#actually i do its because any thinking beyond consuming media and avoiding real life is Too Much Thinking rn

[thosetwofirefighters]

WIP Wednesday

tagged by @mooshkat, thank you so much friend!! <3 I've had the first draft of this (which is for @the-likesofus) open for at least a week now, and I just can't bring myself to edit it (mostly because my life has been a ~shit show~ recently) anywaaaaay here's some of what will be a very late 6.14 coda :))

“I’ve got a list, if you’re interested,” she continues. “I know being set up by your old tia might not be the most attractive idea, but you’ve just gotta find the right woman.” She grabs his hand, the one not wrapped tightly around his coffee mug. He lets her keep it, takes comfort in the familiar pressure of her hand in his, and tries not to worry that this might be the last time he’ll be able to. For a moment, he feels guilty about worrying—this is Tia Pepa, his favorite aunt, the one person who has always been on his side—but then he remembers what his parents—his father—had said when he’d tried having this conversation with them at nineteen. He knows Pepa and trusts her so much, but he’d trusted his parents too.

no pressure tagging (and sorry if you've already been tagged lol) @the-likesofus @lilbuddie @shortsighted-owl @jacksadventuresinwriting @mysteriouslyyounggalaxy @wheelsupin-five <3

[jeremy-ken-anderson]

Too Tired to be Woke

I happened to invent this line in the midst of discussing bad behavior within one of my own friend groups and having to decide what to do about it, and it really seems worth investigating.

There are two objectives to any movement, good or bad: Recruit, and Defeat.

This understanding is important when you’re dealing with, say, fascist American youths who happen to be snappy dressers. A lot of folks who consider themselves “left” and “allies” will assume the goal is to Recruit these snappy dressers. It Ain’t. Those are still fascists, and the objective is to stop them from getting shit done, push our own shit through despite them, and deal with the possibility of them achieving actualization or whateverthefuck once other people are safe. From Them.

Anyway. Got off-topic.

The concept of “too tired to be woke” comes up a lot in critiques of shows and media. The complaints come from fans who miss the good ol’ days of “turn off your brain” style TV, perhaps even trotting out such tired phrases as “when men were men!”

And there is a balance to be struck. Writing affecting badass moments into media that isn’t mindless support for patriarchy can be more difficult, and writing involves many spinning plates so it is unfortunately possible to drop a “writing an interesting scene” or “avoiding a bad plot hole” plate when you make the effort to spin the “don’t make your story endorse bigotry.”

But that last plate is worth spinning anyway. Like, everything you add to or leave out of a scene is a choice with costs and benefits. If you’re an agile, clever writer you can write a scene that succeeds on several layers at once. Many a grand video essay has been written on scenes that succeed on several levels. If you can’t write a story without huge bad plot holes that has interesting scenes and doesn’t endorse bigotry...I’m not going to say you shouldn’t be a writer, tbh, I’m just going to say that personally I’d rather you left in the gaping plot holes if that’s what it takes.

This is all complicated by the twin facts that a) some of the shows catching flak for trying too hard to appeal to a diversity-loving audience are legitimately bad, and b) a lot - and I mean a lot - of the people leveling these complaints aren’t being honest (sometimes even with themselves) about what’s making them angry about the media. Plenty of them would have liked She-ra just fine gender-swapped. It’s funny, it’s got good action, starting the hero off as a gaslit member of the baddies is a cool trope, and the dynamics between the protagonist and antagonist(s) are fun.

Many men - and again, they’d be insulted to hear this, because they haven’t admitted this even to themselves - are upset by media that treats women as real people with their own agency. They find scenes that pass the Bechdel Test superfluous (because “nothing even happens in this scene”).

Beyond even that is the fact that a lot of the shitty stuff that made its way into older media is now part of a memory that may be attached to a happier time in your life. Does Jim-Bob actually bemoan the loss of scenes where women get literally objectified by hypno-rays because it’s a personal fetish, because he truly thinks avoiding mind control plotlines is somehow bad writing, or just because the stories that had it were the ones he consumed back when his life was simple and happy and he didn’t have a shit job?

And to make that first bit of this post less of a worthless tangent... We don’t necessarily need to win over Jim-Bob with every cartoon. If you’re writing kid’s media, maybe don’t worry about how well it satisfies the needs of a thirtysomething. In that case it’s less about him being “defeated” so much as “worked around.” But the principle’s the same. With the energy one might spend appeasing the Jim-Bobs of the internet you could just make a better cartoon that is more fun, even if Jim-Bob never enjoys it.

[raptorific]

i was raised by authoritarian fascists who mentally and emotionally abused me, isolated me, and controlled what i was allowed to consume. it took years of continuing to be traumatized by interacting with fiction that affirmed their behavior and told me that i deserved my abuse before i learned it wasn't normal.

so maybe saying people should bring their own judgements "from home" when interacting with media "beyond disney's ducktales" isn't the morally superior take you think it is. you are essentially blaming people for not being you, or having the same advantages you do. there is no allowance for people with learning disabilities in your stance either.

your experience is not universal. your knowledge and the circumstances by which you came into your knowledge is not universal. your ability to form your own opinions and think critically about media is not universal. some of us were denied those privileges in our formative years. try jumping down from your high horse and exercise some empathy once in a while.

Okay so like... a few things, right off the bat:

First, I’m sorry that happened to you! You didn’t deserve that, nor should people, nor should those stories, have told you that you deserved it. It sounds like those works of fiction made a point to spell out where they stood on the actions they depicted, if they affirmed your parents’ behavior and told you that you deserved your abuse. 

Otherwise, and I’m sure you’ll agree on this, the problem with the development of your moral compass was what was your parents told you and did to you, not the fact that there is such a thing as works of fiction that depict bad things like Fascism and Abuse without having characters look into a camera and say “this is wrong, do not try this at home.” Sometimes, in fact, works of fiction have things to say that can’t be covered by a story where bad behavior is always punished, especially since many stories seek to make the point that bad people often do bad things and get away with it, even though they shouldn’t. 

Should a story about a pedophile being caught and arrested, only to be let free on a legal technicality be discounted just because it doesn’t end with the pedophile being adequately punished for his crimes? Even though having the story end that way would defeat the purpose of the story itself, which is to illustrate how unfair it is that a sexual predator can walk free just because protocol wasn’t followed to the letter, which happens all the time in real life? Is “this doesn’t happen because good always triumphs over evil” which is an outright lie, a better lesson than “this does happen and it’s bad?”

I completely stand by my belief that adults engaging with fiction intended for adults should be able to form their own opinions and use their own moral compass to navigate those works without said works holding their hands and walking them through it. If they can’t do that, it doesn’t mean the work shouldn’t exist, only that it’s a bit too advanced for them, and if they want to navigate it, they should work on developing that skill rather than blaming the writer for making a story that’s too hard for them to comprehend. 

If, using Breaking Bad as an example, you watch a show about a man who abuses his wife, deals drugs, murders people, and you think it’s about what a hero he is for doing those things? Whether you got that opinion just because you don’t see the problem with meth and murder OR you got that opinion because you had terrible parents who left you unequipped to tell right from wrong, you should absolutely be expected to improve your ability to parse media before complaining that the writers didn’t go out of their way to avoid every possible reason why someone with a warped moral compass might misinterpret it. The problem isn’t that Breaking Bad shouldn’t exist, or that Breaking Bad should have to clearly and explicitly condemn each immoral act Walter does, rather than expecting adults watching a prestige television drama to have covered “Murder Is Wrong” at some point in their lives. The problem is with your moral compass, and that’s yours to solve, it’s not the job of every writer whose work you might decide to pick up to compensate for your inability (whatever its cause might be) to tell the difference between right and wrong. 

When I say “from home,” I don’t mean from your parents. I mean from yourself. I have to assume, having been through what you’ve been through, that if you (as an adult) saw someone in a movie acting the way your parents acted and did not say “child abuse is okay,” you would know what they were doing was wrong, even if the movie didn’t say “child abuse is wrong.” I understand that wasn’t always the case! But now, as an adult, you understand that child abuse is wrong, right? If you see child abuse happening in a work of fiction that does not say “it’s good that they’re doing this,” you understand that what the abuser is doing is bad? If so, congratulations, you are already following my advice. 

What really bothers me about this message, though, is that you’re asking me to disrespect a lot of people, including you. Those people who didn’t learn critical thinking, reading comprehension, and media literacy? I believe in their ability to gain those skills, and if they’re going to engage in media analysis, I expect them to try! I don’t think, as you seem to, that “the difference between right and wrong, and the ability to identify them in fiction” is too advanced for people with learning disabilities. Incidentally, you don’t actually know jack shit about what my academic experience was like, or what disorders I might or might not have, so like... I’d thank you to not try to use people with learning disabilities as a cudgel to shut people up when they say “if you’re going to tell writers how to do their job, you should probably make an effort to know how to read at the level on which they write.”

But why do you ask me to believe you’re unable to do this? I’m not going to disrespect you like that. I know you don’t think people with learning disabilities and people who grew up in abusive backgrounds are capable of developing their media literacy skills, personal moral compass, and reading comprehension, but I don’t have any such contempt for them. Believe it or not, I actually don’t think I’m superior to those people, morally or in any other way. I believe they’re fully capable of everything I’m capable of. 

You should be able to form your own opinions and think critically about media. If you aren’t able to do that, you should learn, and I know you can. You might believe that people are simply too stupid to ride the bike without the training wheels, but I don’t, so don’t put your hang-ups on me. Unlearn that shit. 

[unpopularly-opinionated]

I don’t play WoW but I used to play Overwatch and Diablo and this touches on just the general issues that are inside of Activision Blizzard right now regarding the major decline of World of Warcraft and how they’re losing to Final Fantasy XIV, how if the latest WoW expansion or Overwatch 2 flop as they’re projected to do then Blizzard’s most definitely going to pivot almost entirely to mobile games, and how the differences in age demographics are actually dividing the company into multiple camps.

It’s important to note two things: 1) this could be fake but also 2) the link came from Grummz, a former team lead on WoW and producer on Diablo II and Starcraft. It still could be fake despite this, but if he’s sharing it then I feel like there’s at least some measure of truth in this.

Transcription below in case this gets deleted and/or you don’t wanna click the link. Warning, it’s fairly long.

“I’m dropping this here after getting chewed out for three hours over shit the chewee did at work so fuck it. Assume larp and let me vent.”

>Shadowlands is a shitshow. Critical response, Player drop off and just about every engagement metric outside of cash shop have been catastrophic. No higher up expected this because of their “we are too big to fail, if we built it they will come” mentality. They refuse to accept their focus on the world being a begrudged mechanic to funnel players to raiding is not appealing to the player base at large because it appeals to them. They have spent the last 4 months trying to course correct but there is no solid direction and the response to 9.1 has only made things worse.

>Sylvanas is planned to replace the Arbiter despite so many people in the company and god knows how many online saying this would be a total replication of Kerrigans storyline in Starcraft 2 that killed none competitive interest in the brand entirely and you can only go “no, no they WILL like it eventually” for so many real world years before its time to change course. Thus far that has not happened.

>The elephant in the room is FFXIV. To the people in charge they are acting like this came out of nowhere and don’t even seem to understand why its drawing players away in their tens of thousands. We have all tried to highlight things it is doing that are clearly appealing to an mmo audience and not, in my opinion, focussing more on mobile game style retention traps to keep MAU users and habit forming personalities logging in. Its not that they don’t care. They just seem so pig headed and digging their heels in with their fingers in their ears thinking all the problems will go away because WoW is “too big to fail”, there will never be real competition and “they will keep coming back”. But they aren’t coming back anymore. Not in the numbers they used to.

>The people making the spending choices know this. The new model for WoW is market the hell out of a expansion pack for a huge quarter then use 6 month lock ins to pad numbers for the quarters after that. Even if corona had not happened 9.1 still would have been dropping after the initial 6 month subs expired to “keep the chain holding”.

>The mood in the company is tense but also very much “its just a rough transition period”. Activision has been pushing hard for Blizzard to release more regular product and to generate more income per user. As far as i know this is going to be a transition over the next 5 years to a much larger mobile/tablet gaming focus. By all accounts not just WoW but Overwatch was intended to be the moneymaker in the interim but once again someone had the bright idea to kill a game casual players loved on the alter of e-sports hoping for another Brood War. From what i hear the “told you so’s” were loud and a lot of people walked beyond Kaplan.

>The sentiment that was shared quietly in private but being spoken more often is simply that the leadership at Blizzard are not bad people, nor incompetent people but people who had to fill seats left when the old guard jumped ship wether they were suited for it or not. Brack is a genuinely good man out of his depth, Ion is a fantastic raid designer put in charge of designing a virtual world he has no interest or real ideas for and so on. They have been taking form the roles they excel at to be put in positions where they get to do far less of that purely because there is nobody left with the experience to do so and the trickle down is a lack of concrete direction, ambition and focus.

>2021 has seen the playerbase, media and gaming at large “turn” on WoW to a degree i don’t think the leads in their “positivity dojo” bubble considered possible. Its gone from people going “This is how Blizz needs to fix WoW!” to “WoW is no longer salvageable, time for greener pastures” and i think on some level this was never considered as a possibility so there have never been any major plans beyond the usual “try and minimise player drop off by arranging releases around competitors launching updates/products”. The official forums being filled with talk of FFXIV and worse “why do we actually pay a sub?” hasn’t helped.

>There have been some testing the waters lately from certain higher ups if we can remove the line “No King Rules Forever”. Read into that what you will.

>There are still arguments going on about the Kael’thas Voice actor shitshow. I don’t know much about it but i know its heated, wouldn’t be the first time a knee jerk reaction only seemed to generate bad press. We lost a noticeable amount of pvp engagement after the Swifty thing.

>The Preach interview was treated as a disaster and there was talk of more strongly vetting interviewers for “bad actors” and only engaging with a list of questions Blizzard provides. Some pointed out that could just be used to create some form of Fireside Chat akin to the FFXIV “Live letters” but that fell on deaf ears.

>The two sentiments right now among the team are either “we really need a win” or “theres a dedicated cabal of internet trolls out to kill WoW”. Right now we are crunching hard to get 9.2 ready to wrap up the jailors storyline so we can get an expansion out early 2022. If that doesn’t happen there are talks of major shakeups coming down from Activision that have been threatened for a few  years now. Its an all hands on deck feeling thats been around to some degree since the “Is this an out of season April Fools Joke” Blizzcon. A make or break deadline is coming closer and things like Diablo 4 were not planned before then. Blizzard needs a significant win not just in initial profit but consumer goodwill. Nobody likes working at what the public now seems to see as “the bad guy” of the mmo industry.

>This has also made new hires decline. Not significantly but the “you WANT Blizzard on your resume” line doesn’t seem to have the appeal it used to. This has lead to more hiring via friend of a friend, to some rumblings about nepotism, and people severely lacking in experience “because they get great twitter optics”.

>On the topic of Twitter we are not being told to “disengage” from it. Multiple employees like Nervig and Holisky publicly attacking paying customers because they got too heated and couldn’t keep quiet is bad press that could have been avoided. A email reminder has gone around more than once lately stating “if you are not customer relations you should not be representing the company to customers, especially if you cannot remain professional”.

>Lastly the biggest elephant in the room is “yo’ boy” Asmongold. The newer hires cannot stand him. They have used terms like “toxic masculinity” and “dogwhistles to dangerous males” while some of the oldest crowd still remaining have called him “based” or “telling it like it is” which has lead to friction to put it mildly. People are told not to talk about him and the recent FFXIV stuff only made it all worse. The idea that an outside element can have such an effect on the product genuinely upsets people. Like Zach is engaging in some malicious act of cyberwarfare. Many of us have point out the now famous quotes by Naoki Yoshida about understanding that players will drift and we need to make something worth coming back to because they want to but some people for lack of a better word see out customers -or “consumers” as they refer to them nowadays- as some kind of antagonistic relationship where the goal is not being an entertainer putting on a show for a crowd but some kind of game hunter trying to trap a large, profitable kill. I wish i could blame Activision but this is a sentiment from more of the younger crowd than the “tech boomers”. Which personal opinion is probably why so many folks like Metzen and Morheim left.

>Before you ask, yes the topic of “wokeness” has shown up in group talks. Its not all some grand sjw conspiracy, people really do want to feel welcome and represented. However the “we need everything veto’ed by people not working on it to see if its inoffensive and bland enough” rubs some of us the wrong way. Like anything in life you can take something too far and lose sight of the core ideals and with everything gone on since Blitzchung it feels like people are forming little factions to pull people in different directions to decide “What Blizzards identity is now” and how to appeal to new players. There has been some drop offs with “go woke go broke” as the only answer in the survey when unsubbing but honestly we are losing subs in unforseen numbers anyway and still making more money than ever through cash shop “heavy users” so it honestly doesn’t make an impact.

>All in all things are rough right now. Blizzard doesn’t have the love of the customers anymore, is no longer treated as an industry giant and while D4,D2R and Immortal aren’t going to kill Diablo even if they fail the sentiment for World of Warcraft and Overwatch 2 are a lot more tense and stressful. The phrase “it might be good to brush up on your mobile development portfolio if we get another underperformer” has been doing the rounds a lot. If Shadowlands continues its stark decline and Overwatch 2 is looking to underperform like its current projections suggest i think the Blizzard of a few years from now will be imitating King a lot more than trying to learn any lessons from Square Enix’s mmo division.

[bondsmagii]

(cw: I'm about to get real crass about CSA because it makes me real mad and that's how I cope)

the cultural reaction to cuties is infuriating to me, especially how even defenders feel the need to criticise the hypersexualised camera shots for ""normalising sexualistion of children in film"". Like, this is a thing that is happening in real life, right now, folks! Real Life Kids commonly do dances like these, in clothes like these, in an attempt to copy adult women being framed in shots like that! That's basically a good fifth of Tik Tok! The shots being of kids instead of adults is intentionally horrific, because it's trying to highlight that that kind of societal gaze is what pressured them to do the dances and wear the clothes and everything else; to take a thing that we've all come to accept as normal (8 year olds online twerking to songs explicitly about sex) and make us see how horrific it is, so people might give a shit for once. (A real shit, not that Pizzagate-adjacent thing where people only bring it up in service of criticising something/someone they already didn't like, and never exploring why it's so prevalent to begin with). You know, the filmic opposite of normalisation?? It's incredibly disappointing that people's takeaway appears to be: "ew gross, look at how horny this camera is for literal children. Glad this absolutely isn't a thing that happens in real life that I will go straight back to ignoring while patting myself on the back for identifying this media as Problematic

And the idea that "a pedophile could get off to this" makes any sense as criticism! I guess pedophiles only get off to children in revealing clothing, huh? So all children need to do to avoid pedophiles is, uh... *checks notes* "dress less slutty". I *wish* I lived in a world where pedophiles were genuinely waiting on feature films to deliver them a few shots of children in revealing clothing, instead of trading real CP that has caused untold suffering. Sometimes it really feels like people are more invested in weaponising the idea of suffering children in rhetoric, rather than the welfare of real children. It's the same disconnect that makes it impossible to bring up things like early intervention programs for pedophiles without being called a pedophile yourself (a rich thing to call someone who was on the receiving end, and takes about a year off my lifespan every time).

Every time someone brings this movie up, I feel like I'm losing my marbles. Otherwise smart and insightful people seem completely willing to misread it in the most infuriating way possible. It's like it's the Asch conformity test, and I'm the rube in the last chair wondering whether I even watched the same movie as them. It's comforting to see at least one other person on this godforsaken planet comprehending that The Sexualised Children Shots Are Horrific On Purpose in this movie trying to push people out of complacency

honestly go off like I could not have said this better myself. this is exactly what's been pissing me off about the response to this movie and my post about it in general.

the cultural reaction to cuties is infuriating to me, especially how even defenders feel the need to criticise the hypersexualised camera shots for ""normalising sexualistion of children in film"". Like, this is a thing that is happening in real life, right now, folks! Real Life Kids commonly do dances like these, in clothes like these, in an attempt to copy adult women being framed in shots like that! That's basically a good fifth of Tik Tok!

this is what I cannot get my head around. like, people are freaking out over how this movie normalises the sexualisation of young children, but somehow miss the point that it's already been normalised. the movie would not be necessary if this hadn't already become a completely normal part of society. even walking around the shops in town I see children maybe 10 or 11 years old dressed like Instagram models, faces full of makeup, revealing clothing... it's honestly disturbing. these kids think that's acceptable, they think that's what they need to do in order to have worth, and it's terrifying. if I had my own children, I would be terrified for them. the movie is not the problem. why people can't direct this anger and outrage to websites like TikTok instead, I have no idea. probably because that would require actual work, and we all know these people are addicted to outrage and self-righteousness and absolutely allergic to any kind of effort to create real change.

It's incredibly disappointing that people's takeaway appears to be: "ew gross, look at how horny this camera is for literal children. Glad this absolutely isn't a thing that happens in real life that I will go straight back to ignoring while patting myself on the back for identifying this media as Problematic"

people get so offended when they're made to feel uncomfortable. I have no idea why. I'm trying to work out this thought process but it's simply beyond me. it baffles me that people can see something that's actually happening in the world, and instead of getting angry about the actual issue, they decide to attack the female director of the movie about said issue, who is writing from her own experience. like, how in god's name these people managed to miss the point so badly, I do not know. the manoeuvres they had to do to miss a point that big and obvious should make them all automatic gold medal winners in Olympic gymnastics.

(I do think that a lot of people yelling the loudest about Cuties have probably only seen the Netflix promotional poster and then devoured a bunch of Twitter threads highlighting the apparent problems and possibly a view video essays on YouTube showing the most dramatic and out of context shots of the girls, however.)

And the idea that "a pedophile could get off to this" makes any sense as criticism! I guess pedophiles only get off to children in revealing clothing, huh? So all children need to do to avoid pedophiles is, uh... *checks notes* "dress less slutty". I *wish* I lived in a world where pedophiles were genuinely waiting on feature films to deliver them a few shots of children in revealing clothing, instead of trading real CP that has caused untold suffering.

right? like. this point is so fucking useless. by this logic, we should ban everything with photos of children in it. if a paedophile is going to waste time going to see a full feature movie just to see some young girls twerking-- I mean, why would they in the first place? why would a paedophile do that when they can just sign on to TikTok and see thousands of hours of footage of young girls twerking? and if "revealing clothing" is all it takes, what's stopping this paedophile from going to the local pool and watching the kids in swimwear? what's stopping this paedophile from going and picking up a clothing catalogue and flipping to the pictures of little girls in dresses? the fact that people can compare the content of a feature-length film to actual CP fucking baffles me. like. it's actually insulting to compare things like that -- and by extension, any child on the street in a t-shirt or a dress or a skirt or a swimsuit -- to actual CP. like, who looks at a kid and thinks like that? if you want to stop paedophiles being creeps, you'd have to lock kids up in the house until they're 18 and ban all depictions of kids forever. paedophiles are gonna be creeps no matter what, and they're not going to bother with a full film when they can log onto TikTok and comment something creepy on footage of a real life child who might even message back and enter into communication with them. like, damn. why aren't more people getting mad and outraged about that?

Sometimes it really feels like people are more invested in weaponising the idea of suffering children in rhetoric, rather than the welfare of real children.

they are. "somebody please think of the children" is now the rallying cry of the right (all leading Democrats are secret paedophiles, the LGBT agenda is making Our Innocent Christian Children into perverts) and the left (problematic media is Harming Our Innocent Children, everything needs to be censored and squeaky clean so the Metaphorical Children don't stumble across it and think it's acceptable). it's the quickest way to get people outraged and it works like a charm. as soon as somebody starts rallying under the flag of protecting kids, it gives them a fast pass to power and influence. who wants to be seen to not care about kids? who wants to risk being called a paedophile or a child abuser? unfortunately their eagerness to declare everybody such has resulted in it losing its meaning. now when I see someone accused of paedophilia I no longer feel the usual revulsion but instead a tired suspicion followed by hours of research to determine if they are actually abusing children, or if they ship the wrong thing. to put the numbers into perspective, the one and only time I found out somebody was actually abusing minors, I was genuinely shocked because I had never found a true accusation before in oh, six years? which is unsurprising, seems I have been called a paedophile and told I shouldn't be around children because I like a villain from a YA series. as for real children, none of these people give a shit.

It's comforting to see at least one other person on this godforsaken planet comprehending that The Sexualised Children Shots Are Horrific On Purpose in this movie trying to push people out of complacency

that's exactly it right there -- it's horrific on purpose, but these people can't understand that. to them, literature and art and film is supposed to always make you feel good, and if it doesn't it's mean and abusive and you should have warned for it and also you're an asshole for making it in the first place. for people who only consume media to feel good, and only create it to feel progressive and wholesome, it's inconceivable why people would create something depressing or disturbing. because they're consuming media of only things they like, they assume everyone else is. ergo, if you make something nasty, it's because you're into something nasty. if you write about a murderous villain, it's because you want to be a murderous villain. if you direct a movie about children being sexually exploited, you must want to sexually exploit children.

these people cannot understand that art is supposed to teach and inform as well as comfort and coddle. some art is there to make you feel good, and other art is there to make you take notice of injustice and suffering and make you angry and upset enough to want to do something about it. these people do not understand that at all, and with this kind of logic they would try to ban Holocaust survivors from speaking at schools because it's too upsetting to think about, rather than paying attention to the message that such things get across. we cannot change society without empathy, and to experience empathy for something outside our own understanding and experience, we need to come into contact with people who have lived through it. we need to see it depicted. that's how we learn to feel for others. it puts a face to the suffering and makes it easier to stay motivated and stay mad.

but no. these people just want to be nice and fuzzy and safe. that's all that matters to them, and anyone who thinks they're wrong for doing it must be a paedophile or something. right. gotcha.

[wannabepygmalion]

30 factoids let’s gooo

( i just felt like doing these for fun... seeing briar do it + the ask memes got me thinking and i had the urge lmao )

1. His favorite Sanrio character is Cinnamoroll!! Also a fan of Marumofubiyori and Pompompurin.

2. Domino enjoys some music from pretty much any genre, but his favorite music usually is of the pop rock-pop punk-rock umbrella of sounds. He likes music that you could shout along to for Emotional Release (even though he will not actually do the shouting. he just still likes that vibe). 

3. He likes Animal Crossing. Probably doesn’t care too much about having a super finished and decorated island, but I imagine he tends to drift towards fall/autumn aesthetics and cottagecore vibes for what he does do… I think some of his favorite villagers would include Sylvana, Marshal, Teddy, Patty, Chief, Benjamin, Anabelle, Eunice, Shep, Hazel… he likes most of the Sanrio villagers too.

4. His favorite season is autumn, unsurprisingly.

5. Domino really likes dyeing his hair! He likes the sensation of looking in the mirror afterwards and his reflection feeling Different. 

6. He’s just so into art and art history. Once you get him to open up and he doesn’t feel like he’s annoying you, he will happily talk your ear off about (checks watch) the Corinthian order of Ancient Greek architecture. 

7. Also he does enjoy himself a little K-pop. He’s not super, super into it, but he has some groups he follows. Likes some songs he comes across. This is largely because I like to think about what kind of idols he’d bias since I”m so into it. I would name some groups he’d like, but I doubt any of them would still be around by 2030--

8. Growing up, his family never had any pets! Too busy. I think, honestly, Domino’s maybe never lived in a household that had pets, only met other people’s briefly. He would enjoy having a pet someday, but right now he doesn’t feel stable enough or like his life situation is good for a pet.

9. He has a couple fake succulents in his bedroom. He is currently too nervous that he’ll accidentally kill one and feel awful about it to try looking after a real plant.

10. His roommate’s name is Atlas! Atlas is a Twitch streamer who’s been getting more popular recently due to Minecraft roleplay, and is also a musician. Atlas’ online handle is Bird; his real identity is not public information.

11. Which. Yes, Domino has played Minecraft. But only on creative mode. He thinks it’s fun to build when his brain needs to chill, not really here for combat and all that.

12. He has a tattoo of a larkspur flower on one of his forearms; he got this pretty recently! Within the last 3 months or so.

13. He is banned from every Jamba Juice. If you ask him about this, he will either avoid it or tell you a different story every time.

14. Domino is actually really good at drawing as well as sculpting, but he heavily prefers sculpting. He’s been drawing for longer, but, when he first tried sculpting, something about it just clicked with him that he’d never experienced prior. 

15. He doesn’t drink alcohol, nor does he consume caffeine!

16. Atlas is also a faceless streamer -- his audience doesn’t know Domino exists beyond Atlas mentioning he has a roommate. Domino would like to keep it that way as much as possible.

17. He’s not a big spender… a good chunk of the money he earns from working goes to general life expenses -- rent, groceries, etc. He is not rich by any means. Money that’s leftover gets put away for when he needs to buy more art supplies; he spent a hot minute saving up for his tattoo since he wanted it to be nice.

18. Domino has an Instagram, but he doesn’t really do the “social” aspect of it. He just uses it more like a portfolio to post his work. Doesn’t respond to comments or anything, doesn’t look at it otherwise.

19. In general, he kinda avoids social media besides, like. Youtube and Twitch, and even then, he’s a diehard lurker for everything. He has spent some time browsing R/ddit, though, because it’s a decent place to see people talking about extremely specific experiences. Been on some specific forums too. Sometimes stuff like that makes him feel more validated and shit. Only valid R/dditor on the planet, etc. He absorbs other internet culture via osmosis from Atlas anyway.

20. He doesn’t drive! He still has a license for the sake of having a valid ID, but doesn’t drive with it. Doesn’t even have a car.

21. He has an older brother, who’s an engineer. He’s a couple years older and is off married somewhere else having an extremely normal life. Domino is estranged from his brother and has never met said brother’s wife. Probably didn’t even go to their wedding, honestly.

22. Domino doesn’t do commission work! He just kinda… does things at his own pace, then displays and eventually sells his work when it’s done.

23. The agent Domino works with is an older woman who works at a local art gallery that kinda took him under her wing. For obvious reasons. I mean, look at him. Her name is Veronica McCoy. Yes, I just took two names from Riverdale and slapped them together.

24. He doesn’t believe in soulmates! Or love at first sight, for that matter.

25. Domino’s usual typing style is actually a lot more laid back and casual -- no capitals, more prone to shortening words, etc. However, he types a lot more formally when it’s appropriate and/or he’s not comfortable with everyone in the convo. Similarly, he’ll loosen up a little in-person as he grows more at ease with you. To no one’s surprise, he will not give anyone nicknames unless they tell him to call them something else… he doesn’t want to offend.

26. Yes, he can and will swear if he’s comfortable with you. Yes, Domino can and will say ‘fuck’ -- though, he doesn’t throw it around constantly like some of my other characters. 

27. Domino has read a translation of all of Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses.’ He loves that shit.

28. I think cows are one of his favorite animals… he just thinks they’re cute and have very sweet faces. He never wants to touch T/kTok (or its future equivalent) with a 10-foot pole, but he would be very pleased if you sent him videos of cute animals. Curated content with none of the stress.

29. When very focused working on something, he tends to stick his tongue out. :P

30. Some plants I would associate with him include: cyclamen, columbine, and meadow saffron!

[thestile1972]

Book Review: Chris Arnade’s “Dignity”

By Jason Segedy

January 6, 2020

Occasionally I read a book that helps me to see things that I knew intuitively to be true, but couldn’t articulate properly, and consequently helps me to have a better understanding of the cultural world that we inhabit.

Chris Arnade’s Dignity is one of those books.  

Why?  

It is partly the stories that he tells.

The stories in this book are poignant – often humorous, and just as often heartbreaking.  You cannot read more than a few pages in this book without reading about poverty, or racism, or – most omnipresently - drugs, and the terrible things that addiction has done to people and to the places that they live.  

It is partly the photos.  

The photos, like the stories, are poignant.  Some of them are heartwarming, while, again, others are heartbreaking.  All of them are compelling, beautifully composed, and masterfully produced.  The complexity and the humanity of the people who are depicted in them comes through in ways that many similar photographs seem unable to capture.

It is partly the writing.  

This book is very readable.  Arnade is a fluid, crisp, and efficient writer.  He is not given over to long expostulations or flowery turns-of-phrase.  The writing is a sort of journalism that we seldom encounter nowadays – prosaic, without seeming detached or clinical; sympathetic, without seeming overly-sentimental.  

But, more than anything, what has helped me is the framework that this book provides for understanding today’s America.  

Before I get into all of that, allow me to briefly describe who Chris Arnade is and how he got to the place where he wrote this book.

After two decades of working on Wall Street as a bond trader, Arnade grew dissatisfied with his line of work, particularly in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis:

“I wasn’t in the mood for listening to anyone, especially other bankers, other academics, and the educated experts who were my neighbors.  I hadn’t been for a few years.  In 2008, the financial crisis had consumed the country and my life, sending the company I worked for, Citibank, into a spiral stopped only by a government bailout.  I had just seen where our – my own included – hubris had taken us and what it had cost the country.  Not that it had actually cost us bankers, or my neighbors, much of anything.”

He began taking long walks from his Brooklyn neighborhood - sometimes as long as 15 miles - to reduce stress, and to explore the parts of New York City that many people describe as dangerous or uninteresting – places like Hunts Point in the South Bronx.  

Arnade began to carry his camera on these walks, talking to anyone who would talk to him, and with their permission, would photograph them and their surroundings.

This process of interacting with flesh-and-blood people, rather than flickering images on a computer screen, ultimately caused Arnade to wrestle with who he was and where he was going:

“What I started seeing, and learning, was just how cloistered and privileged my world was and how narrow and selfish I was.  Not just in how I lived but in what and how I thought. . .like most successful and well-educated people, especially those in NYC, I considered myself open-minded. . .and reflective about my privilege.  I read three papers daily, I watched documentaries on our social problems, and voted for and supported policies that I felt recognized and addressed my privilege.  I gave money and time to charities that focused on poverty and injustice.  I understood I was selfish, but I rationalized.  Aren’t we all selfish?  Besides, I am far less selfish than others, look at how I vote (progressive), what I believe in (equality), and who my colleagues are (people of all races from all places).”

Ultimately Arnade quit his job and began driving all over the country – racking up 150,000 miles on his car over a three year period, and visiting a broad and culturally diverse cross-section of this nation.

As he describes in great detail, he saw how messy life is - all too often filled with pain, injustice, and problems too big for any public policy regime to truly address.  

But he also saw how resilient people can be, and how community can thrive in the most unlikely of places (like McDonald’s) amidst the pain and poverty.  In a word, he found what many people would find most unlikely in stigmatized places full of marginalized people – dignity.

The framework that Chris Arnade articulates through stories, photos, and commentary focuses on three things:

·        The front row/back row dynamic

·        The enduring importance of place in a spatially-agnostic world

·        The power of non-credentialed forms of meaning

I’ll cover the three of them in order:

First, the front-row/back-row dynamic is a powerful lens for viewing our present moment in time.  Arnade’s metaphor, as you have probably already guessed, takes us back to grade school – where the high-achievers, go-getters, and social extraverts sat in the front row of the class; while the kids of whom little was expected lingered unnoticed in the back.

The United States has always been a country that has tried its damndest to avoid acknowledging the reality of social class.  Our meritocracy (which is both real and imagined) has much to offer, but one of its real shortcomings is an inability to grapple with social class.  When we Americans do occasionally think about social class, we always tend to think that it is simply about how much money that one makes.  

But class is about far more than that.  It’s not just about annual income – it’s also about net worth (and the insulation from sudden financial disaster that comes with it); occupation and profession (do your back or your knees hurt at the end of the workday?); and educational attainment (did you graduate from college; and, if so, where did you go to school?)

Paul Fussell, in his book, Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, identifies nine social classes:  Top Out-of-Sight; Upper; Upper Middle; Middle; High-Proletarian; Mid-Proletarian; Low-Proletarian; Destitute; Bottom Out-of-Sight.  The first three are clearly the front row, while the last five are clearly the back row.  “Middle” is just that – a way-station between the front row and the back row, and a place that not as many people as we would like to believe pass through.

But beyond income, net worth, occupation, and educational attainment, there is one overriding thing that separates the front row from the back row:  cultural power.  

Cultural power is the power to define reality.  The front row makes the rules.  It decides what is important and what is not.  It decides who is important and who is not.  It decides which places matter, and which ones don’t.

The back row might greatly outnumber the front row, but that doesn’t matter.

The front row has cultural power, and it is a type of power that is self-replicating and self-reinforcing.  It is about who sets the agenda, who decides what will be discussed (and on which terms), what is cool or politically correct; and conversely, what is uncool or politically incorrect.

It is the type of power that is wielded by the insiders in both political parties, by the people who run major for-profit and non-profit institutions, by the people who control the media; and by the upper middle and middle class functionaries who serve and/or benefit from the status quo created by those insiders and the organizations that they oversee.

McDonald’s looms quite large in this book, and it is a great example of an institution that (while a corporate creation of the front row) is very much looked down upon by those in the front row, while being simultaneously embraced and beloved by those in the back row.  

Like many of us in the front row, Arnade had always thought of McDonald’s as a place to be avoided, or joked about, or perhaps visited to “slum it” just for fun. What he realized time and again on his journeys is that for those in the back row, McDonald’s is a place to socialize; to get satisfying cheap food; to get clean water; to charge a phone; and to get free Wi-Fi.  

In short, a place that you and I sitting in the front row might see as a soulless corporation that is part of the problem; many people in the back row see as a low barrier-to-entry community center where they will be accepted, and where they can get simple things that they need without having to follow a bunch of seemingly arbitrary rules, or navigating a big, faceless bureaucracy.

Second, Arnade does a wonderful job of explaining the enduring importance of place to a world that is increasingly spatially agnostic, and often actively privileges certain front row places over back row ones.    

But, as he points out, even in the centers of front row cultural power like New York, Washington, and Los Angeles, there are plenty of back row places.  The South Bronx, Anacostia, and South Central are only a short drive away from the Upper East Side, Capitol Hill, and Brentwood.

And then there are the vast stretches of America where virtually every place is composed of people in the back row – small places like Portsmouth, Ohio; Cairo, Illinois; and Selma, Alabama; as well as larger places like Bakersfield, California; Gary, Indiana; the north side of Milwaukee; and the east side of Cleveland.

Chris Arnade firmly rejects what I call “The U-Haul School of Public Policy”.  His writing about place is honest, realistic, and often profound:

“I was part of a global group of lawyers, bankers, business people, and professors who are their profession first and a New Yorker, Brit, or Southerner second. . .

. . .In their minds, staying put is a mistake.  If you stay, you limit your career, you limit your wealth, and you limit your intellectual growth.  They also don’t fully understand the value of place because like religion, it is hard to measure.  What is the value of staying near the family that raised you or in the valley where you were born?

Had I asked those in my hometown when I visited why they stayed, why they were still there, I would have gotten the answer that I heard from Cairo, to Amarillo, to rural Ohio. They would have looked at me like I was crazy, then said, ‘Because it is my home.’

It is an answer that is obvious, because there is value in home. . .The front row doesn’t fully get that because they don’t see that value. . .

When communities and towns are destroyed, partly because of the front row’s policies of globalization, the front row solution is, ‘Well, just move.’ Buffalo is dying, so just leave Buffalo.  Or Appalachia or the Rust Belt or Texas or Ohio or wherever they see suffering.  It doesn’t matter where people work, where they live, or where they raise a family.  If a factory moves and a town dies, then workers can just move.

Never mind that place, family, and friends are often the only network many people have, the only community that provides them a vital role, because what matters is growth at all cost – even if it is brutal – and that requires everyone to always be economic migrants.”

Finally, Arnade discusses what he calls “non-credentialed forms of meaning” – things like family, faith, place, and race.  These are all things that you inherit without having to do anything:      

“People respond to humiliation in different ways, but the most common response is to find a source of pride wherever possible, even if that means in places the status quo doesn’t approve of.  It means trying to find a community or activity that values them.  For those in the back row, that means a place that doesn’t demand credentials.  

Living in the place that you grew up doesn’t require credentials.  It’s a form of meaning that cannot be measured.  Family doesn’t require credentials.”

Arnade’s writing about religion, like his writing about place, is moving, and impressed me more than anything else in this book.  

He writes about religious faith with a degree of honesty, respect, and authenticity that I almost never encounter in an age where dismissive and infantile rejoinders about “the Flying Spaghetti Monster” are taken by some of the world’s leading intellectuals to be the final word on a philosophical debate about the existence of God that is as old as humanity itself.  

He describes faith and religious people in the complex and realistic way that I know them to actually be in real life, not in the two-dimensional caricatures that people in the front row so often use to dismiss them:

“When I walked into Hunts Point, I expected that the people there, those most impacted by the cold ruthlessness that our world can dish out, would share my atheism.  Instead, I found a strong belief in the supernatural and faith manifested in almost every form, mostly as a belief in the Bible.”

“Mixed with faith in God is a strong belief in the reality of evil. . .When you’re up against evil, whether the mysterious efforts of demons or all-too-explainable effects of drugs, the front row’s world of science, education, and smart arguments doesn’t do much for you.”

Many of the people that Arnade writes about – homeless people, drug addicts, and prostitutes - are people whose religious beliefs and life experiences are nuanced in ways that many people in the front row would have a difficult time understanding.  

They are people whose hardships, trials, and tribulations have helped them to see truths about life that many of us with comfortable lives have trouble seeing.  

As C.S. Lewis said:

“Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self-righteous, are in that danger.”  

Arnade continues:

“When I walked into the Bronx I was an atheist, something I was sure about. Standing years later outside the Gospel Lighthouse in Bakersfield I wasn’t so sure.  To my educated lifelong friends I might have said I was now agnostic, or still an atheist but one who appreciated religion.

Like most in the front row, I am used to thinking we have all the answers.  On Wall Street there were few problems we couldn’t solve with enough smarts, energy, audacity, or money.  We even managed to push death into the distance; with enough research and enough resources – eating right, doing the right things, going to the correct medical specialist – the inevitable could be delayed, and mortality could feel distant.

With a great job and a great apartment in a great neighborhood, it is easy to feel we have nothing for which we need to be absolved.  The fundamental fallibility of humans seems outdated, distant, and confined to a few distant others.  It’s not hard to imagine that you have everything under control.  

The tragedy of the streets means few can delude themselves into thinking they have it under control.  You cannot ignore death there, and you cannot ignore human fallibility.  It is easier to see that everyone is a sinner, everyone is fallible, and everyone is mortal.  It is easier to see that there are things just too deep, too important, or too great for us to know.  It is far easier to recognize that one must come to peace with the idea that ‘we don’t and never will have this under control.’ It is far easier to see religion not just as useful but as true.”

Reading Dignity put this often antiquated-sounding passage (with its talk of temples, Pharisees, and tax collectors) from the Gospel of Luke (and one that I’ve read dozens of times) into a fresh, contemporary light:

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

But the tax collector stood at a distance.  He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’”

I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.  For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

-Luke 18:9-14

Chris Arnade doesn’t have a six-point plan for fixing what is wrong with America. This book isn’t a white paper describing an innovative new public policy framework. Some reviewers have (quite unfairly) criticized Arnade for this.

But they are missing the point of this book.  Thinking that there is "a plan" for fixing this is exactly what someone in the front row would think.  I should know, because I'm one of them.  We always think there should be a plan.  And we always expect someone in the front row like Arnade to come up with one.

Yes, it should go without saying that the economic divergence between people and places is having social and political ramifications that are becoming impossible to ignore.  And yes, we need to think, and think hard, about how to fix that.

But the purpose of Dignity is not to offer policy solutions.  It is to listen, learn, understand, and document what is happening to back row America.

The listening, learning, and understanding must come before any policy solutions can be proffered.  

And whether any of us like it or not, we need to recognize that “policy solutions” may be of limited or little use.  Many of the challenges and problems that Arnade is documenting are social, cultural, and even spiritual – and they are deeply complex. They do not easily lend themselves to a tweak of a legislative dial here, or the pull of a policy lever there.

The economic and cultural gutting of Portsmouth, Ohio, or of the east side of Cleveland, was decades in the making, as each fall of a socioeconomic domino knocked down many others.  

Data and statistics, important as they often are, never tell the entire story about a place.  

If we are to hope to help these places and the people living in them, we first need to get to know them as people.  

People like us.  

People with dignity.

I have the utmost respect for Chris Arnade.  In addition to the pleasure of having read his book, I have had the fortune to interact with him every now and then on Twitter.  He is a thoroughly decent person.  He was willing and able to acknowledge his own imperfections, and he decided to get out and begin to do something about them.  

I have learned a lot from his example.  His book has helped me to see my own selfishness and narrowness more clearly, and to think hard about what it might mean for me to be a better person.

I hope that you will take the time to read his book, and to look at his photographs. The people and the places that he depicts are worthy of your consideration.

[faisalkhanlove]

What is Motion Graphics? – The Complete Guide

What exactly do 2D motion graphics mean ? And what do they actually serve to accomplish?

2D Motion Graphics is a kind of digital animation that offers motion (and the feeling of living) to pictures. The images can be directly derived by digital resources. They could be original art or photographs or vectors etc.basically any digital image can be used as a basis for. The real power is in the manipulation of the image(s) which transforms an image of a person to a dynamic persona, or even a stock photo into the form of a video clip that is pulsating or even a photograph to a moving video clip and so on. Utilizing 2D Motion Graphics, a designer can design complete video commercials, short films and more.

What is motion graphics?

What's the most important advantage of two-dimensional motion graphics?

This is a significant benefit that was not available until recently. It's possible to do this using an ordinary computer. With a PC with adequate specs and a high-quality processor, you can create quality animations. There's also advantages 2D Motion Graphics has over other forms in animation. Traditional animation can be slow and be difficult to convert to digital. Although you can make 3D animation using personal computers it will require more time, which means processing power.

What industries benefit from 2-D motion graphic technology?

Each and every individual. Absolutely. It's the cheapest alternative for anyone looking to stand out with video. 2-D motion Graphics are used in advertisements or film as well as explainer videos and technology video, television commercials and many other. Every media business requires 2D motion Graphics content.

Where to Begin

The most crucial thing you should make is to select the correct software you require learn. The majority of influencers and animators recommend learning about their Adobe program. I totally agree with the advice. It is my opinion that Adobe Creative Suite is the industry standard, and is an all-in-one solution that covers every aspect of 2D Motion Graphics Animation.

how do I become a motion graphic designer

The software you'll need to be paying attention to is:

Adobe After Effects. This is the program that you employ for animating stages.

Adobe Illustrator. It is where you can create vector images (images which can be scaled to any size, with no loss of quality) to be used for animation.

Adobe Photoshop. Everyone has been familiar with Photoshop. It is true that it permits you to modify and edit images, but it also lets users to create raster images that can become animated.

Adobe Premiere Pro. It will allow you to record everything you've done in video format by using this.

Alongside Adobe Suite Another helpful tool to master could include Cinema 4D. It's not an Adobe product, but it's a popular one and is worth keeping track of. However, it doesn't require an expert user to use it.

Selecting the right hardware for your personal computer

Is it the best motion graphics computer?

When you choose a computer to use, you'll have four main parameters to consider. When selecting the right machine there are four primary aspects to consider.

1. CPU

2. RAM

3. VGA

4. HARD DRIVE

Find out more particulars of the equipment you'll need here.

What NOT To Do

Before you dive involved, you should go through these tips. I can guarantee you that it will be the most efficient method to reduce your time, money, and frustration in the long run.

Do not just search "Top 2D Motion Graphics Animation" for advice.

It's an arduous concept to comprehend, and it's crucial to understand. Google is amazing however it's not able remain in all places at all times. This means that it isn't able to evaluate how well motion graphics are and doesn't consider written articles as the most effective outcomes. In reality, it will see results from people who are skilled at writing SEO. This means you'll receive a lot of clickbait as well as people who are SEO experts, but not examples of a great 2-D motion graphics. This is the reason why you'll start with the wrong idea that you're looking at what you must master, not what you need to learn to achieve. Instead of looking through a maze of sources, I'll present you with some excellent sources at the end of the article.

After Effects isn't "Motion Graphics" and vice versa

Some novices (and beyond) believe that they're employing motion graphics. After Effects are the same thing , and can be substituted with the other. I'm certain you'll be able to be confident that I'm here to provide you with what's real. You'll look like a novice if you switch between them. After Effects is a software. Motion graphics is a method of animation. You should learn each, but remember that it's a technique , and the other involves art.

Motion graphic inspiration 7 websites to inspire the imagination of your. Platforms, designers and companies platforms, as well as many other sites listed here that are all focused on motion-related designs, graphics and motion. Get your creativity flowing and stimulate through motion in the most efficient method using the most reliable sources.

Here's what you need to be aware of about motion graphics

Branding

If it boils to selecting the best design, layout and color for your company's brand, motion graphics play a role for making these aspects seem more authentic. The majority of motion graphics revolves around the business's values and goals and then understanding how they can be conveyed digitally and then creating the artwork that is produced.

If it comes to branding, an effective animated video that communicates the company's vision can go a long way. For instance, Google Chrome uses its attractive style of design and its four colors that create a lively tone that makes it apart from its competition. They push branding to the next level by demonstrating the way Google Chrome is a fast and reliable internet browser . It does this by using animations of a shorter time, e.g., through motion graphics.

If you incorporate motion graphics in branding strategies, businesses can rapidly improve their audio or visual appeal. This is a matter of the creation of a more persuasive place to proclaim, "We're better than the rest!" Without putting too much effort into it and using the very best creative thinking.

Telling A Story

If we were to identify the winning method of marketing, it's a guaranteed method to highlight the art of telling stories. It's because selling a product or service isn't just about the worth of the product you're selling but more about how valuable it is for consumers.

If the marketing strategy to the limits, you need to be aware that you're selling to people. People tend to be emotional and have stories to share. The more authentic your story is the more attractive it is to potential customers which will increase the chances that they will convert.

Motion graphics can assist in telling stories through the use of appropriate methods and formats that produce an immersive visual experience that is attractive and exciting. Take a look at the vast distinction between static images and the visual representation of something. Which is more efficient?

While images are sure to create emotions, motion graphics are the norm.

Explaining Concepts

At times, the topic is so complex that it's easier to present information visually rather than orally. This is because complex concepts are much easier to comprehended by looking at pictures. Many times businesses that attempt to explain how an item functions are more effective in explaining the process with animations in contrast to writing using static images.

Motion graphics can be among the most efficient ways to create engaging video tutorials and explanations. They are ideal for illustrating important concepts. For instance how bitcoin and blockchain work, and how a particular company can assist you in making better choices when it comes to investing in these options.

In addition to the development of motion-based graphics audio within motion graphics may allow businesses to give "their side of the story" and allow users to see the facts from a different viewpoint.

Raising Awareness

In the early stages of a brand's life, it is crucial to establish the brand's name. In particular what are the company or brand looking to resolve an problem? Is it an organization that is not for profit and has an issue that is of significance? Whatever it is, motion graphics should be a part of those organizations working to make a statement.

Tools like Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects can add energy and power in any communication. It doesn't matter if the issue is sustainability on a global scale or a local issue in the community on an individual level. Leave motion graphics to stimulate actions.

Try Motion Graphics Yourself

For people who are just getting started with learning about Motion Graphics, it's crucial to begin with the basics. Learn about motion editing as well as video editing and special effects by following the right courses. We offer Interactive video editing classes along with After effects courses in NYC and can help in the process of establishing yourself using practical projects, techniques taught by industry experts , and personalized focus. Start now!

The guide here is crucial and helpful for animators who are just beginning their careers with motion graphics software 

The ability to create motion-based images using personal computers is still a nascent idea. Motion graphics in 2D have been around for a short period of time, and there aren't any options for those who are only beginning. It's easy to lose track and then take a wrong path and lose a substantial amount of time in just beginning. My aim is to help you in avoiding the mistakes as best it is possible.

This is why I've put together this guide to assist you.

I've been involved with animation for more than 10 years -- basically since the moment it started becoming possible with personal computers that could make motion. I've learned many tricks and techniques, but have also made more mistakes than I can be able to count on my journey. I'm aware of how challenging it is to start up and how challenging it can be for someone who isn't experienced. Sure, you'll face some stressful situations initially, but I'm hoping that this guide will help you save considerable time as well as stress and money!

[thesswrites]

Let’s Abolish ‘Growing Up’

The term ‘growing up’ is a strange and, in some of its definitions, arbitrary one. While it’s occasionally used in its core definition - ‘achieving physical and/or mental maturity’, the issue comes when the second definition according to Merriam-Webster comes into play: “to stop thinking in a childish way”.

The concept of ‘behaving like a child’ is a term used to vilify and belittle people, usually for very little cause. In fact, the only two reasons that seem to exist to use the concept of ‘childishness’ as derogatory are ableism and envy.

Ableism

One of the primary times people accuse others of behaving childishly is when they avoid responsibilities and mismanage core life chores as a result. Everything from cleaning one’s living space to putting off that necessary phone call is met with a derisive, “Grow up!” That is not the whole story and never has been; it’s just a convenient way to sweep other people’s problems under the carpet while feeling superior over how much ‘better’ one is managing than ‘that immature weirdo over there’.

It never occurs that ‘that immature weirdo’ has significant anxiety, and has difficulty picking up the phone and speaking to strangers voice-to-voice. The one deemed ‘immature’ can’t admit that, because of the reactions they so often get to admitting to their anxiety - generally dismissal and an order to ‘get over it’ from people who believe that the definition of ‘anxiety’ stops at ‘just being a bit worried about things’. People with anxiety require support to work through the problems associated with the issue, and instead they get more anxiety as the world proves that it is judging them - and judging them harshly. Further avoidance ensues and the whole thing ends with a far worse mental state than anyone should ever have to endure.

As to the ‘cleaning one’s living space’ thing, there are any number of reasons that people are less than perfect about their household chores. Most often this is fatigue or at least resource management by someone whose personal resources are drained by other things - things either more vital, unavoidable or both. While many people don’t understand it, managing resources well enough to get through depression, anxiety, or just a bad and abusive job (or jobs) without burning out or breaking down, prioritising survival and basic self-care when the resources for the full self-care that is cleaning one’s living space simply aren’t there anymore ... that epitomises maturity, wherein ‘maturity’ is defined as ‘knowing one’s self’.

Envy

Unfortunately, while ableism is a significant problem with the term ‘growing up’, it’s not the most prevalent use of the derogatory. Instead, most people use it as what appears to be an order to ‘stop having fun’. Generally it is directed at people who pass a certain arbitrary age limit but show enjoyment for a specific range of media that passes a certain arbitrary limit. One is, in general, allowed to play video games (there are caveats to that but that’s a whole other essay). One is, in general, allowed to loaf on the sofa and watch Game of Thrones or Star Trek: Discovery. One is allowed to go to the cinema and watch Star Wars: The Last Jedi or Black Panther. But one is not allowed to obviously enjoy it without accusations of childishness. Fan fiction or fan art? Childishness. Cosplay? Childishness. Fan conventions? Childishness. That’s not even getting into those who show obvious enjoyment in comic books or animated series - “Those are for kids; grow up!” This does not even begin to cover those who spend hours every day participating in the ‘playing pretend’ that is roleplaying, be it tabletop, chat-and-forum or LARP.

The overall sense is that people are permitted to intake but not obviously enjoy, or else they will be labeled as ‘childish’. Which changes the definition of ‘grow up’ from ‘be prepared to face the responsibilities your society places on adults’ to ‘stop having fun in the ways you used to’. Few enough people in society give this due consideration, though; why do people seem to think that open, enthusiastic, participatory enjoyment of media is a realm only inhabited by the young?

Some would say that it’s time that might be better spent doing something else; something ‘mature’. Chores, perhaps. However, these same people spend an undue amount of time passively taking in media with no apparent investment, instead of doing those very same things they say that people who are actually actively enjoying their media should do. People who sit and watch things because ‘it was what was on’, or ‘I just want to know what happens; I don’t really care’ still invest a great deal of time in that media, provided it’s in what they consider to be a socially acceptable way. It may be that they lack the creative spark to be actively involved in the transformational elements of fandom, or that they are too shy and anxious to show their investment in an obvious way. Or it may be that they are deliberately denying themselves the escapism that media of this type can provide because society tells them that ‘adults don’t do that’.

It’s a vicious cycle - children are told ‘adults don’t do that’ and enough people believe them that they grow up and tell that to their children, and so on. And so society goes, with the only people truly getting the best part of the situation being those who make exorbitant amounts of money off both active and passive media consumers. Meanwhile, active media consumers have to deal with accusations of childishness and derogatory orders to ‘grow up’, while those of the ‘adulthood = no fun’ mindset seem to think that if they are no longer allowed to enjoy, say, Star Wars the way they did when they were children, no one else should be allowed to either. Perhaps they hope to cut out the temptation fans present to them, or they simply don’t understand how someone can still be an adult and be having fun. After all, the world is a horrible place. Horrible things happen all the time. People shouldn’t be laughing so much, having so much fun, enjoying life so much when it’s all so horrible. Apparently the concept of escapism as yet another resource management tool has escaped their notice, which is sad. Knowing how much of the world’s misery one can take before one needs to reboot with some fun escapism is yet another resource management tool that, while reliant on things society deems childish, is quintessentially adult. Not to mention the social, political, economic and theological concepts that fans tend to explore when watching, reading or participating in stories at a level beyond ‘things are happening in front of me and they are more entertaining than the wall’.

Between the ableism of assuming that people willfully ignore their responsibilities because they ‘don’t feel like being an adult today’, and the selfishness of assuming that everyone having any fun is ‘too immature to understand how the world works’, the concept of growing up has gone to a judgemental place. No longer a badge of honour, it’s become a switch to beat people with until they fall in line with whatever society decides is appropriate at that particular time. Worst of all, it affects how people raise their children, making some focus on the wrong aspects of legal adulthood - how to do one’s taxes, how to cook, how to vet potential flatmates, how to keep up with the job market to increase one’s chances of finding a job or at least not be so depressed when it takes a great deal of time to find one, and so on - in favour of denying people those little bits of joy that make the depressing slog that modern adulthood has become worthwhile.

Adulthood means more than becoming expendable cogs in the sociopolitical machine that is modern life. It means doing things for one’s self. It means having fun. It means engaging with whatever one chooses to engage with, provided that engagement doesn’t actively hurt anyone else. Yes, it may hurt someone to see that people are capable of having far more fun than they are by their own social rules, but that’s a different thing. The person refusing to enjoy things has the option to do so. Ironically, the so-called ‘real adult’ blindly following a set of social rules could be seen as far less mature than the so-called ‘childish weirdo’ in the Stormtrooper outfit saying, “I’m not hurting anyone, I fit this into my budget, and I made a hundred or so people smile today, myself included, so this is all worth being told I don’t fit an arbitrary standard”.

So let’s drop the concept of ‘growing up’, or find some way to reclaim it from people who have changed its meaning to ‘being forbidden from showing obvious joy and ignoring legitimate psychological issues’.

[backwardsflow]

i may or may not make a better post about this sometime, but i want y’all to know that like

as a phenomenon that i’m experiencing second- or third-hand on tumblr, the dream daddy game is one of the most unpleasant things i’ve had to deal with on my dash. and listen, i despise sitewide generalizations as much as the next jaded tumblr user, but i’m gonna complain about this so buckle up.

the first issue i have with this game is relatively minor: i don’t care about the game itself. i am thoroughly unmoved by everything about it. the project is a dating sim (which i have a generic distaste for) about men with children (which i have a generic distaste for) dating other men with children (which i have a generic distaste for). i know it’s dumb, but one of the parts i enjoy so much about being a lesbian is that i don’t have to give a shit about anything that centers men. and you don’t get more man-centric than a video game about dudes dating each other. the inclusion of afab/binder options in the character creator and the canonically trans man character are nice, but far from new or revolutionary.

i have a sub-point here real quick. i have a few things on my xkit blacklist that are just minor annoyances for me. i put “ddadds” on there pretty quickly as a result of the previous point, but for some reason xkit is finicky about actually blocking it. this is just annoying for me, moving on.

like many others, i have an automatic distrust of ddadds thanks to the contributions made by the game grumps. rest assured that i’m well aware that the grumps only provided financial backing and voice acting for the game. i’m also well aware of the game grumps’ extensive history of racism, transphobia, and inability to take criticism. i’ve seen the screenshots of the one time arin apologized to fans on twitter, and i’ve seen countless people try to shrug off their constant use of stereotypes and punch-down humor. i watched the grumps for several years of my life, from the end of jontron’s involvement through to the rebirth of guest grumps. they have a well-documented cycle of trying to avoid sensitive topics before inevitably falling back on stereotypes and shock humor. i feel that this topic has been written about enough without my input.

so the game is released and it’s good, for a dating sim game. i’m assuming. again, i have no intentions on playing the game or watching anyone else play it. but just when i think i can sit back and let my blacklist do the work of making me forget about ddadds, things start to heat up among the fans. some unfinished files relating to a planned/scrapped joke ending about a cult surfaces and people begin to panic. many people find the unused ending to be a cruel retraction of the otherwise wholesome mlm romances in the game. this is where things start branching out beyond the limits of my blacklist.

those on tumblr who are more inclined to quick judgement dropped the game and its fandom immediately, citing this cult ending as malicious intent from the creators. i expect that everyone reading this has a working knowledge of the stereotypical “”tumblr fandom”” response to media like this - something bad surfaces, fandom freaks out and labels the media as “””problematic”””, and the creators and anyone who still enjoys the media are shunned off the platform. this stereotype of how fandoms function on tumblr is inaccurate and most widely circulated on twitter in my experience. suffice it to say that most of those on my dash nowadays are more reserved than this narrative would suggest. however, that doesn’t mean my dash was spared the snap judgments or hot takes.

instead, what seemed like a tidal wave of backlash flooded my tumblr experience, both in direct reference to the ddadds “discourse” and in general against the stereotype of the tumblr fandom that demands perfect and flawless media. let me tell you, from my perspective, this wave of snap backlash is just as exhausting to watch play out as any of the horrible tumblr dramas i’ve lived through (homestuck and steven universe come to mind). the reasoning here is that it is unreasonable to expect creators to make perfect media, and especially hypocritical to expect perfect media from independent minority creators. being harshly critical of works like ddadds is undesirable because of its supposed chilling effect on the market for other minority creators. i’m getting about as tired of writing this as i’m sure you are of reading it, but suffice to say that posts about “tumblr fandom” strawmen are more readily available on reddit if that’s what i wanted to see.

if that wasn’t enough, a smaller noticeable aftershock emerged of tumblr and twitter users arguing against the second wave of ddadds backlash. these reactionary posts attempt to take a more center approach, advocating against both harsh purging of “problematic” creators and uncritical glorification of flawed media. by this point, more than anything i just want to stop hearing about this on my dash.

you see, this particular area of discourse boils down to a question of “how much criticism is reasonable for a piece of media?” or even “what is the most ethical way to approach media criticism?” these questions are somewhat of a sore spot for me nowadays, thanks to social media’s promotion of over-simplified morality. media criticism is kinda my thing, so seeing answers to these questions endlessly proposed and torn down without time for full consideration just irritates me to no end.

here’s what i have to say on how to handle these situations moving forward. it is always healthy to consume media critically. but doing so means developing a nuanced understanding of the media and its creators. consuming media pessimistically, seeking out flaws in order to discredit the work, is no more critical than refusing to see any flaws at all. media criticism takes time and effort, but that’s the only functional way for an individual to judge a work without succumbing to an increasingly-exhausting cycle of social media hivemind.

what i’m trying to say is: please for the love of god - think for yourself and stop arguing so much online. 

sorry for writing so much, i got carried away. stay in school, don’t send anon hate, hope you have a great day.

[howtoloseweightfastsafely]

How To Deal With the "Stress Hormone" Before It Deals With You

I think an apology is in order. On my part.

I've dropped the "C" word on and off and mentioned how it can lead to stress, inflammation, disease and more.

And I've mentioned that it can especially lead to excess belly fat.

But I haven't actually explained it more in depth, or explained how it works.

And I haven't given you some simple strategies to reduce it.

Sorry.

Let's get into it now, and end any confusion.

As you've realized if you read the chapter title, the "C" word is Cortisol.

Cortisol is better known as the "stress hormone", which your body produces to help with certain necessary responses.

Before we get into the "bad side" of cortisol, let's discuss its merits.

One of the more well-known cortisol-related responses is the "fight or flight" reaction you have when you're in danger. In this scenario, cortisol plays a vital role in telling your muscles and liver to release certain enzymes, acids, fats, and glucose, in order to give your body the energy it needs to fight or flee.

This response was crucial just as much in evolutionary times, when faced with a life-threatening bear for example, as it is these days, when you may sense danger on a dark, empty street in a bad part of town.

Beyond the fight or flight response, cortisol is known to help metabolize glucose, fats, and protein, it is an anti-inflammatory, and it regulates blood pressure and cardiovascular function.

Lastly, it is the main component of the Cortisol Awakening Response (CAR), which refers to the slightly elevated cortisol levels we have in the morning. These levels gradually drop down as the day progresses. The CAR is thought to be an evolutionary mechanism that helped us wake up, and go on waking the rest of the day.

Now that we've covered the "good", let's get to the "bad".

The main idea to understand here is: beyond the acute, helpful cortisol functions (fight or flight; helping with recovery post-workout) and the morning awakening response, cortisol can get very chronic, very fast.

And when it gets chronic, research shows we're faced with everything from unmanageable stress levels to a wide variety of major diseases (heart disease, Alzheimer's, depression, and various cancers immediately come to mind).

Let me elaborate.

For starters, there are many different reasons that people have excess cortisol in their system.

There are a few recurring themes, though - namely, diet quality (or lack thereof) and stressful life situations (long-term pressure at work, financial issues, relationship or spousal tension, caring for elderly parents, etc.). And from a genetic perspective, many are naturally prone to anxiety or depression., and the stress/cortisol output that comes with it.

There are some "unknown" causes of chronically-elevated cortisol, too.

Besides chronic stress, the top 2 hidden causes are:

1. Excessive gym time followed by under-eating

a. High intensity, long duration exercise (especially "chronic cardio") training is proven to increase cortisol significantly

b. Basically, any time spent over 60-75 minutes ramps up cortisol like nobody's business, and it's made worse when we're too hard on ourselves to decide to eat next to nothing after a tough workout

c. Follow the workouts in the "6 Weeks to Lean" manual and you'll be outta the gym before you need to worry about cortisol building up.

d. Essentially, weight lifting, cardio, and any other high-intensity workouts deal with 4 main hormones:

i. Testosterone

ii. Growth Hormone,

iii. IGF (insulin-like growth factor)

iv. Cortisol

e. The first 3 are the anabolic hormones that build muscle (more muscle = less fat = healthier body and healthier 'look'). The last one, cortisol, is useful in certain circumstances but can also become very detrimental.

f. The key here is output of the anabolic hormones (testosterone, GH, and (IGF) stops after about 60 minutes of workouts, but cortisol keeps going and becomes chronic (and damaging to the body)

g. So, if you're working out for 2 hours, that's 1 hour or more of muscle-ruining, fat storing Cortisol permeating through your system. So, work hard and fast during workouts, and then stop!

h. Cap workouts at 1 hour, or 1 hr and 15 minutes including warm-ups. Then get adequate rest and recovery!

2. High levels of caffeine and sugar, which keep you "on edge" 24/7.

a. High cortisol in the bloodstream often correlates with the morning coffee... and the brunch coffee and post-lunch coffee, and the subsequent sodas and energy drinks consumed throughout the day.

b. But let's not be hypocritical - I have my morning cup of coffee, and most people do, too.

c. It's not unhealthy to have a bit of caffeine in the morning, and a few cups of tea throughout the day. However, it's important not to overdo it. (A surefire way to overdo it is drinking 3+ cups of coffee, plus sodas or energy drinks all day like many people do.)

Basically, having too much cortisol can have a highly negative impact on your body in the long term.

Too much cortisol means your body enters a catabolic state, whereby your body starts cannibalizing its own tissues (including bone, muscle and even brain matter) to get energy. Too much cortisol also signals your body to store excess fat, particularly in the midsection region (stomach, love handles, and butt/hips).

The reason for this is that your body thinks it's in mortal danger (the "fight or flight" response), so it's suddenly willing to use whatever resources it has available at its command to survive.

And when the body is spending time trying to fight off this perceived "danger", it doesn't give a rat's you-know-what about burning fat. On the contrary, any food at or above your limit will be stored as fat in the exact place you're trying to avoid putting it on!

You see the problem here: You drank that second cup of coffee because you like the way it tastes with those little hazelnut creamer packets they have at 7-11, and you inadvertently released a bunch of cortisol in the process.

And these chronically elevated cortisol levels mean increased stress, and increased stress causes mood swings, anxiety, depression and flat-out shrinkage of brain cells.

If your cortisol has been elevated for a long time, it's also possible your brain isn't even producing healthy levels of serotonin and dopamine anymore - causing you to enjoy pleasurable feelings less, and feel down in the dumps more often.

As mentioned, your cortisol levels are supposed to be naturally high in the morning - one of the actual good effects of the stress hormone is to help you feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when you first wake up. But they're supposed to drop off during the day - which means you have to be careful about the amount of caffeine you take into your system, and most importantly, when you take it into your system.

It's pretty simple: No caffeine after 12 PM (2 PM is OK if you go to bed around 12), except for a cup of green tea if you really need it. Generally, you want to have your last bit of caffeine at least 10 hours before bedtime, since cortisol levels are so closely correlated with our sleep/wake cycles. So for most people who go to bed around the 10-11 p.m. hour, it's best to stop drinking soda, energy drinks or coffee by noon. It's also best to have a daily "goal" of no more than one soda/energy drink/cup of coffee per day, and 1-2 cups of tea at most.

You want to max out at 400 mg. of caffeine per day (most coffee has between 150-200 mg already!) Your body doesn't really get much benefit after one, anyway - and you're just maxing out your stress levels!

While you're taking a long-term, nice and easy approach to reducing your caffeine consumption, here are some other methods by which you can naturally reduce your cortisol levels.

 Interested in losing weight? Then click below to see the exact steps I took to lose weight and keep it off for good...

Read the previous article about "The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)"

Read the next article about "7 Common Sense Ways to Have Uncommon Peace of Mind (or How To Stop Your "Stress Hormone" In Its Tracks)"

Moving forward, there are several other articles/topics I'll share so you can lose weight even faster, and feel great doing it.

Below is a list of these topics and you can use this Table of Contents to jump to the part that interests you the most.

Topic 1: How I Lost 30 Pounds In 90 Days - And How You Can Too

Topic 2: How I Lost Weight By Not Following The Mainstream Media And Health Guru's Advice - Why The Health Industry Is Broken And How We Can Fix It

Topic 3: The #1 Ridiculous Diet Myth Pushed By 95% Of Doctors And "experts" That Is Keeping You From The Body Of Your Dreams

Topic 4: The Dangers of Low-Carb and Other "No Calorie Counting" Diets

Topic 5: Why Red Meat May Be Good For You And Eggs Won't Kill You

Topic 6: Two Critical Hormones That Are Quietly Making Americans Sicker and Heavier Than Ever Before

Topic 7: Everything Popular Is Wrong: The Real Key To Long-Term Weight Loss

Topic 8: Why That New Miracle Diet Isn't So Much of a Miracle After All (And Why You're Guaranteed To Hate Yourself On It Sooner or Later)

Topic 9: A Nutrition Crash Course To Build A Healthy Body and Happy Mind

Topic 10: How Much You Really Need To Eat For Steady Fat Loss (The Truth About Calories and Macronutrients)

Topic 11: The Easy Way To Determining Your Calorie Intake

Topic 12: Calculating A Weight Loss Deficit

Topic 13: How To Determine Your Optimal "Macros" (And How The Skinny On The 3-Phase Extreme Fat Loss Formula)

Topic 14: Two Dangerous "Invisible Thorn" Foods Masquerading as "Heart Healthy Super Nutrients"

Topic 15: The Truth About Whole Grains And Beans: What Traditional Cultures Know About These So-called "Healthy Foods" That Most Americans Don't

Topic 16: The Inflammation-Reducing, Immune-Fortifying Secret of All Long-Living Cultures (This 3-Step Process Can Reduce Chronic Pain and Heal Your Gut in Less Than 24 Hours)

Topic 17: The Foolproof Immune-enhancing Plan That Cleanses And Purifies Your Body, While "patching Up" Holes, Gaps, And Inefficiencies In Your Digestive System (And How To Do It Without Wasting $10+ Per "meal" On Ridiculous Juice Cleanses)

Topic 18: The Great Soy Myth (and The Truth About Soy in Eastern Asia)

Topic 19: How Chemicals In Food Make Us Fat (Plus 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply)

Topic 20: 10 Banned Chemicals Still in the U.S. Food Supply

Topic 21: How To Protect Yourself Against Chronic Inflammation (What Time Magazine Calls A "Secret Killer")

Topic 22: The Truth About Buying Organic: Secrets The Health Food Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

Topic 23: Choosing High Quality Foods

Topic 24: A Recipe For Rapid Aging: The "Hidden" Compounds Stealing Your Youth, Minute by Minute

Topic 25: 7 Steps To Reduce AGEs and Slow Aging

Topic 26: The 10-second Trick That Can Slash Your Risk Of Cardiovascular Mortality By 37% (Most Traditional Cultures Have Done This For Centuries, But The Pharmaceutical Industry Would Be Up In Arms If More Modern-day Americans Knew About It)

Topic 27: How To Clean Up Your Liver and Vital Organs

Topic 28: The Simple Detox 'Cheat Sheet': How To Easily and Properly Cleanse, Nourish, and Rid Your Body of Dangerous Toxins (and Build a Lean Well-Oiled "Machine" in the Process)

Topic 29: How To Deal With the "Stress Hormone" Before It Deals With You

Topic 30: 7 Common Sense Ways to Have Uncommon Peace of Mind (or How To Stop Your "Stress Hormone" In Its Tracks)

Topic 31: How To Sleep Like A Baby (And Wake Up Feeling Like A Boss)

Topic 32: The 8-step Formula That Finally "fixes" Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested (If You Ever Find Yourself Hitting The Snooze Every Morning Or Dozing Off At Work, These Steps Will Change Your Life Forever)

Topic 33: For Even Better Leg Up And/or See Faster Results In Fixing Years Of Poor Sleep, Including Trouble Falling Asleep, Staying Asleep, And Waking Up Rested, Do The Following:

Topic 34: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 35: Part 1 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 36: Part 2 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 37: Part 3 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 38: Part 4 of 4: Solution To Overcoming Your Mental Barriers and Cultivating A Winner's Mentality

Topic 39: How To Beat Your Mental Roadblocks And Why It Can Be The Difference Between A Happy, Satisfying Life And A Sad, Fearful Existence (These Strategies Will Reduce Stress, Increase Productivity And Show You How To Fulfill All Your Dreams)

Topic 40: Maximum Fat Loss in Minimum Time: The Body Type Solution To Quick, Lasting Results

Topic 41: If You Want Maximum Results In Minimum Time You're Going To Have To Work Out (And Workout Hard, At That)

Topic 42: Food Planning For Maximum Fat Loss In Minimum Time

Topic 43: How To Lose Weight Fast If You're in Chronic Pain

Topic 44: Nutrition Basics for Fast Pain Relief (and Weight Loss)

Topic 45: How To Track Results (And Not Fall Into the Trap That Ruins 95% of Well-Thought Out Diets)

Topic 46: Advanced Fat Loss - Calorie Cycling, Carb Cycling and Intermittent Fasting

Topic 47: Advanced Fat Loss - Part I: Calorie Cycling

Topic 48: Advanced Fat Loss - Part II: Carb Cycling

Topic 49: Advanced Fat Loss - Part III: Intermittent Fasting

Topic 50: Putting It All Together

Learn more by visiting our website here: invigoratenow.com

[unknought]

Entering the park, you strip away the layers of your vision.

Gone is the default public layer which would tell you where you are, what time it is, what the weather is going to be, where to walk to best avoid crowds. Gone is the layer provided by the park specifically, which would attach to each bird and tree a label indicating its species and providing various fun facts, and which would show you the history of each bench and sculpture. Gone are the social media layers giving windows into the lives of your friends, gone are the couple of augmented reality games that are normally an ambient presence in your life. You keep on an emergency layer, so that if someone needs to contact you or there's a disaster, you'll know. But otherwise reality is stripped down to its bottom layer, the shared physical world you can't choose to opt out of.

You sit down on a bench. Nearby, on what used to be a basketball court, a group of teenagers is playing a game. With all your layers off, you can only see half of what's going on: You can see the players running around, but not the game world which coordinates and motivates their actions. Judging by their yelling and their gestures, you infer that they're working together to defeat some large monster by casting spells at it.

One of the kids crouches and then jumps eight feet straight into the air. You're not old, but you're old enough that this seems strange, all these human bodies doing things that human bodies can't do. It's often said that such augmentations are improvements on evolution's work (the less blasphemous cousin of an older boast) but you know that that's not really true. Modified bodies like the child's consume more calories and are more damage-prone. In an environment like the one their ancestors evolved in, they would probably have starved to death or been immobilized by injury. Now, food is plentiful and deadly injuries are rare, so such concerns are less of an issue. It's not that augmented bodies are better than unmodified ones in an objective sense, just that they're optimized for a drastically different world.

For all the yelling of the children and chirping of the birds, there's a certain quietness to the world stripped bare of its extraneous layers. Watching a small flock of birds peck at birdseed someone scattered in the grass before you arrived, there's a certain… You don't want to say realness: You know better than to pretend that the things that happen in the other layers are unreal, and you've only recently kicked the habit of calling the base layer “the real world”. You don't want to say authenticity: You're pretty sure those are starlings, you know the whole stupid story of how they came to be in North America, and there's nothing authentic about it. But there's a concreteness, at least, in knowing that those birds exist for everyone in the park, and not just for you.

There's a woman walking slowly through the grass, intent on something you have trouble deciphering. She's middle-aged, slightly gaunt, with long messy brown hair. She's wearing grass-stained blue jeans and a ratty jacket, and she's carrying a trash bag. She keeps kneeling down, running her fingers through the grass, picking things off the ground, and putting them in her bag. Your first guess would be that she's picking up litter –good for her!– but she's being so meticulous about each little patch that she could never hope to cover a significant area. And it doesn't look like she's trying to: She's moving in a slow straight line, picking things up from a narrow strip only a couple feet wide, and ignoring everything outside the strip.

She sees you watching, and smiles and waves. You smile back and then look away, embarrassed to have been caught staring. But you keep finding yourself looking back. Her trajectory will take her within ten feet of the bench you're sitting on. She's not walking straight toward you, so it isn't creepy, but the fact that she keeps getting closer makes her difficult to ignore.

“You're probably wondering what I'm doing!” she half-shouts, once she's close enough to you. You hadn't intended to ask, but it's hard to deny that you had been wondering. You give her an expectant look.

“I'm clearing a fairy path! A small one, admittedly. Over there is a thorn bush,” she points to a rosebush a hundred feet away, “which the fairies use as a home. Over here is a fairy ring, which they use for dances and meetings.” Indeed, there's a circle of white mushrooms half-hidden in the grass behind the bench.

She seems harmless enough, and you don't have anywhere to be, so you decide to humor her. “Why do you need to clear the path for them? Couldn't they do that themselves?”

She drops her bag on the grass, bounds over to the bench, and sits down next to you, clearly thrilled to have an audience. “Actually, no! They're not very good at affecting human things, like litter. As for why I do it, the traditional reason is to prevent them from retaliating with blights and abductions and so forth. But I doubt these ones have the ability to do anything that serious. I'm mostly just doing this because I want them to be happy and successful.”

You're still trying to figure out whether this is a strange joke or she actually believes what she's saying, and apparently it shows on your face, because she chuckles a bit ruefully and says “You don't believe me. I can't blame you! I don't think I would believe in fairies either, if I couldn't see them for myself.”

This doesn't make you any less confused, but at least there's an obvious next question. “You can see fairies?”

“Yes, I've always been able to. I was the youngest of four children –I had two older sisters and an older brother– and before any of us were born my father promised his third daughter to a fairy prince, not as a bride but as a possession. I don't know what he gained from the bargain. The fairies wouldn't tell me, and Dad died before I was old enough to ask. But I'm guessing it was my mother's love. Very few other things went right in his life, and apparently a lot of people were surprised when she fell for him.

“I was born belonging to the fairies, with one foot in their world and one foot in ours. During the daytime my life wasn't too different from any other child's. I could see goblins out of the corner of my eye and fairy writing in the arrangements of flower petals, but I still went to school and had friends and enemies and crushes. But every night I was taken away to the fairy prince's palace.

“There I was taught to sing and dance and tell stories, and I was told that my role was to bear the fairy prince a child. If I could not provide him a child, I would be given up to the fairies' Hunt. If I could, I would be treated like royalty for the course of my pregnancy, then the baby would be taken from me and I would be given up to the fairies' Hunt.

“On my… I hesitate to call it a wedding night, but on the night my father's sale of me was to be consummated, the prince asked me to tell him a story. The story I told is not one which would interest you –just the mundanities of my daily life, my siblings and friends and classes– but it was strange to him, and I told it well. He fell asleep with his head resting in my lap.

“I tied him up with his own belt, held his own knife to his throat, and made him promise to let me go, to leave me and mine alone, and to never take human girls unwillingly again. 'Why didn't you kill me?' he asked. 'I've killed girls like you before. I was going to kill you. Why let me live?'”

She stares off into space. “'You're beautiful,' is what I told him. I know that sounds stupid, but that's just because you didn't see him for yourself. I could describe him to you –the flowers in his hair, the luster of his skin– but it wouldn't make any sense to you. If you had seen him, you would understand how beautiful he was, and how he was beautiful, and why I couldn't destroy something like that.”

She pauses, watching for your reaction. This is all a bit more than you bargained for. It seems to go beyond mere superstition, but other than the content of what she's saying, there's nothing to make you doubt her sincerity or her sanity. But there's something infectious about the narrative she's spinning, that makes it easy to play along.

“So why are you helping them, then?” you ask. “I would think that after an experience like that, you would want to have as little to do with fairies as possible. But you said you were clearing the path for their benefit.”

“It's the same reason, really,” she says. “They're beautiful, and we're killing them, and I can't bear to let that happen. I'm trying to save them from us.”

She pauses for a few seconds, thinking. “Do you know what a fairy is?” She doesn't wait for an answer. “A fairy is a thing which is diminished. They used to say that fairies were angels or devils which had been trapped on Earth. They used to say that fairies were old pagan gods which had been demoted to things to scare children with. They used to say that fairies were an older race of people who had once owned the land but had been driven into the shadows and under the hills by invaders. They were right. When the Victorians reinterpreted fairies as mischievous little sprites instead of the dangerous otherworldly beings they had been in the past, they were right. For all of human history we've been pushing the fairies deeper and deeper into the dark corners of the world, weakening them, and they're running out of places to hide.”

“What are we doing to diminish them, though? I've never fought a fairy, I'm pretty sure most people haven't,” you say, a little more belligerently than you intended. “Is it just like a Tinkerbell thing? Every time someone says 'I don't believe in fairies,' one of them dies?”

“No… It's not really about belief, at least not human belief. The world is made up of multiple stories of how it might work. These stories aren't always consistent with each other, and sometimes there's friction where two stories clash and the universe has to figure out how to resolve a contradiction. There used to be many stories and many peoples, existing not exactly in harmony but in something like balance. But there was one story which was so totalizing and convincing that it nearly convinced the universe that it was the only one. That story has had many parts: The development of iron tools was one, which struck the first major blow against the fairies for control of the world. Monotheism as the backbone of the great Christian and Islamic empires was another. More recently, and more powerfully, was the Scientific Revolution.”

“You're anti-science, then? Narrow-minded scientists are removing all the mystery and magic from the world?”

“Not at all! Science is a beautiful thing, and I appreciate modern medicine and conveniences as much as anyone else. But science seeks to obtain a coherent understanding of how the world is; it leaves little room for contradictory stories. When you use experiments and observation to ask the world what the answer to your question is, you cannot help but whisper in its ear that there is a single answer and that all others are false.”

“So science is mapping all the dark corners of the world and leaving less and less room for the fairies to hide in. Isn't what you're doing hopeless, then? Soon there will be nowhere left to hide, and they'll go extinct.”

She grins unexpectedly. “Nope! The modern world is driving them out of their old hiding spots, but it's starting to make new ones for them. All they need to do is survive long enough to make the transition.” She gestures at the basketball court, where the teenagers are still performing impossible acrobatics in response to something you can't see. “Look at them. Look at their willingness to accept a world that isn't real for you. Look at what they can do, think about the modifications that have been in the news lately: lizard people, flower people, people with wings. Soon many of the more humanlike fairies will be just another face in the crowd, and they'll be able to walk among us freely.”

She looks suddenly shy, for the first time since she started talking to you. “Would you like to see them? The fairies?”

Confused, you nod.

“Turn on your public layer,” she tells you.

You do, and she sends you a short message: The name and password to a layer of the park hidden from public view. Both appear to be random twenty-character strings of alphanumerics; nothing that anyone could possibly hope to guess. You turn on the hidden layer.

The air is filled with pollen or spores in half a dozen colors, so thick that the sun is partially blotted out. The trees visible in the base layer are still here, but their trunks extend impossibly far upwards, their tops vanishing into the cloud of pollen. On the fairy path there is a procession of moths with two-foot wingspans, crawling from the ring to the bush single-file and in time, alternating black and white. On the far side of the basketball court there is a towering humanoid creature, twelve feet tall, whose skin is mostly gray-brown and covered in snaking roots, but whose head is many-colored and shaped like the flower of a gigantic orchid. A seven-foot python with ice-blue human eyes lies curled around the far leg of the bench. It makes eye contact, then swiftly begins to uncoil and slither towards you.

You turn off the layer in a panic. The woman looks at you, crestfallen, and without saying a word stands up, walks back to her bag, and resumes her task.

This doesn't prove anything. It's barely even evidence. Anyone could set up a private layer with whatever they wanted on it. The animation was pretty good, but maybe she's an artist, or has an artist friend, or downloaded the art for somewhere. All this shows is that she or someone cared enough to set up the layer. It's certainly not enough to show that your whole worldview, your whole metaphysics is wrong.

But still. Next time you visit the park you check for the hidden layer. (Your name and password combination doesn't work, so either the login information has changed or the layer is gone entirely.) And you pick up the shred of candy bar wrapper lying in the mushroom circle. Just in case.

[jackfallows]

What’s a Cryptogram Puzzle Post? An Autobiographical Essay on Comics, Symbolism, Magic & Game Mechanics

Back in March this year, I began probably my most ambitious self-publishing project to date – Cryptogram Puzzle Post. The main barrier I’ve faced in terms of marketing so far is that it isn’t easily summed up in a sentence but this is also what I find most infectious about it from a creative perspective. For now, I’ve been describing it as ‘a monthly bundle of interlinking puzzles, codes, spells and illusions inspired by witchcraft and alchemy’. If you want to know more about what that looks like in real terms or how you can support it, there’s lots of information over on the website.

But I wanted to get into the guts of it here because although it may seem as though it’s sprung out of left field, it’s actually been a natural, even inevitable, distillation of all the things I find fascinating in life. And I want to define the links and interplay between those things because deconstructing everything is also a favourite pastime of mine, and kind of the umbrella under which the whole project could be placed.

So let’s start with comics - the love of my life and the medium and community that has served as the well from which I’ve drawn the majority of my craft. First off, let me just say that I think the comics industry is as problematic as any other kind of mass media industry. For starters, it’s unfairly pigeon-holed when represented in more mainstream media like television, so that our cultural understanding still tends to follow two very tired assumptions; either they’re about superheroes and therefore for straight, white, twenty-something men with poor social skills, or they’re sub-literature designed to bridge the gap into ‘proper’ literature for young people (and as such are silly and should be ‘grown out of’ by a certain age). I think these stereotypes exist for a reason but of course, I don’t subscribe to either of them and it’s been very encouraging within my lifetime to observe a significant shift in not only attitudes towards comics but also a diversification of their content, audiences and creators.

However, in no way is this to say that the industry isn’t still rife with abuse, misogyny, bigotry, and fascism in certain pockets; from Frank Miller’s steady decline into a paranoid right-wing fantasist to the endless list of creators who have been called out for sexually aggressive and/or abusive behaviour to little or no repercussions; not to mention the almost weekly onslaught of covers objectifying women’s bodies so barely-acknowledged at this point that it’s almost become its own tradition. And the list goes on, of course. In other words, there have been countless reasons to bow out of comics over the years, and where that urge has avoided me then at the very least I’ve felt a tangible level of trepidation when meeting people for the first time and telling them I’m a cartoonist, or work in a comic shop, or collect comics.

But the thing that keeps me coming back is the medium itself, the mechanics, the symbolism, the process, the untapped potential and the infinite possibilities not yet explored (impeded, even, by the cultural assumptions discussed above). People like Scott McCloud, Lynda Barry and Chris Ware have explored these ideas in ways far smarter than I could or would presume to here, so if you want a more thorough exploration than the one I’m about to offer, I recommend seeking out their work, writing, interviews and talks on the subject. But here’s how I think a life in comics has given way to this project, and why I think fans of comics have responded supportively to it so far:

Comics are a language of symbols. When a cartoonist draws a character, object or background, they’re rarely trying to recreate the way we engage with those things in real life, and if they’re the kind of cartoonist I get excited about, they’re also not trying to recreate the way we engage with those things in any other medium either. That’s why ‘wide-screen’ comics, photorealistic artwork and other such tropes tend to turn me off – trying to force Hollywood in there where it simply isn’t needed, overlooking the tools at your disposal, borrowing too heavily from more socially accepted mediums, following the money etc. all just leave a weird taste in my mouth. On the other hand, the cartoonists I admire concern themselves with trying to distil characters, objects and backgrounds into a form that will convey the idea or feeling they wish to communicate most efficiently. This is why when I run comic book workshops, the first thing I try to establish with participants is that being a skilled illustrator is not a prerequisite for making a successful comic book.

If it was possible to just smash that idea, we would not only kill part of an unhelpful culture surrounding comics that sees it being graded unfairly against other mediums in what we perceive as its “ballpark” – i.e. in terms of what TV shows or illustrations have that they don’t (slick production values or soundtracks for example), but we also see something like the recent groundswell in indie comics publishing where suddenly hundreds of unique voices are not only speaking loudly, they’re being heard for the first time and are being the first things heard by a new generation of fans.

The comic artists I most enjoy have an understanding of clarity, flow and immediacy, and they can bend those skills to fit a multitude of purposes, art styles, lengths and formats. From a creative perspective, that immediacy is also one of the most soul-crushing aspects of the medium as a creator too; often the hours of tedious monotony and forwards planning and experimentation is concerned with subtraction – it’s about streamlining the work to a point where the images and text become so consistent to the reader that they almost go actively unnoticed, only registering on a subliminal level. The potential hours that can be put into creating a panel may very well be to achieve the aim that it is only ‘read’ for a fraction of a second between other panels. Conversely, drawings and compositions can be utilised to make you linger, they can offer modes of engagement that are intrinsically linked to the story, or that act as a set-up for a contrasting pay-off later on. They are a medium; a language of symbols that it is discouraging to see so many people learn only to the extent you might learn the conversational basics of a foreign language at school. There’s a lot to be said beyond asking the time and ordering drinks.

And this habit of reducing things into symbols is manifest in so much of human endeavour for as far back as we are able to catalogue and observe; whether it’s the language systems we’ve developed to communicate with each other, the records we’ve kept as cave paintings, hieroglyphs, tapestries and books, the short-hands we use in our study of chemistry, mathematics, engineering and so on, down to the instant-recognisability we aspire to with logos and branding. And this last arena is a true testament to the power of symbolism, as it has given way to one of the most competitive industries on the planet. Capitalist and consumer culture relies on our almost primal relationship with symbols in order to thrive – what is McDonalds without the golden arches? What is Coca Cola without swirly white lettering against a red background? Symbols permeate everything we do, from the red, amber and green lights on our roads to the WiFi symbol stuck to the coffee shop window.

But our understanding of these symbols is a learned one; there is often no inherent link between the signifier and the thing it signifies, except a common (but not necessary) visual clue. Even words themselves are meaningless sounds and shapes until we actively build those connections between them and our lived experiences; which is to say there is nothing inherent in the word ‘orange’ that has anything to do with the fruit or the colour; if I wanted to (and I don’t) I could teach my child when he’s born that ‘orange’ is the word we use for chairs and he could go on reclining on oranges without any confusion about what that word meant on his part. In other words, a symbol out of context is devoid of content. And the meaning of symbols is not fixed or immune to personal, cultural or historical forces either.

So where does witchcraft and alchemy come in? Well that part is probably less surprising to people who know me or my work but there were slightly more considered reasons than pure aesthetic preference (although it’s still not certain which reasons had most bearing on the decision). I’ve been fascinated with witchcraft for a long time but have only properly started researching over the last year or two. To begin with, I was gearing up to make a long-form comic about a present-day coven that would act as a vehicle to explore the survival and recovery of abused people and their associated mental health issues.

The more documented history I’ve devoured, the more distinctly I recognise an evil that has survived the ages, as rampant now as ever before but appearing very differently – namely, man’s hatred of (powerful) women. Not only that but I recognise a culture of deafening silence surrounding abuse and/or the mistreatment of people suffering with mental health difficulties. There is so much parallel to be drawn between the dangerous and hysterical witch-hunts carried out by hateful, bigoted and above all terrified men in Salem during the 1690’s and their counterparts on Twitter, 2017. But I’m not about to draw those parallels because, like with the mechanics of comic books, far more qualified and interesting people have already taken the time to do this for us. As a survivor, a queer and a person who suffers from mental health issues, there is enough in there for me to identify somewhat with that history while also being so foreign to it that there is always more to learn.

This is especially true where actual practiced magic is concerned, as opposed to baseless prosecutions against hated women who weren’t witches. For example, actual witches frequently used (and still use) symbolism in their craft, science and medicine. Alchemy was considered magic until science caught up and now we shorten ‘alchemist’ to ‘chemist’ when we pop into Boots for our prescription. These were people breaking ground based on experimentation and intuition, understanding the flow and symmetry in the world and using that to redirect things when they got out of whack. Lots of it probably didn’t work, or worked as a placebo, lots of it did but not yet very efficiently, lots was deliberate superstition but all was carried out with conviction that there was more beyond what we can currently name and observe in the world, and there is good reason to explore it.

As part of my own recovery process over the last year or so I’ve gotten into meditation again and although there’s a bit of a gross cult surrounding ‘mindfulness’ at the moment, a lot of the basic ideas in there are ones I can get behind. Being in open, green spaces and just spending a bit of time taking things in and giving my attention to them does great things for my brain, and its encouraged by mindfulness – slowing down enough to be present and observe. I think the reason this works for me is because, subconsciously or otherwise, I begin to recognise the balance of things, not unlike a witch in a meditative state (or ‘trance’ or ‘possession’ as it was often misdiagnosed). Nature has its affairs in order – it knows roughly where the earth is on its axis and orbit around the sun, there are cycles of give and take on each level that allow everything its fair chance; again, I probably can’t tell you as much about this as David Attenborough but it does make perfect sense to me. If you have suffered trauma or live with mental health issues, you are used to being dominated by the fear of everything that is out of your control and the universe can really throw you a bone by convincing you there are some cogs in the machine still turning as intended, a few basic rules that all things must follow and a way to pretty accurately predict possible outcomes.

Which brings me nicely to games. I’ve had a lifelong relationship with tabletop games that is as passionate as it is strange to lots of people. My favourite thing about buying a new game is unboxing it, looking at all the pieces and above all else reading the rules; I like to play the game too, of course, but only to see the rules come to life. I’m not competitive, I’m not a very good strategist and I’m more likely to try and create a game when I’m bored than I am to play one I already own. A good rule system has the same effect on my brain as observing nature in action. I find the symmetry and the variables and the interplay between theme, aesthetics and interactivity completely spellbinding. Games are a rich and diverse medium, that allows creators to build worlds, tell stories and engage the ‘readers’ of that story in a way unlike any other. I have had gaming sessions where just as effectively as any novel or comic or movie, the mechanics have been able to immerse me in fully-realised fantasy universes, make clear and nuanced political points or elicit strong emotive responses.

In short, I’ve been spoiled, and as such there are two things within this medium that I think it’s wasteful to overlook. Firstly, a tabletop game is a kind of ritual and whether it’s played alone, with friends, partners or strangers there are people present and the ritual cannot be completed without them. Factoring human beings and all their associated quirks and abstractions into your game mechanics is a way to instantly give ownership and investment to players and to potentially increase the replayability of the game itself to an infinite degree. Like a coven of witches chanting in a circle, if one of them disengages because they have nothing to do or nothing of bearing to observe until it’s their turn again, the spell can quickly be broken and the ritual made a failure. People should be at the centre of the game play, rather than being the robots procedurally facilitating it.

Secondly, there should always be an element of choice for any action a player carries out; even if there is only one obvious choice in terms of achieving a given goal, the ability to wilfully sabotage that goal for no reason other than exercising the right should be built in; even if the choices given involve rolling dice and leaving the outcome in the hands of fate; even if the choices given are all stinkers and none of them appeal. Players should be given agency otherwise they cease to be players at all. We need the freedom to explore and learn through action if we hope to fully understand the universe created by the game designer. What kind of witch would create a spell for something that will happen inevitably anyway? The worlds we build in games should have balance and symmetry but should in no way be prescriptive or unable to be influenced by the players, otherwise the magic will die.

These considerations become interesting when transposing them onto puzzles, of course. With a puzzle, the experience you attempt to create for the gamer is one of unravelling a mystery with a single, concrete answer. So player choice lies in how to interpret the symbolism on each page and building in red herrings, or dichotomies, or even multiple paths to reach the same conclusion. And human-centred play lies in recognising the format of the game play; it’s printed onto paper and will be picked up and handled, it’s usually a solitary experience and therefore will slow down and speed up, placing more importance on maintaining a consistent atmosphere and making the puzzles reflective of the story and vice versa. In essence, I’m trying to provide the tools necessary to carry out a ritual that will transport you to and engage you in a fictional world. And like many of the comics and games that I enjoy, this wouldn’t be possible without tapping into that primal relationship we have with symbolism or that naturally meditative state we achieve when attempting to find the balance and order in the world around us (be it fictional or otherwise).

I don’t think I would class Cryptogram Puzzle Post as magic or comics or even as a game in the strictest sense but it definitely couldn’t exist without everything those mediums have taught me. And I’m excited to find out how much more there is to learn.

[actuallyschizoid]

More thoughts on schizoid motivation

It’s one of those life-long ongoing problems for me, so excuse me if I talk too much about it. Can’t help it. But still...

What a tricky thing this schizoid motivation is, huh?

It’s tough to pinpoint what it is all about exactly. And probably that’s not the same way for most other schizoids out there. But here’s how it is for me. 

The difference between having motivation and not having it is not just drastic. It’s overwhelming. It changes everything. The very essence of how I think, what I do or don’t do, what I’m capable of doing... At about 95% it depends on whether I am motivated to it. Or more like interested in, even. 

There’s very little else that can ever stop me from whatever I’m doing. Other than not wanting to. Just understanding that doing it would be in my interests, that it’s profitable to me in some way, there’s some gain in it... that was never enough even to get me to move a single finger. 

More so, even 100% understanding that *not* doing it would be harmful for me in long- (or even short-) term wouldn’t cut it most of the time. I get bored in an instant even by things I kinda like... in theory. On practice it turns out my “liking” is still schizoid “liking”, which means it’s really just that dim and lacks enough intensity to serve as a motivation. 

Which means I can’t sustain any kind of ambition for anything in my life. I just flow along the current, thinking “meh, that’d be nice if there was something worthy enough to make me move a bit, maybe I’d make it somewhere from here”. 

But here I am, 3 and a half months away from hitting 30 y.o., living with my parents, doing just about nothing, feeling just about nothing, having no goals other than to keep on breathing for awhile longer, if possible... 

And it’d be fine for the most part, really. Not that I could get myself to care enough otherwise. If not for that tiny fact that I *know* it can be different sometimes. Honestly, I’d prefer not knowing it. 

But I always knew it enough to never find myself being capable of doubting it with all honesty. And I sure tried to doubt it. But the fact is that I actually *can* do things. No, that sounded wrong. I mean I’m *really fucking good* at getting things done. Just about any things. I’m actually way better then average at it. Assuming I’ve motivation for whatever it is. Sure, most of the time I got none of that. But in those very rare occasions when I do...

I can work 15 hours a day for weeks non-stop. I can go on until late morning without breaks to eat (I’d just forget I need food for a few days and would just burn through a few kg fat instead). Then I’d have 5-6 hours of sleep and be just fine to wake up and swap right into whatever I’m on to. 

I can learn new things on the go without acknowledging those were new things to me. I’d just google absolutely unknown to me things like coding languages, grab them and just go on to adapt it to whatever thing I’m doing without bothering to understand them properly first. Only to realize a few weeks later that it was kinda crazy to expect this to work while it *actually worked*. 

When in that motivated state, I can’t really imagine something like a task I won’t be able to complete due to it being too hard or too time consuming or me not having enough skill or knowledge for it. I wouldn’t care a first thing of whether I get anything in return for all those efforts, be it money or anything else. Heck, sometimes I wouldn’t even care if doing it would cause me to get something I’d really rather not gain in return. Like dragging attention to myself. Though of course of all thing that could stop me, motivation aside, that’d be next on the list. 

When I’m motivated, I feel no anxiety or doubts about my own abilities. I don’t require any external approval to keep going. Disapproval won’t be a problem either (it actually might help to stay motivated for a bit longer). I have no fear of failure and can bang on the unbreakable wall of problem over and over again until it shatters. I make mistakes, sure, but I admit them, fix them and keep going. 

Somewhere here you might ask, “the fuck’s your problem, if that’s the case”? Well... problem is that I don’t really know how to control it. I never can get that kind of motivation (the only kind I can have, anyway) when I need it the most. I can’t direct it where I need it. I can’t even make it stop when I don’t need it. 

Thing is... I don’t really *feel* it. I know (or, well, I guess) there is an emotion behind it somewhere. But I don’t feel that emotion. I don’t feel joy or anything like that when I’m on it. Or at least I don’t perceive feeling it, as with most other emotions. I can only experience side effects of it (being productive, among others), deducting that it’s probably there somewhere, beyond my capacity of understanding. 

Of course, the more chances to experience it I get, the more I know about it. It’s rare and hard to reflect upon since generally I’m busy with more important things when it happens. I can only examine my own memories of it when it’s already no more (like now). 

One unfortunate thing I get to understand is that it seems to be tied to other people. Unfortunate - because, y’know, I really don’t like the idea of anything of mine being tied to other people. That just sucks. And is yet another reason to not really chase it all that much. But then again, it’s curious, as to how... 

It might be different from time to time, but at least sometimes it feels almost like I borrow that motivation from people around me. Or maybe even steal it, appropriate until they run out of fuel. Most of the time it is somehow connected to someone else being interested in whatever I’m doing. But then there’s this extra tricky general requirement... It must not be too personal. If it is personal, then it works the other way around. It would stop me from even trying to think that way. 

It is also not quite positive kind of motivation. I mean, it seems to originate from all the things I rather dislike and try to avoid. Which might explain why it is so rare, to think of it...

That probably makes little sense. I’ll try with a fresh example. A couple months ago I accidentally started a project of a website. Maybe I’ll tell more about it later, but for now just the motivational part. 

So it started with a joke on twitter. Someone said an ordinary tweet line with a rhetorical question. I seconded it with a notion that I had even thought to do something like that myself. In response I got “Do it!”, in obviously not a serious way, like a finishing line that suggests no follow up action or answer. From random dude I don’t know and have no obligations to.

And yet somehow it was enough of an initial trigger. Next day I replied with something like “challenge accepted, challenge complete” and a link to a website I made over a couple hours which sufficed the initial “request” (despite its author never intended of it being filled). Even though it was made out of long as outdated free code which I just googled and installed with a bunch of small fixes.

Key moment? I felt something. Dunno what, not even sure if I liked it. But it’s so rare I actually feel things that it was enough of motivation in itself. Even though there wasn’t anything serious about this whole thing. And it had a lot to do with people. But if not for that, I wouldn’t ever move my ass to actually do it, no matter how many times I thought of it. 

Anyway, it turned out this random dude (who happened to have 10k+ followers) retweeted my answer and the link, and it got a bit of attention. Not much, but maybe 200-400 likes&retweets plus a few publications in medium-sized communities and media. Which ended up leading over 1k people to reg on that website. 

Should I even mention that was rather disturbing thing for me? I mean, I dislike attention as is, even positive variation of it. Yet actively disliking it still means feeling more then nothing... Yep, that did it. 

So I’ve spent next few weeks working on bringing that website to more or less usable state (it really wasn’t much initially, since it was done more like a joke than anything). Like, really... I’ve managed to set a priority on that task over just about all my usual stuff like playing games I’m sick of playing for years or watching tv-shows I’m sick of watching for years or... well, you get the idea.

Can’t say I enjoyed it... though can’t say I didn’t either. I don’t know what I felt. Surprise, eh? Me not understanding feels? Who’d thought... But it was much more intense then what I get to experience usually. It made me engaged in process even though I still couldn’t care what would happen with that project. 

Key element here? It just happened that there were people interested in what I’m doing. I had no idea who were those people and couldn’t give a flying fuck about them, what they like and why they like it. More importantly, they didn’t give shit about me. Thankfully. They had no idea who I am (I’m working from anon nickname which has no connection to my real name). Which gave me a bit of freedom to act.

Yet it only worked for as long as *they* had interest in this. The moment there wasn’t enough interest for this project to go on from random people, my interest also ceased to exist. I guess I could still scrap a bit of it to finish the most important stuff, but all in all I no longer care what happens of it. Can’t help it, really. Though I wonder if I could get it back if more people with fresh interest would come in. Maybe I’ll even check that theory in a bit.

Still, kinda sucks, huh? Maybe I wasn’t interested in it to begin with. Maybe those weren’t my emotions and motivation? Maybe I just mirrored it like I always do with other emotions. Maybe I only made myself think I felt something, but in fact those weren’t my feelings after all... 

But I guess that doesn’t even matter. As long as it works. I think I still kinda like that I have this hidden skill, no matter how unpredictable and ambiguously useful it is. 

Eh, so I ended up writing yet another wall of text. Oh well. Can’t help it. ^^’ And you’ll have to scroll though it coz I don’t feel like using a readmore today. 

Still, if someone’s planning to read through that, let me know if you experience something similar. 

Edit: rebloggable version.

[isearchgoood]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

via Blogger https://ift.tt/38ciULe #blogger #bloggingtips #bloggerlife #bloggersgetsocial #ontheblog #writersofinstagram #writingprompt #instapoetry #writerscommunity #writersofig #writersblock #writerlife #writtenword #instawriters #spilledink #wordgasm #creativewriting #poetsofinstagram #blackoutpoetry #poetsofig

[whitelabelseoreseller]

Heart, Ear, Eye, Mind, Mouth: Local SEO Exercises for Your Least Technical Clients

Posted by MiriamEllis

When was the last time you relaxed with a client?

As a local business consultant, I know that deeper marketing insights can be discovered when you set aside formality and share experiences: a moment, a laugh, a common bond. 

When I’m looking for ways to make life easier for a client, I sometimes reflect on ancient practices like yoga, tai chi, and mindful breathing, which are increasingly understood as beneficial to human health. For a space in time, they reduce the complex world we live in to a simpler one where being, breath, movement, and focus bring the practitioner to a more intuitive state. 

Local marketing agencies can empathize with the complex world their clients inhabit. Local business owners must manage everything from rent and employee benefits to customer service, business reviews, web content, and online listings. When you take on a new client, you expect them to onboard a ton of information about marketing their brand online. Sometimes, the most basic motivations go unaddressed and get lost in assumptions and jargon — instead of decreasing client stress for your least technical clients, you can accidentally increase it. 

Today, I’ll help you newly create an intuitive space by sharing five simple meditation exercises you can use with your agency’s clients. Instead of signaling via SEO, CTR, USPs, and GMB, let’s relax with clients by relating successful local search marketing practices to experiences people at any level of technical proficiency already understand.

Heart

To show their heart is in the right place, the Vermont Country Store publishes a customer bill of rights.

For a local business owner, there is no more important quality than having their heart in the right place when it comes to their motivation for running a company.

Yes, all of us work to earn money, but it’s the dedication to serving others that is felt by customers in every interaction with them. When customers feel that a business is there for them, it establishes the loyalty and reputation that secure local search marketing success. 

Heart meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of a time in your life when you most needed help from a business. Maybe you needed a tow truck, a veterinarian, a dentist, or a plumber. You really needed them to understand your plight, deliver the right help, and treat you as an important person who is worthy of respect. Whether you received what you required or not, remember the feeling of need. 

Now, extend that recognition beyond your own heart to the heart of every customer who feels a need for something your client can offer them.

A business owner with their heart in the right place can powerfully contribute to local search marketing by:

Running a customer-centric business.

Creating customer guarantees that are fair.

Creating an employee culture of respect and empowerment that extends to customers.

Creating a location that is clean, functional, and pleasant for all.

Honestly representing their products, services, location, and reputation.

Refraining from practices that negatively impact their customers and reputation.

Participating positively in the life of the community they serve.

A good local search marketing agency will help the business owner translate these basics into online content that meets customer needs, local business listings that accurately and richly represent the business, and genuine reviews that serve as a healthy and vital ongoing conversation between the brand and its customers. A trustworthy agency will ensure avoidance of any tactics that pollute the Internet with spam listings, spam reviews, negative attacks on competitors, and negative impacts on the service community. An excellent agency will also assist in finding and promoting community engagement opportunities, helping to win desirable online publicity from offline efforts.

Ear

Keter Salon of Berkeley, Calif. really listens to customers and it shows in its reviews.

Local business success is so linked to the art of listening, I sometimes think Google should replace their teardrop map markers with little ears. In the local SEO world, there are few things sadder than seeing local business profiles filled with disregarded reviews, questions, and negative photos. (Someone cue “The Sound of Silence”.)

From a business perspective, the sound of branded silence is also the sound of customers and profits trickling away. Why does it work this way? Because only 4% of your unhappy customers may actually make the effort to speak up, and if a business owner is not even hearing them, they’ve lost the ability to hear consumer demand. Let’s make sure this doesn’t happen.

Ear meditation

Close your eyes for a few seconds and listen closely to every noise within the range of your hearing. Ask yourself, “Where am I?”

The sound of typing, phone calls, and co-workers chatting might place you in an office. Sliding doors, footsteps on linoleum, and floor staff speaking might mean you’re at your client's brick-and-mortar location. Maybe it’s birdsong outside and the baby in their crib that tell you you’re working from home today. Listen to every sound that tells you exactly where you are right now.

Now, commit to listening with this level of attention and intention to the signals of customer voices, telling you exactly where a local brand is right now in terms of faults and successes. 

A business owner who keeps their ears open can actively gauge how their business is really doing with its customers by:

Having one-on-one conversations with customers.

Recording and analyzing phone conversations with customers.

Reading reviews on platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook and sites that are specific to their industry (like Avvo for lawyers or Healthgrades for physicians).

Reading the Q&A questions of customers on their Google Business Profile.

Reading mentions of their brand on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Reading the responses to surveys they conduct.

Reading the emails and form submissions the company receives.

A good local search marketing agency will help their client amass, organize, and analyze all of this sentiment to discover the current reputation of the business. From this information, you and your client can chart a course for improvement. Consider that, in this study, a 1.5 star improvement in online reputation increased consumer activity by 10%-12% and generated 13,000 more leads for the brands included. The first step to a better reputation is simply listening. 

Eye

Moz’s Local Market Analytics (Beta) helps you see your market through customer location emulation.

When your clients choose their business locations, they weigh several factors. They compare how the mantra of “location, location, location” matches their budget, and whether a certain part of town is lacking something their business could provide. They also look at the local competitors to see if the competition would be hard to beat, or if they could do the job better. Success lies in truly seeing the lay of the land.

Local search mirrors the real world. The market on the Internet is made up of the physical locations of your clients’ customers at the time they search for what your client has to offer. 

Eye meditation

You already know most of the businesses on your street, and many of them in your neighborhood. Now, with eyes wide open, start searching Google for the things your listening work has told you customers need. Where appropriate, include attributes you’ve noticed them using like “best tacos near me”, “cheapest gym in North Beach”, or “shipping store downtown.”

See how your client is ranking when a person does these type of searches while at their location. Now, walk or drive a few blocks away and try again. Go to the city perimeter and try again. Where are they ranking, and who is outranking them as you move about their geographic market?

A local business keeping its eyes open never makes assumptions about who its true competitors are or how its customers search. Instead, it:

Regularly assesses the competition in its market, taking into account the distance from which customers are likely to come for goods and services.

Regularly reviews materials assembled in the listening phase to see how customers word their requests and sentiments.

Makes use of tools to analyze both markets and keyword searches.

A good local search marketing agency will help with the tools needed for market and search language analysis. These findings can inform everything from what a client names their business, to how they categorize it on their Google My Business listing, to what they write about to draw in customers from all geographic points in their market. Clear vision simultaneously enables you to analyze competitors who are outranking your client and assess why they’re doing so. It can empower your client to report spammers who are outranking them via forbidden tactics. An excellent agency will help their client see their competitive landscape with eyes on the prize.

Mind

When an independent Arizona appliance chain surprised three shoppers with $10,000, it made headlines.

With hearts ready for service, ears set on listening, and eyes determined to see, you and your client have now taken in useful information about their brand and the customers who make up their local market. You know now whether they’re doing a poor, moderate, or exceptional job of fulfilling needs, and are working with them to strategize next steps. But what are those next steps? 

Mind meditation

Sit back comfortably and think of a time a business completely surprised you, or a time when an owner or employee did something so unexpectedly great, it convinced you that you were in good hands. Maybe they comped your meal when it wasn’t prepared properly, or special-ordered an item just for you, or showed you how to do something you’d never thought of before.

Recall that lightbulb moment of delight. Ask yourself how your client’s brand could surprise customers in memorable ways they would love. Create a list of those ideas.

A creative local business gives full play to the awesome imaginative powers of the brain. It gives all staff permission to daydream and brainstorm questions like:

What is something unexpected the business could do that would come as a delightful surprise to customers?

What is the most impactful thing the business could do that would be felt as a positive force in the lives of its customers?

What risks can the business take for the sake of benevolence, social good, beauty, renown, or joy?

A good local search marketing agency will help sort through ideas that could truly differentiate their clients from the competition and bring them closer to making the kinds of impressions that turn local brands into household names. An excellent agency will bring ideas of their own. Study “surprise and delight marketing” as it’s done on the large, corporate scale, and get it going at a local level like this small coffee roaster in Alexandria, Va. selling ethical java while doubling as funding for LGBTQ+ organizations. 

Mouth

Put your best stories everywhere, like in this social media example. Moz Local can help with publishing those stories.

“Think before you speak” is an old adage that serves well as a marketing guideline. Another way we might say it is “research before you publish”. With heart, ear, eye, and mind, you and your client have committed, collected, analyzed, and ideated their brand to a point where it’s ready to address the public from a firm foundation.

Mouth meditation

Open your favorite word processor on your computer and type a few bars of the lyrics to your favorite song. Next, type the first three brand slogans that come to your mind. Next, type a memorable line from a movie or book. Finally, type out the the words of the nicest compliment or best advice someone ever gave you. 

Sit back and look at your screen. Look at how those words have stuck in your mind — you remember them all! The people who wrote and spoke those words have indelibly direct-messaged you. 

How will you message the public in a way that’s unforgettable?

A well-spoken local business masters the art of face-to-face customer conversation. In-store signage and offline media require great words, too, but local search marketing will take spoken skills onto the web, where they'll be communicated via:

Every page of the website 

Every article or blog post 

Social media content

Review responses

Answers to questions like Google Business Profile Q&A

Business descriptions on local business listings

Google posts

Featured snippet content

Live chat

Email

Press releases

Interviews

Images on the website, business listings, and third-party platforms like Google Images and Pinterest

Videos on the website, YouTube, and other platforms

A good local search marketing agency will help their client find the best words, images, and videos based on all the research done together. An excellent agency will help a local business move beyond simply being discovered online to being remembered as a household name each time customer needs arise. An agency should help their clients earn links, unstructured citations, and other forms of publicity from those research efforts.

Determine to help your client be the "snap, crackle, pop", "un-Cola", "last honest pizza" with everything you publish for their local market, and to build an Internet presence that speaks well of their business 24-hours a day.

Closing pose



One of the most encouraging aspects of running and marketing a local business is that it’s based on things you already have some life experience doing: caring, listening, observing, imagining, and communicating. 

I personally should be better at technical tasks like diagnosing errors in Schema, configuring Google Search Console for local purposes, or troubleshooting bulk GMB uploads. I can work at improving in those areas, but I can also work at growing my heart, ear, eye, mind, and mouth to master serving clients and customers.

Business is technical. Business is transactional. But good business is also deeply human, with real rewards for well-rounded growth.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

from The Moz Blog http://tracking.feedpress.it/link/9375/13312223