Certainly way more than $60k. My already-ridiculously-high expectations soared to new heights. Part of me was sure I was setting myself up for disappointment, but I couldn’t help it.

And then it was August 22 and the first episode (Chapter 1: The Bells) dropped and it was so much better than I was hoping for. First of all, the look set the tone perfectly. The lighting was exquisite, and the location – incidentally the same house where Muzzled was filmed – was perfect. And then there was the writing. One thing the Persauds had mentioned during the Kickstarter was that they were inspired by the movie Clue, which will be featured in a future episode of this podcast, so I was expecting similar vibes to that, but I was not expecting there to be so many direct references to Clue. All of them made me extremely happy. It felt like the show was made specifically for me. It was like Clue, but even better. I already loved every single character and knew I would be sad to see some of them get murdered. It was also very clear from even just that first episode that this was going to fall into the “everybody was having way too much fun” category of film that I love. But while most movies like that tend to have pretty weak stories and just overall mediocre scripts, and the cast having fun makes up for that, Poe Party was different. The writing was fantastic, AND the acting was perfect, AND it looked gorgeous, AND everybody was having fun. Again, I tried not to have unrealistic expectations, I tried to tell myself that not every episode could be quite the banger that the first one was, but I was still incredibly excited for the rest of the show. And I was not at all disappointed. Somehow it just kept getting better. The running joke about everyone forgetting Emily Dickinson was there or who she was just kept getting funnier. Ditto the joke about George Eliot thinking she needed to convince everyone she was a man when everyone was clearly fine with her being a woman. I remember at one point, when around three or four chapters were out, Mary Kate tweeted that they were working on editing her favorite part of the show, and I thought, surely it doesn’t get better than what I’ve seen already. But it turned out she was talking about chapter 8, and yes, it absolutely was better. The constables, Jim and Jimmy – played by Jim O’Heir and Jimmy Wong – and everyone else trying to fool them, are so delightful to watch. Even though chapter 8 features probably the second saddest death in the series, it’s overall the funniest episode. This show touches an incredibly wide range of emotions and moods, especially considering it takes place in one house over one night.

I want to make it clear that I would still love Poe Party even if I’d stumbled upon it years after it came out, and even if I didn’t recognize any of the actors. The show is excellent enough to stand on its own. But being part of it from the Kickstarter, being familiar with some of the actors, and being online as it was coming out, certainly enhanced my enjoyment of it. Shipwrecked had a weekly “competition” of sorts where they would give a vague prompt and people would make fan art or write fan fiction and post it on social media (#PoePartyFTW), and each of the four members of Shipwrecked would pick their favorite to re-post. I wrote a fic after each of the episodes, and several of them got chosen by Shipwrecked, and I hadn’t felt that good about myself in years. I loved the show so much that I couldn’t confine it just into weekly fics; I was shouting about it on every social media platform. I also started weekly speculation Tumblr posts, using Clue references as my guide, many of which led me astray – I was convinced there must be a secret passage between the kitchen and the study that didn’t turn out to exist – but I did figure out part of the solution relatively early on. While the mystery aspect of Clue is ultimately nonsense if you think about it too hard, Poe Party actually tracks. And if you’ve listened this far and you still haven’t seen Poe Party, please go watch it now, because I’m going to start getting into story specifics and spoilers, and I think everybody should get to see it once without knowing what’s coming. (I’m also going to spoil some of Clue, so you could go watch that too if you want, although I don’t feel like Clue spoilers matter that much.)

In her episode of A Tell Tale Vlog, Annabel mentioned that she had started seeing a banker named Eddie, and then in the Poe Party Kickstarter video, she asked Edgar if she could bring Eddie as her plus one to his party. So Eddie (played by Ryan W. Garcia) shows up late to the party with Annabel, and then becomes the first murder victim. EXCEPT, spoiler alert: he’s actually NOT DEAD, and is, in fact, one of the murderers. And from the very first episode, I recognized Eddie’s similarities to Mr. Boddy in Clue, who is also not dead when you first think he is, and I was therefore suspicious of him from the get-go. But I was still very much open to any possibility (or so I thought) because the Persauds had done an excellent job of making everyone at least somewhat fishy. But there was one thing I was not prepared for, and that was the end of chapter 9. Because it absolutely never occurred to me that Poe’s beautiful Annabel Lee would die, and I’m honestly still kind of devastated about it, even understanding why it had to happen, and at the time I was almost inconsolable. Mary Kate Wiles had led me to this brilliant show, in which she played the kindest, most likable character, only to be brutally murdered? Some fans at the time had thought Annabel might be the killer, which I never did, and honestly I would have been kind of angry if she had been because we need to have more genuinely nice characters in things. I was upset that she died, but I would have been more so if she’d turned evil. (Not that I have anything against MK playing villains – I’m all for it, under the right circumstances. And thankfully the Persauds know when the right circumstances are.) And like, okay, I know I complain about too much romance in stories, but Annabel’s “It was always you” as she died in Edgar’s arms – that got me. Annabel had been planning to marry Eddie because he was more respectable than the unhinged poet she actually loved, and I think that that whole trying to fake the life you think you’re supposed to have thing spoke to me. I had been so tempted to try that, and this was almost as clear of a message as the constables’ “Don’t Do Murder”: Don’t Fake Romance.

At that point, I was pretty much convinced that Eddie must have had something to do with this; why would anyone else kill Annabel? Also, chapter 9 reveals that Annabel wrote the invite list, and I thought it made sense that Eddie, her boyfriend, could have told her whom to include, especially since it had already been established that most of the guests had some connection to Eddie. The prompt for that week’s Poe Party FTW competition was “Confession,” so I decided to try something different from the short stories I’d been submitting, and I re-wrote the poem “Annabel Lee” from Eddie’s perspective as if he was the murderer. And I know this episode is already longer than most of my solo episodes and I have a lot more to say, but I’m still proud of this poem (even though it’s not completely accurate, since it turned out that Eddie didn’t kill everybody), so I need to share it with you:

It was many and many a month ago,

           In her cottage by the sea,

That I first read the words that Edgar wrote

           For my girlfriend Annabel Lee;

And he said that she lived with no other thought

           Than to love and be loved by he.

“He’s just my friend and I’m just his friend,”

           She quickly explained to me;

But we loved with a love which was worse than love –

           I and my Annabel Lee –

With a love that was founded on secrets and lies,

           Fueled by jealousy.

And this was the reason that, later on,

           Faced with opportunity,

I took advantage of an offer made

           To innocent Annabel Lee;

For when Lenore asked whom to invite

           To that cad’s dinner party,

Annabel deferred to my input

           Which I gave most willingly.

All authors, not half so worthy as bankers,

           Who had e’er quarreled with me –

Yes! – they were the ones (no one would know;

           I’d met them all secretly)

That Edgar would invite to his house that night,

           At the behest of “his” Annabel Lee.

For our love it was weaker by far than the love

           Of vengeance I carried in me –

           Of justice toward those who’d wronged me –

And neither the psychics who bring back the dead,

           Nor the cops fresh from Academy,

Can hinder my murderous plan; no one can!

           No, not even my Annabel Lee.

As I watch them point fingers I find my gaze lingers

           On the beautiful Annabel Lee;

When they mention invites, she suspects, knows she’s right,

           Out the door runs my Annabel Lee;

Can’t let her get away: who knows what she might say?

So I kill her – I kill her – my eleventh kill today.

           Instead of revealing me,

           Her last breath says it was always he.

So yeah. I was deep into this. But then nobody in Shipwrecked chose it that week, and I thought, okay, maybe it wasn’t that good, or, maybe my theory is laughably far off the mark. Maybe Eddie’s too obvious. Maybe he really is dead. Then in chapter 10, Charlotte Brontë confessed, and revealed that her sister Anne had been there the whole time helping, and at that point I was pretty sure Eddie was also involved again. We clearly saw that Annabel’s killer was wearing pants, unlike either Brontë sister. And then it was Halloween and the finale finally arrived, and I was right about Eddie, but I was still completely unprepared for how awesome that final chapter would be. I think there was still a small part of me that didn’t believe it was possible for the end to live up to the buildup of the first ten incredible chapters. But it absolutely did. The finale was everything – everything, I say – that I wanted it to be and much more. The evil slow clap. The revolving villain trio of creepy neck touching. The flashbacks. The fights. The pet rock’s revenge. The literary references. And of course, the surprise reveal of Jane Austen, played by Laura Spencer, who had also played Jane Bennet in the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The episodes were posted at 9 am on Mondays, when I was at work, so I couldn’t watch them right when they dropped, but after the first one I couldn’t wait until I got home either. My work’s wifi blocked YouTube, and I had an extremely limited data plan at the time, so on my lunch break I would walk to the McDonald’s down the street and watch the new episode using their wifi. And when the camera panned to Jane Austen, it was all I could do not to yell “OH MY GOSH IT’S LAURA SPENCER!” in that McDonald’s. I definitely audibly gasped, but I don’t think anyone noticed. The thing is, I would have still been blown away by the finale without that extra surprise. But that’s what Shipwrecked does. They make things that can appeal to a wide audience, and then they sprinkle in some extra treats for people who have been following them for a while. Of course, LBD was not a Shipwrecked project, but finding Shipwrecked through LBD is a fairly common path. And I’m still so impressed with how well they kept Laura as Jane Austen a secret. As a Kickstarter perk, I’d had a video chat with the Core Four that summer, and I’d mentioned that Jane Austen was my favorite author, and I was disappointed that she wasn’t going to be in Poe Party, and they were just like, “Yeah, we thought about including her, but we figured she would be too similar to Charlotte Brontë,” and betrayed not a SINGLE HINT that she was, in fact, in the show. Which is another thing Shipwrecked does: make a very specific, deliberate plan about what to reveal when, and stick to it.

As another example of that, the Poe Party Kickstarter had reached a stretch goal to produce an epilogue. I had completely forgotten about that, but other backers remembered and started asking about it after the finale. Shipwrecked was pretty cagey with their answers, but then directed us to a mysterious Twitter account that was dropping strange clues. I watched as the Shipwrecked fan Facebook group decoded them and ultimately unlocked the epilogue a day before it was released publicly. The epilogue is not included in the feature cut, and now I don’t really think of it as part of the show. Chapter 11 ends so perfectly – Poe stares at the floor as the heartbeat grows louder, a floorboard creaks, fade to black: chef’s kiss. But at the time I was feeling so many overwhelming feels about this show that I desperately needed that epilogue. I was so utterly relieved to see Annabel and HG thriving as ghosts. And I was so thrilled to be surrounded by such a great fandom, who all worked together and helped each other to solve the puzzles – it was a beautiful weekend. And it was also the last weekend before Donald Trump was elected president of the United States and I had to face the fact that the country was more broken and divided than I’d wanted to believe, which definitely adds to my nostalgia for that epilogue adventure.

The show may have ended, and the world may have been falling apart faster than usual, but I could not have gotten Poe Party out of my head even if I’d wanted to, which I didn’t. For over a decade I’d been searching for something that felt like a classic movie, but with some modern sensibilities, and these independent filmmakers had made exactly what I was looking for, zillions of times better than I’d imagined it. That clever, witty dialogue, perfectly delivered by quirky characters, almost felt like it came from a 1930s screwball comedy. But it also felt fresh and new and different from anything I’d seen before. It had so many similarities to Clue – in fact, I taught myself how to make gifs, or [other pronunciation] gifs, in order to highlight specific parallels between Poe Party and Clue – and yet remained unique. Where Clue was mostly just comedy, Poe Party was comedy, tragedy, romance, and intrigue, and absolutely nailed all of those. (Sadly no ravens, though, they didn’t have the budget for that.) Anyway, the series held up shockingly well upon rewatch, and I could not get enough of it. And despite the socially anxious part of my brain that remains convinced that everyone always is annoyed with me, that I have nothing worthwhile to say, that I should just shut up and stop bothering others with my existence – people seemed to like what I was posting about Poe Party. Other fans would engage me in conversation, and I started making internet friends for the first time. And, shockingly, the members of Shipwrecked seemed to genuinely appreciate what I was saying as well. After the finale had aired, Mary Kate reblogged my Annabel Lee poem on Tumblr and said, “I legitimately thought this was brilliant, and only didn’t choose it that week because of spoilers. Every single fic Jane wrote for this ftw has been wonderful, and I have so enjoyed them all, but this was above and beyond.” And maybe it sounds like I’m just boasting at this point, but the reason I’m sharing this is because a year earlier I had felt like a failure of a human who had no place in the world, and now this incredible actress/producer I greatly admired, who had just made my new favorite show, was saying that I had enhanced her experience of releasing it. People were liking and appreciating me, just for being myself and enthusiastically enjoying a movie. And I no longer felt like I was supposed to change who I was.

In early 2017, I got the rest of my Kickstarter perks, including behind-the-scenes goodies that featured not one but two fabulous commentaries. I love them both, but the second one is particularly chaotic in the best way. Ashley Clements and Ryan W Garcia, true to the villainous characters they played in the show, keep derailing the conversation and it’s incredibly amusing. The commentaries are over the feature cut, so many if not most of the views that I counted were with one of the commentaries. And I also bought the feature cut without commentary so I could show it to other people and still count it on my list. Now I tend to watch it episodically because I want the Shipwrecked YouTube channel to get more views for the algorithm, although I’m not sure that actually helps. But anyway, the feature cut and commentaries and other bonus features are still available to rent or buy on shipwrecked.vhx.tv, which I will also link in the show notes, if you’re interested.

Also in 2017, the first episode of Poe Party was shown at a festival near me, so I got to meet the Core Four members of Shipwrecked and some fans in person. That was very exciting, but I was also extremely nervous, although I didn’t need to be. The Shipwrecked people were so lovely and actually wanted to talk to me and the other fans who were there. And then I got to see Poe Party win some awards, which was awesome. And then a few months later, Shipwrecked launched another Kickstarter, and I pledged even more to it than I had to Poe Party even though the goal was lower, and then they kept making more stuff and I kept supporting it, and also continued to love everything they made (yes, even the Fart Feud with the Tin Can Brothers). I continued to support Mary Kate on Patreon, and I also started supporting other cast members on Patreon, like Whitney Avalon who had played Mary Shelley and does a lot of her own stuff on YouTube, and of course Ashley Clements, as I’ve mentioned previously, and as soon as Shipwrecked finally got their own Patreon, I was all in at the top tier. And, like, I don’t want to go on about this too much, because I do truly believe that I would love their work even if I’d never interacted with them, but I don’t know that I’d be quite the die-hard, take-all-my-money-to-make-more-things Shipwrecked fan that I am, if I hadn’t had so many wonderful interactions with the members of Shipwrecked over the years. I didn’t set out to become friends with them, but I kind of have – although I still feel a little weird and presumptuous to claim that. I feel like this will sound to some people like an out-of-control parasocial relationship, but like, it’s not that, because they do know me. Other people in my life have referred to Shipwrecked as “the people you pay to be your friends,” but it’s not that either: I give them money so they can keep making things, and we also happened to hit it off as friends – which again feels like a presumptuous label, but I can’t come up with a more accurate word. They make what they love and I love what they make, so it’s not that surprising that we’d get along. And for similar reasons, it’s not surprising that I’ve made so many very close friendships with other Shipwrecked fans. Our love for these projects brought us together, and then turned out to be far from the only thing we have in common.

I feel like I’m talking way too much about my own personal experiences, I’m so sorry if this is boring. Back to Poe Party itself. I’ve hinted at it already, but I need to emphasize again both how incredible the script is, and how amazingly the cast brought it to life. The story was so well thought out: every scene, every character, every moment was there for a reason. Like, I thought George Eliot disguising herself as a man was just a nod to female authors having to use male pen names, but then that turned into an important clue that led to the Brontës. Yes, you can poke plenty of holes in Poe Party if you want to – not all of the characters based on real people were actually alive at the same time, some of the technology is anachronistic, etc – but none of that stuff really matters. It’s clearly meant to be silly and fun, so you don’t really need to know what year it is. But the fact that they managed to write something silly and fun that didn’t completely devolve into absolute nonsense is so incredibly impressive. Sean and Sinéad wrote an absolutely brilliant script, and then they assembled the perfect cast for it. Every actor is on the exact same page about what this project is, and they each know exactly how their character fits in. Even when they’re in the background, everyone is giving 100%. I want to especially shout out Joey Richter, since Ernest Hemingway is drinking all night, and Joey did a tremendous job of tracking how drunk he was supposed to be. By the finale he’s having to slap himself to stay awake in the background, and it’s hilarious. Everyone else is also a delight to watch, and I feel like I’m still noticing little background moments I hadn’t clocked before. There aren’t very many close-ups, which I think was mainly because they didn’t have the budget for the time it would take to shoot them, but it works perfectly because a lot of the funny moments become even funnier when you can see multiple characters’ reactions at once. If you’re watching the background acting closely enough, you may notice a few instances of people almost breaking, but personally I just choose to interpret that as the characters finding it difficult to keep it together when other characters around them are being silly, and who can blame them? I appreciate that the writers and director trusted the cast enough to let them play around and improvise, because some great ad-libbed lines ended up in the final cut, and many more went into the best blooper reel ever, which is 24 minutes long and I love every second of it. There are some moments from the bloopers that I find myself saying sometimes when I’m watching the actual show – Ashley’s “Don’t be mean to me!” is probably the one I quote the most.

There is definitely romance in Poe Party – the whole reason for the party is because Edgar is in love with Annabel. Lenore and HG Wells develop feelings for each other over the course of the evening…until he dies. And several other characters flirt with each other. But none of the romances end well, and throughout the story, there is a lot of emphasis on friendship, and acquaintanceship, and other types of relationship. And that’s a running theme in most of Shipwrecked’s projects. There hasn’t been a kiss in any of them since Kissing in the Rain. Of course, much of the Poe Party fandom was, and is, into shipping characters with each other – for any listeners who may not be terminally online, shipping characters means that you want them to be in a romantic relationship with each other. I joined in somewhat, mostly because I felt like I was supposed to, but I couldn’t have articulated that at the time. And, as I mentioned earlier, I was particularly fascinated by the Eddie/Annabel dynamic, but I was only able to fully comprehend how much I needed the “don’t fake romance” message in hindsight. This show and its fandom made me feel less alone and adrift, but I still didn’t figure out I was aroace for a few more years. Although it was friends I made in the Shipwrecked fan community who first really helped me understand and accept that part of my identity, so I can still say that Poe Party was an important step on that journey.

I want to say so much more about this utterly brilliant show – I don’t feel like I’ve even come close to doing it justice here – but there truly are no words to adequately express my love for it. It still holds up nearly 7 years later, but Shipwrecked has come a long way since then. When their most recent webseries, Headless: A Sleepy Hollow Story, was about to come out, they said it made Poe Party look like it had been done by a bunch of kindergarteners, and I was upset at the Poe Party slander, but once I watched that series, I understood what they meant. Headless is so far above and beyond, but unfortunately it came out too recently to make it into my top 40. Currently they’re releasing an audio narrative called The Case of the Greater Gatsby, which should be on the same platform you’re listening to this on. That is a sequel to their short film The Case of the Gilded Lily, which I will be discussing in a future episode. I really hope that someday Shipwrecked gets the level of recognition they deserve – their fandom is still relatively small, although we are mighty and devoted. At the very least, I hope that the current strikes will help enable them to make a living from writing and acting.

Thank you for listening to me discuss another of my most frequently rewatched movies, or at least attempt to. Following this will be a two-way tie of movies I watched 25 times, both of which feature Cary Grant, my favorite leading man apart from Sean Persaud. As always, I will leave you with a quote from the next movie: “Hi! Mellow greetings, ukie-dukie!”

[nerdygaymormon]

how did you find affirmation? it seems to mean a lot toyou

I attended BYU in the 1990's as a closeted gay student, and because of how the Honor Code was, people weren't out as queer on campus. They could be kicked out if they were.

While at BYU, I somehow learned of Affirmation, but didn't know how to contact them, and also I didn't try to find out more because I was worried about being found out and kicked out of BYU. I graduated in 1997 and moved away. The internet was still fairly new and Affirmation wasn't online, so to access Affirmation meant you had to live in the Mormon corridor. I moved to Florida and was so alone.

In 2010 I started slowly coming out to a few people. In 2014 I started this little blog where I write about my thoughts and experiences being gay and Mormon, and in 2017 one of my posts went viral. Suddenly I was out to everyone and LGBTQ LDS people started contacting me. One of them added me to an Affirmation Facebook group and I liked the camaraderie found here. I decided to attend the 2018 International Conference in Salt Lake City. I didn't know anyone who would be there. I was kind of nervous and excited to be there. 

The conference had workshops that spoke to me and my situation. The people were my people, or at least I wanted to belong with this group. The willingness of people to share their stories and where they were in their journeys was astounding to me. The Sunday story-sharing session (like a testimony meeting but queer people sharing what's on their heart) had me in tears as people shared their journeys in regards to gender, sexuality, and faith.

Affirmation is a group of people who understand all of me. Affirmation is a place where I can feel welcomed and supported as my whole self. I've been part of of Affirmation ever since.

[onenettvchannel]

LATE-BREAKING THIS MORNING: Southern Californian animated YouTube star and VTuber nominee 'JaidenAnimations' wins U$D1M in MrBeast's Online Game Show Challenge in North Carolina [#TeleRadyoSerbisyoEXCLUSIVE]

(Written by Miko Kubota and Rhayniel Saldasal Calimpong / K5 Tele-Serbisyo Patrol #4 reporter of OneNETnews & Station Manager and President of ONC, and Freelance News Writer, Online Media Reporter and News Presenter of OneNETnews)

GREENVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA -- Southern Californian 2D-animated YouTuber named 'Ms. Jaiden Kiyomi Dittfach' wins the 'MrBeast' YouTube Challenge outlasting 4 YouTubers as contestants, who were participated in an online-only reality game show at a disclosed television-like studio in North Carolina, United States of America (U.S.A.) after eliminating 50 of the biggest social media & video influencers and personality individuals including ValkyRae (Rachell Marie Hofstetter), Odd1sOut (Robert James Rallison), Kai Carlo Cenat III, Logan Alexander Paul, KSI (Olajide Olayinka Williams Olatunji), Nick Channing DiGiovanni, The Game Theorists (Matthew Robert Patrick [MatPat]), MoistCr1TiKaL (Charles Christopher White Jr.), LilyPichu (Lily Ki) and Pokimane (Imane Anys).

This was recently surpassed last Wednesday (July 10th, 2024 -- Eastern local time) after hitting 300 million subscribers from a video-sharing platform YouTube (owned by Google's Alphabet), as according to ViewStats. 'TeleRadyo Serbisyo: Dumaguete' was first to cover the only entertainment scoop from our internet media partners at OneNETnews.

For context between those individuals aside all of that… Mr. James Stephen "Jimmy" Donaldson, better known by his online alias 'MrBeast' is a 26 y/o North Carolinian-based YouTuber, online personality, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the now - online game show host & executive producer of himself. Mr. Donaldson started as a YouTuber alone in the late mid-February 2012 when he was just 13 y/o old and intially went by the former channel username 'MrBeast6000'. His early content included Let's Plays and older videos estimating the wealth of other YouTubers.

Fast forward to January 2017, he went viral with his "counting to 100k" video, gaining tens of thousands of views in a few days. But today, due to increased demand of popularity, Donaldson's content evolved to feature elaborate challenges, large giveaways and high-production value. Several sponsors and partnerships endorsed related to him in product placements and virtual goodies online. In the early Q1 2024, his own studio in North Carolina was now completed. The rest remains history within the present day.

While Ms. Dittfach on the other hand, better known online as 'JaidenAnimations' in Los Angeles, California; who was an independent 2D-animator, VTuber, gaming YouTuber and the 6-time Streamy Awards nominee, famously known for her engaging story-time animations that cover a variety of topics, from personal experiences to general anecdotes.

Dittfach primarily creates videos centered around video game stories like Pokémon (Pocket Monsters) and even the now previously declared - Virtual YouTuber (VTuber) during a Sub-a-thon broadcast debut in December 2022. Her main animation channel has over 12 million subscribers, while their gaming channel including her VTuber debut surpassed 1 million subscribers. Lastly on their official Twitch gaming and LIVE reaction channel received 965,000 followers at the time of this writing scoop. She only won previously an award in the Animated category of the 2020 Streamy Awards.

Now, 50 of the biggest YouTube creators were confined in a cube, battling various challenges from the start in his own studio as pre-recorded during the process in the making and filming new online video and later released on Saturday (July 13th, 2024 at 12nn -- Eastern local time). The task, simple on paper, demanded mental and physical endurance as in-person contestants navigated eliminations through basketball shots, a Squid Game-inspired sugar cookie challenge, and a high-stakes Jenga competition. Think about as a qualifying-like rounds and later advanced in the semi-finals.

17 YouTuber contestants in the 3rd challenge of Jenga were eliminated, while 7 of them in the 4th challenge of 'Steal or No Steal' are also eliminated with guest Canadian host of "Deal or No Deal" and "America's Got Talent" named Mr. Howie Michael Mandel. Down to 10 YouTubers in the 5th semi-finals challenge, an intensive MasterChef-inspired team cooking competition to be judged with Mr. Joseph Christian Chestnut, Nickelodeon's iCarly reboot star actress named Ms. Miranda Taylor Cosgrove, and IShowSpeed's Darren Jason Watkins Jr.

In a team cooking challenge… Kai Cenat, Ayaanle "AJ" Shabeel, Logan Paul, El Rubius' Rubén Doblas Gundersen and SpriteDer SPD's Prite Netijen Netirattanapaiboon were eliminated. Leaving only the last 5 in the grand finals unveiling the MrBeast YouTube millionaire, which may either subjected to tax or tax-free in some states of America per contestant individual.

At the grand finals, as part of the last 6th challenge… Amixem's Mr. Maxime Chabroud, Ms. Dittfach, Ms. Alexandra Valeria Botez, Mr. Ludwig Anders Ahgren and Mr. DiGiovanni battled for a jackpot prize inside one of 5 briefcases, moderated by MrBeast himself.

In the first round with the unofficially tied majority vote of 2 points goes both to Dittfach and Ludwig. He won the tiebreaker round for another 2 points but, Ludwig didn't make the cut and goes home with nothing, then proceeds anyway with a final 2nd round. At the end of it with a final majority vote of 3-1 goes to Ms. Dittfach, now declared officially a video platform winner worth U$D1M (or nearly PHP58.45M). Taxes will be immediately shouldered by MrBeast and received her Diamond Creator Award since 'JaidenAnimations' reached late above the 10 million subscribers mark in June 2021.

Per the short vlog-like conference money box, sat beside 'MrBeast' obtained exclusively thru 'TeleRadyo Serbisyo: Dumaguete', Dittfach's proceeds of U$D1M prize will sent them over to the art school in her home state of California and selected states in their home country for those supportive and active subscribers nationwide on this video sharing platform: "It's hard for a lot of (aspiring animation) artist out there. I'd really like to send a lot of them to art school", JaidenAnimation said.

Dittfach made it through to the very end and secured the impressive U$D1M prize from 'MrBeast'. Afterwards, she will soon complete her animation degree after graduation, making it full-time professional 2D-animator and VTuber altogether in Southern California. You can see a full video available right now on his official YouTube channel of 'MrBeast'. A big congratulations to JaidenAnimations!

SCREENGRAB and LOGOS COURTESY: MrBeast via YT VIDEO & Jaiden Dittfach (JaidenAnimations) BACKGROUND PROVIDED BY: Tegna

SOURCE: *https://x.com/MrBeast/status/1811019365514428859 [Referenced X Network Tweet Post via MrBeast] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SNThp0YiU4 [Referenced YT Video #1 via MrBeast] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ySUjrJFcI [Referenced YT Video via Pokimane] *https://twitch.tv/videos/2196800638 [Referenced Twitch VIDEO via JaidenAnimations] *https://indianexpress.com/article/trending/trending-globally/mrbeast-next-challenge-50-famous-youtubers-competing-1-million-for-subscribers-9443915/ [Referenced News Article via The Indian Express] *https://www.sportskeeda.com/us/streamers/news-mrbeast-1-000-000-challenge-contestants-full-list-youtubers-participated-video [Referenced News Article via Sportskeeda] *https://tribune.com.pk/story/2479628/jaidenanimations-wins-mrbeasts-1-million-youtube-challenge-outlasting-logan-paul-and-ksi [Referenced News Article via Tribune Pakistan News Bureau] *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWcldHxHFpo [Referenced YT Video #2f via MrBeast] *https://mrbeast.fandom.com/wiki/Jimmy_Donaldson *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaiden_Animations *https://www.businessinsider.com/photos-inside-mrbeasts-14-million-top-secret-filming-studio-2023-5 [Referenced News Article via Business Insider] *https://www.wnct.com/news/mrbeast/best-of-mrbeast-inside-mrbeasts-top-secret-14-million-studio/ [Referenced News Article via WNCT-TV's CBS 9: Greenville] *https://www.streamys.org/nominees-winners/13th-annual-nominees/ *https://www.youtube.com/creators/how-things-work/get-involved/awards/ *https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/income/other-income/taxes-on-prize-winnings/ [Referenced Editorial Article via H&R Block] *https://osgamers.com/frequently-asked-questions/how-much-is-taxed-if-you-win-1-million-in-california [Referenced Editorial Article via Old School Gamers News Bureau] and *https://bartleylawoffice.com/faq/how-much-tax-is-taken-from-lottery-winnings-in-california-solution-found.html [Referenced Editorial Article via Bartley Law Office]

-- OneNETnews Online Publication Team

[mostlysignssomeportents]

On the Media on the enshittification (pt 1)

This afternoon (May 6), I’ll be in Berkeley at the Bay Area Bookfest for a 3:30PM event with Glynn Washington for my book Red Team Blues; tomorrow (May 7), it’s an 11AM event with Wendy Liu for my book Chokepoint Capitalism.

Weds (May 10), I’m in Vancouver for a keynote at the Open Source Summit and a book event at Heritage Hall and Thu (May 11), I’m in Calgary for Wordfest.

I'm many kinds of writer - novelist, journalist, activist, editorialist, screenwriter - but at core, I'm a blogger. Every bit of interesting stuff that crosses my path gets turned into a blog post, which gets lodged in both a WordPress database and my mind, where it rubs up against other interesting stuff and crystallizes into longer, more considered pieces:

https://doctorow.medium.com/the-memex-method-238c71f2fb46

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/2023/05/06/people-are-not-disposable/#otm

It's an iterative process, and it follows a predictable and often very exciting life-cycle. First, I encounter an idea in the wild that niggles at my attention and I try to capture what it is that's making it so interesting. The act of writing about some little fragment for strangers makes me think about it harder. That means that I end up making connections to other ideas that I've thought about, and things I continue to encounter in the wild.

As I write about the subject over and over again, over days, then weeks, then years, it gets sharper and more focused. I get better at talking about it, sure, but I also get better at thinking about it. This is an activity @brucesterling​ once called "advancing and demolishing potential political arguments that have never been made by anybody but me":

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

At a certain point, the idea "tips." The act of repeatedly writing about it, relating it to new stuff happening in the world, makes it clear enough to me that it becomes clear enough to explain it to other people, too. Then I'm no longer "advancing and demolishing arguments" for myself - everyone gets in on the act.

That's what happened with enshittification. I coined the term while on vacation last summer:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

Though I was just tossing the idea off idly, it stuck with me. I dusted it off in November to talk about Amazon and ad-tech:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

Then in December to write about an aspect of online speech that is wildly important but rarely considered:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

A week later, the rapid-onset enshittification of Twitter got me thinking about the subject again:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

And again, just before Christmas, thanks to a magisterial essay by Cat Valente:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

The idea percolated over the holidays, and I revisited it in January:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/08/watch-the-surpluses/#exogenous-shocks

And then, in late January, I had a conceptual breakthrough, thanks to some excellent reporting on TikTok by Emily Baker-White:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

That was the essay that broke the idea out of my own endless argument with myself into the wider world. Wired reprinted it, using the Creative Commons license on the piece:

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

(All the essays on my Pluralistic blog are licensed Creative Commons Attribution-only - you can republish them, too, including in commercial forums, provided you follow the license terms!)

After that essay went viral, I started to hear from lots of people about the subject and it kicked into overdrive - you can see how it went after that by looking at the "enshittification" tag on my blog:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/enshittification/

The best part of this phase of the process is the move from arguing with myself to having serious discussions with others. And I just got to spend a week doing just that, with some of the smartest, most challenging discussants I could ask for: the producers of On the Media, and its host, Brooke Gladstone.

I'm a giant On The Media fan. I don't think I've missed an episode in decades. And I loved Gladstone's graphic novel about media theory:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/07/07/influencing-machine-brook-gladstones-comic-about-media-theory-is-serious-but-never-dull/

So I went into this discussion with high hopes, but those hopes were met and exceeded in every way. My conversations with Rebecca Clark-Callender and Katya Rogers brought these ideas into a new focus for me, and then, over the course of many hours, Gladstone and I put them into an orderly progression that was transformative.

On The Media turned those discussions into an hour-long, three-act series. They've just aired part one, "Why Every Platform Goes Bad":

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/enshittification-part-1-where-did-it-all-go-wrong-on-the-media

It's a superb piece of radio (the FCC_mandated bleeps on the "shit" in "enshittification" are hilarious). Though I'm mostly a sole practitioner, it's a forceful example of the power of collaboration, from Gladstone's challenging questions to the superb editing.

The rest of the series will air in the coming weeks, and I'm told they're going to air it as a complete hour this summer. I hope you'll give it a listen!

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: Jean-Leon Gerome's painting Pollice Verso, 1872, depicting gladiators in an arena with noble onlookers giving a thumbs-down gesture. The tapestry before the nobles has been replaced with a US $100 bill in which Ben Franklin's mouth has been replaced by an Amazon smile logo.=

[rhetoricandlogic]

THE POWER by Naomi Alderman

RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2017

THE POWER

by Naomi Alderman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 10, 2017

Very smart and very entertaining.

All over the world, teenage girls develop the ability to send an electric charge from the tips of their fingers.

It might be a little jolt, as thrilling as it is frightening. It might be powerful enough to leave lightning-bolt traceries on the skin of people the girls touch. It might be deadly. And, soon, the girls learn that they can awaken this new—or dormant?—ability in older women, too. Needless to say, there are those who are alarmed by this development. There are efforts to segregate and protect boys, laws to ensure that women who possess this ability are banned from positions of authority.

Girls are accused of witchcraft. Women are murdered. But, ultimately, there’s no stopping these women and girls once they have the power to kill with a touch. Framed as a historical novel written in the far future—long after rule by women has been established as normal and, indeed, natural—this is an inventive, thought-provoking work of science fiction that has already won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction in Britain. Alderman (The Liars’ Gospel, 2013, etc.) chronicles the early days of matriarchy’s rise through the experiences of four characters. Tunde is a young man studying to be a journalist who happens to capture one of the first recordings of a girl using the power; the video goes viral, and he devotes himself to capturing history in the making. After Margot’s daughter teaches her to use the power, Margot has to hide it if she wants to protect her political career. Allie takes refuge in a convent after running away from her latest foster home, and it’s here that she begins to understand how newly powerful young women might use—and transform—religious traditions. Roxy is the illegitimate daughter of a gangster; like Allie, she revels in strength after a lifetime of knowing the cost of weakness. Both the main story and the frame narrative ask interesting questions about gender, but this isn’t a dry philosophical exercise. It’s fast-paced, thrilling, and even funny. Very smart and very entertaining.