#bullying or vapid influencing content

[kaurwreck]

OH YOUR VERLAINE AND RIMBAUD POSTS AND THE TENDENCY OF ASAGIRI TO FLIP FLOP THE MENTOR/MENTEE OR ADMIRED AND HOW RIMBAUD WAS THE YOUNGER ONE BUT IN BSD VERLAINE WAS SOCIALIZED BY RIMBAUD

With Rimbaud and Verlaine, it's worth remembering that bsd!Rimbaud is Verlaine. His skill is Illuminations, but he gave Black #12 his birth name, Paul Verlaine. bsd!Verlaine was not originally named Rimbaud, but his youth, passions, and duality are Rimbaudian, while bsd!Rimbaud's more coddling temperament, at times paternal and at times impassioned, and last sentiments for bsd!Verlaine, are seemingly references to irlVerlaine's poetry about irl!Rimbaud. (Such as Watercolors: Green, an English translation of which I shared in a separate post.)

Notably, Verlaine published Illuminations on Rimbaud's behalf and influenced the content and arrangement that was published. His legacy is often related more to his relationship with and publication of Rimbaud than his own poetry, according to the journal articles I've been reading. bsd!Verlaine's Brutalization incantation also comes from Arthur Rimbaud's Les Sœurs De Charité.

But the bsd iterations of Rimbaud and Verlaine aren't wholly distinct either, each carrying fragments of the other, sometimes blurring together. That, too, is a homage to the philosophies of the irl!poets. For example, Rimbaud, at times, writes from Verlaine's perspective in Une Saison en Enfer.

Rimbaud's poetry is also marked for its dialogic perspective-shifting, and he wrote through and lived within a philosophy of ambiguity, duality, and self dissection (at least during his youth):

irl!Verlaine, too, had a dual personality at times:

So, I don't think Asagiri flip/flopped Rimbaud and Verlaine's roles; I think he's commentating on, illustrating, and interpreting where their poetry, legacies, and passions became thoroughly entangled, as filtered and processed through bsd's themes. I think Asagiri enjoys plucking tragedy from reality and asking, "What would it have taken for them to have found reason and purpose absent any?"

That said, I also don't think Asagiri is ever really inversing mentor/mentee roles, even in regard to Akutagawa and Dazai. irl!Akutagawa was not irl!Dazai's mentor, he was a profound influence who lived and wrote just prior to the era of modern Japanese literature in which Osamu Dazai made in his name. I think Asagiri is commenting on (i) where they were deeply alike in mind and heart, which is why Dazai found solace and reflections of himself in Akutagawa, and (ii) on the stylistic dexterity Dazai could have lent to Akutagawa had he been in the position to do so, specifically regarding the way Dazai intepreted the I-novel genre through perversions of the truth as a means for expressing sincerity and gut-wrenchingly raw autobiographical candor without flaying himself apart the way Akutagawa seemed to when bullied into confessional literature by the cultural zeitgeist.

(Akutagawa was criticized for his sharp brilliance since the era was consumed with confessional literature, in comparison to which Akutagawa's stylistic precision seemed to many distant and aloof. Parasocialism is older than Christ, and BookTok is a descendent, not the progenitor, of corrosively vapid takes.)

The choices in bsd are playful but sincere inquiries into + conversations with the works, legacies, emotional turmoils, and overwhelming humanity of the referenced authors. But, while I think there's immense profundity in call and response, especially across eras, literary cultures, and artistic mediums, I also think Asagiri is more consumed by revelations than reflections.

I'm also not so sure whether we can call Rimbaud socialized by any contemporary connotation of the word—

[realweezer]

CSH, Identity, & Change (800 words)

A while ago, I saw a post on r/CSHfans asking what it means to write about deeply personal or private things – how that can shape our relationship to someone else’s art and what regrets an artist might have because of this. I came up with this huge response from the lens of a master’s student (read: huge nerd) studying celebrity persona and authenticity, particularly how those components can create community and identification within musical subcultures. I felt like I didn’t really capture the essence of the question – my response sounds more like formal writing than anything else – but I wanted to share here just in case anyone might be interested in my rambling opinion piece.

Car Seat Headrest piqued my interest first because the music is just amazing (what other band would let me listen to a furry monologuing about weird sex for 5 minutes straight), then because I think the relationship between Will Toledo, his personal thoughts and experiences, and the public is an interesting one. The contents of Twin Fantasy are deeply personal; we hear Will sing about an idealized, but ultimately harmful relationship, the fantasy he’s created of his partner, and his struggles with being queer. For a lot of listeners, myself included, his self-disclosure in this album is part of what makes it great. The ideas we gather about who Will is and what he’s gone through guide our own interpretations of the music and form the basis for a fan culture that’s sprung up around CSH (See: Hansen).

But when you reach Will Toledo’s level of fame, it gets more difficult to navigate opening up about your private life. Your experiences are no longer purely your own; they’re left to the interpretation, analysis, and re-imagining of the general public. Will has expressed frustration with how personal narratives in TF have been interpreted, calling out a Rolling Stone writer for disseminating “a weird, gross, inaccurate representation of [his] personal life” (See: New York Times), and seems to be pulling back from the open approach of his earlier albums (the newest CSH drop is literally called Making a Door Less Open).

From an audience perspective, it seems like TF Face-to-Face might’ve been a turning point for Will, as nearly all his original works produced since then (with the exception of MADLO) have been from his jokey EDM side-project, 1 Trait Danger. With three concept albums out to date, the music of 1TD doesn’t follow the personal thoughts or actions of Will, but rather the fictional high-school antics of characters including Stoney Bologna, Cossett the bitcoin-stealing bully, and a derisive caricature of journalist Tim Schenectady. 1TD members Will and Andrew even perform as two of their characters (1 Trait and Stoney Bologna respectively), causing them to walk the line between musicians and character actors.  

You can clearly see the influence of 1TD on CSH’s 2020 album, Making a Door Less Open. I mean, come on – Will performs MADLO as Trait, an extremely recognizable bunny thing wearing a gas mask and neon orange jumpsuit. From the criticisms I’ve seen of MADLO, it seems that some people perceive the lyrical content as vapid or gimmicky, Trait as a redundant alter-ego of Will himself, and the project as a whole as an example of CSH “cannibalizing itself” (see: Pitchfork). But, to relate this to your topic, Toledo has clarified that the contents of MADLO/Trait character are meant to “take the focus off Will Toledo for once.” Even though some MADLO entries can be viewed as autobiographical (“Hollywood”), they just don’t provide the same level of personal disclosure as earlier works.

I think a key takeaway from this is that any deeply personal work of art will be subject to audience dissection, analysis, and at times, horribly incorrect interpretation. Will Toledo – who has essentially built his musical brand as intimate and authentic through CSH’s disclosive lyrics – will never be able to prevent audiences from conflating the ‘real Will’ with the idea of Will derived from his music. Because audiences genuinely believe they have access to the ‘real Will,’ the introduction of the Trait character could’ve been an attempt to form a stronger boundary between Will as himself and Will as Car Seat Headrest.

Obviously, posting these 800-some words of speculation make me no different than the rest. I can’t pretend to understand the motivations behind Trait, or MADLO, or Will’s interest in fursuiting (a different, but related, conversation) any more than any other fan of CSH. I just think it’s interesting to examine how Will might be renegotiating his personal disclosure and public persona as time goes on, particularly from an academic standpoint.

If anybody has any related thoughts, please drop a response or DM. I’m super interested in other perspectives on this topic, or even related thoughts on celebrity and fandom identity.  

[yeahnews]

YouTube, TikTok, Snap execs face senators on kids’ safety

The leaders of a Senate panel have called executives from YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat to face questions on what the companies are doing to ensure young users’ safety

Bearing down on hugely popular social media platforms and their impact on children, the leaders of a Senate panel have called executives from YouTube TikTok and Snapchat to face questions on what their companies are doing to ensure young users’ safety.

The Senate Commerce subcommittee on consumer protection is fresh off a highly charged hearing with a former Facebook data scientist, who laid out internal company research showing that the company's Instagram photo-sharing service appears to seriously harm some teens.

The panel is widening its focus to examine other tech platforms, with millions or billions of users, that also compete for young people’s attention and loyalty.

The three executives — Michael Beckerman, a TikTok vice president and head of public policy for the Americas; Leslie Miller, vice president for government affairs and public policy of YouTube’s owner Google; and Jennifer Stout, vice president for global public policy of Snapchat parent Snap Inc. — are due to appear at a subcommittee hearing Tuesday.

The three platforms are woven into the fabric of young people’s lives, often influencing their dress, dance moves and diet, potentially to the point of obsession. Peer pressure to get on the apps is strong. Social media can offer entertainment and education, but platforms have been misused to harm children and promote bullying, vandalism in schools, eating disorders and manipulative marketing, lawmakers say.

“We need to understand the impact of popular platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube on children and what companies can do better to keep them safe," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the subcommittee’s chairman, said in a statement.

The panel wants to learn how algorithms and product designs can magnify harm to children, foster addiction and intrusions of privacy, Blumenthal says. The aim is to develop legislation to protect young people and give parents tools to protect their children.

The video platform TikTok, wildly popular with teens and younger children, is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance. In only five years since launching, it has gained an estimated 1 billion monthly users.

TikTok denies allegations, most notably from conservative Republican lawmakers, that it operates at the behest of the Chinese government and provides it with users’ personal data. The company says it stores all TikTok U.S. data in the United States. The company also rejects criticisms of promoting harmful content to children.

TikTok says it has tools in place, such as screen time management, to help young people and parents moderate how long children spend on the app and what they see. The company says it focuses on age-appropriate experiences, noting that some features, such as direct messaging, are not available to younger users.

Early this year after federal regulators ordered TikTok to disclose how its practices affect children and teenagers, the platform tightened its privacy practices for the under-18 crowd.

A separate House committee has investigated video service YouTube Kids this year. Lawmakers said the YouTube offshoot feeds children inappropriate material in “a wasteland of vapid, consumerist content” so it can serve ads to them. The app, with both video hosting and original shows, is available in about 70 countries.

A panel of the House Oversight and Reform Committee told YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki that the service doesn’t do enough to protect children from potentially harmful material. Instead it relies on artificial intelligence and self-policing by content creators to decide which videos make it onto the platform, the panel’s chairman said in a letter to Wojcicki.

Parent company Google agreed to pay $170 million in 2019 settlements with the Federal Trade Commission and New York state of allegations that YouTube collected personal data on children without their parents’ consent.

Despite changes made after the settlements, the lawmaker’s letter said, YouTube Kids still shows ads to children.

YouTube says it has worked to provide children and families with protections and parental controls like time limits, to limit viewing to age-appropriate content. It emphasizes that the 2019 settlements involved the primary YouTube platform, not the kids’ version.

“We took action on more than 7 million accounts in the first three quarters of 2021 when we learned they may belong to a user under the age of 13 — 3 million of those in the third quarter alone — as we have ramped up our automated removal efforts," Miller, the Google vice president, says in written testimony prepared for the hearing.

Snap Inc.'s Snapchat service allows people to send photos, videos and messages that are meant to quickly disappear, an enticement to its young users seeking to avoid snooping parents and teachers. Hence its “Ghostface Chillah” faceless (and word-less) white logo.

Only 10 years old, Snapchat says an eye-popping 90% of 13- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. use the service. It reported 306 million daily users in the July-September quarter.

The company agreed in 2014 to settle the FTC’s allegations that it deceived users about how effectively the shared material vanished and that it collected users’ contacts without telling them or asking permission. The messages, known as “snaps,” could be saved by using third-party apps or other ways, the regulators said.

Snapchat wasn’t fined but agreed to establish a privacy program to be monitored by an outside expert for the next 20 years — similar to oversight imposed on Facebook, Google and Myspace in privacy settlements in recent years.

[poor-cromwell]

Philippa Gregory and the Virgin-Whore Dichotomy

I like historical fiction. As a historian, I enjoy reading period pieces because they bring to life characters that I spend lots of time with. As a result, I’m usually willing to forgive the genre it’s many shortcomings, yet I have had a particularly difficult time digesting a certain author. With any Philippa Gregory novel, I have found lots and lots of issues to unpack, dissect, and despise. From subpar prose to unfocused plots and especially to the gigantic fallacies in her portrayal of history, specifically because she claims to aim for total historically accuracy. Still, it’s not her ineptness to interpret historical data with any degree of conformity to historiographical consensus that irks me the most. Philippa Gregory writes stories about women for women, they’re (for better or for worse, “chick lit”). And yet the portrayal of the main characters in her two most popular novels, The Other Boleyn Girl and The Boleyn Inheritance make forgiving her for historical inaccuracy for the sake of guilty pleasure nearly impossible.

It’s not just that Gregory ignores facts in favor of her own interpretation, and thus is forced to portray women like Anne Boleyn in ways that conform to said interpretation, but that her characterization of her leads – completely turning away from historical fact – follow several problematic tropes that detract from their actual characters. This in and of itself follows a trope in adaptation wherein women with balanced, fleshed out characters have everything taken away from them so that they can fit into the neat little virgin-whore dichotomy that sadly is seen even in today’s most popular media. So, instead of giving Anne and Mary Boleyn in The Other Boleyn Girl and Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard in The Boleyn Inheritance their dues as fascinating historical figures, she neatly consigns each of them to one of her little boxes: Mary Boleyn and Anne of Cleves as virgins, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard as whores. 

Mary Boleyn, who was sent from the French court after serving for a time as the King of France’s mistress for her “unseemly behavior,” and came to England and became Henry’s mistress despite her family’s embarrassment and consternation, is inexplicably portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as a naïve, sexually innocent girl who is forced into her affair with Henry by her ambitious family. She is consistently portrayed as the victim of her father’s and uncle’s, and later her sister’s schemes, ousted from the Henry’s affection by the ambitious Anne who wants power and glory (I’ll address Anne’s storyline in more detail below). And despite this being her story, from her point of view, she has no real autonomy, despite historically being one of very few women who clearly were in control and enjoyed their sexuality and didn’t care about seeming virginal. The only thing she does is get married against her family wishes, which is the action that ultimately saved her from being implicated in the coup against the Boleyns in 1536. Additionally, Gregory does this weird thing where she makes Mary the youngest of the Boleyn, born in 1508, even though overwhelming scholarly evidence proves that Mary was the eldest child, born in 1499/1500, which does nothing but further Mary’s infantilization. There is no reason to do any of this but to vilify Anne and make Mary, again, this story’s hero, fit with Anglo-Christian morality so the outcome of her story is justified – which I’ll explain in more detail later.

Anne of Cleves, who most likely died a virgin as she never married and was a devout Lutheran, did not have have a sexual autonomy to be taken away in order for her to be the virginal protagonist to counterbalance Catherine Howard. However, Gregory - for no perceivable reason- invents a history of abuse in the Cleves family (we’re treated to a drawn out scene of Anne being whipped by her mother while her brother watches in the shadows) and Anne’s father being mentally ill. This despite the fact that Anne’s father did not suffer a mental illness, and Anne was known to be the favorite of both her mother and her brother and having a happy family life. Anne of Cleves and Mary Boleyn both have invented abuse and bullying from their family, because according to Philippa Gregory, you can’t like a character unless she’s suffered incredible childhood trauma and has no sexual autonomy, as shown by her portrayal of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard.

Anne Boleyn, a highly pious woman who initially rebuffed King Henry’s offer of being his mistress because of said piety, is portrayed in The Other Boleyn Girl as being so power hungry and ruthless that she sells out her sister to pursue her man and has sex with her own brother in order to make and keep herself as Henry’s queen. This isn’t to say that Anne wasn’t ambitious, she most certainly was. But Gregory goes about her ambition in the wrong way. Anne doesn’t pursue power in a vacuum (she also does it after Mary’s affair with Henry had ended) but in part because of her convictions and in part because she knows that she must yield to Henry and tries to make the best out of her situation. Anne took care of Mary and her children, securing a pension for Mary after her husband died and left her in debt, and making sure her son got a good education. Most importantly, unlike the portrayal of the book and the films of the events of 1536, Anne wasn’t executed because Jane Boleyn made a silly report implicating George and Anne in an affair (historians actually believe Jane had very little if anything to do with her husband and sister-in-law’s downfall, which makes sense if you think about it). She was in part executed because she had lost two children and in part because councilors like Thomas Cromwell didn’t like her butting into their work and criticizing their immorality. The charges of incest served the purpose of weakening the Boleyns farther and scrubbing the court of their influence. She was completely innocent of the charges.

Catherine Howard was not. This is another case in Gregory’s novels where she didn’t have to invent a “crime” because Catherine was “guilty” of having sex with both Francis Dereham and Thomas Culpeper. Most historians, however, give Catherine a pass for her mistake, while being aware of what happened to her cousin, citing her youth and the fact that she was way in over her head at the time to know what she was doing. But Gregory couldn’t possibly let that play out without adding her particular flavor of awful. Catherine is a vapid, empty headed, superficial and annoying character, and even though despite these flaws I still found myself sympathizing with her, I don’t know if Gregory intended me to. She is shown in every bad light, from making fun of Anne of Cleves’ dresses to being utterly fake and more or less the pawn of Uncle Norfolk and his desire for power. Of course, she has her affair with Culpeper not just because she’s infatuated with him, but because her uncle tells her to in order for her to get pregnant, even though the intention of getting pregnant to dupe Henry has no historical grounds whatsoever.

Now, you might be wondering, why would Philippa Gregory go through such pains and take all this criticism when she could have easily just written what actually happened historically. Isn’t it much easier, especially when you already have an interesting plot write for you, to fill in the blanks? Possibly, but I think the answer to this question lies in the fate of the respective characters. Our “virgin” characters, Anne of Cleves and Mary Boleyn get happily ever afters. They outlive their tormentors in peace and fulfillment, and lead contented lives. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, on the other hand, are both executed. Gregory conforms the life to the outcome so that all seems justified in the end. At least, this is the implication of how she chose to tell these stories. By making Anne and Catherine “guilty” of ambition and sexual autonomy, we’re meant feel satisfied in their demise because this is what bad women get. Conversely, if you’re a good, “pure” woman, you get a long and happy life. 

This is nothing new in the world of fiction, but it is a terrible trope that informed by gender roles in our society. Essentially, if you’re a woman and you have agency, your head’s going to get cut off. We as women are told this over and over again in many different ways across every genre, from the scream queen getting killed while having sex with her boyfriend to the countless times on TV that the Strong Female Character has been sexually assaulted as a plot point. And Philippa Gregory definitely helps perpetuate this. And that is why, among other reasons, I do not like her novels.

[mollsmcb-blog]

Fuck You Kardashian’s

So.... basically after watching "The People Vs. OJ" - aside from loathing OJ Simpson further... it literally opened my eyes to how TRULY AWWFULLLLL the KARDASHIANS are. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! "The People Vs. OJ" gives audiences a glimpse at how media, Hollywood and the DEATH of Nicole Brown Simpson made them money sucking fake SHIT HEADS. This scandal was the fire that lit these children's vapid ideologies to a current life of "All I care about is money and I'm really pretty and have a huge ass and big lips and like omg i'm so much smarter than like... my sister, like can you believe she like blah blah blah like blah".

EW. EW. EW. They were BORN from this scandal - WATCH THE SHOW. READ ABOUT IT / THE SCANDAL / THEM -- (Wallstreet Journal, Business Insider, Harvard Journal, Forbes, CNN, ABC, Old archived video footage on YouTube and Vimeo are also great sources if you want to draw your own theories) But, are you serious Kardashians? I don't know why this was the topic that hit me the hardest from this AMAZING SHOW (Go Netflix for another HIT) But it did.

There's so much FAKE bullshit going on within social media toady -- trying to portray ones life in a "imperfect" way using filters, perfectly placed captions, constantly trying to ONE UP each other -- that I feel the Kardashians really played a part in developing and even influencing such fake/ mindless drama, and quit possibly even negative feelings of "HATE" or BULLYING amongst our peers... that maybe this is why I feel so strongly about the rise of their fake-fames? Not sure... But I wanna talk about it.

How they look at themselves in the mirror... how the world continues to play / pay into those PHONIES is beyond my comprehension (Side Note - And they're not the only ones out there like this, I'm just using them as an example because, like I said, just finished the show on Netflix)... I've never understood the appeal. Or their fame. Mainly because I can't justify nor understand why I should condone these girls (and their vial husband(s) ) who are more interested in clothing, make-up, cars, material products (only the 1% truly have opportunities to enjoy... let's be real) as well as never understood how ALL THAT in combination of 10000000x selfies should make me respect you? Not only that, but consider you a public figure? Why?? Then they go and make a reality television show about more NOTHING'S and their privileged lives, it's hard to cope with! When their are so many struggling screenwriters or aspiring writers (like myself) who actually have original, expressive, educational, fun, exciting (etc) content that SHOULD be created, talked about, and watched!

Life's unfair, sure. But this is more than unfair, it's ignorant. And FOUL. And people are curious why other people in America voted for Trump? ... (That's a bit of a stretch metaphor on my behalf) But if you're literally telling me you enjoy / respect groups of people who are saboteurs to each other, care about nothing but JIMMY CHOO'S or what MILLIONTH selfie they should post.... Then hey, excuse me for having doubts American audiences could have been persuaded to for vote for a MF-er who's just as big of a "famously born from media" billionaire, like Trump? Did we not all used to laugh at his insanity through "People Magazine" or "US Weekly" or YouTube interviews about his latest purchases, blah blah blah's? It's all fun and games watching him in the news and reading about his bullshit scandals until he becomes the fucking President of the United STATES! PEOPLE WAKE UP! THE DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA... STOP! EW. No, I've never understood the appeal. Sorry Kardashian's no selfie or awful fashion statement can hide your true identities. RAW!

I'm disgusted. I'll be over this by lunch time. Which is now. HA! Thanks Facebook for allowing me to digitally rant. And for those of you who are now judging this RIDICULOUS rant, privately name-calling, or thinking "man she's so angry " - Yeah, sometimes (shrugs)? Like you haven't thought about something like this in your lifetime? Laughable. "SURRREEEE SUSIE Q. Tell yourself whatever you need to." -- Don't get me wrong, I have a pretty wonderful life. It's dope. Not guna gloat about#Blessed right now. Because I'm an ant in the realm of this thunderous social media atmosphere. Gloating about myself really doesn't do me, or anyone else justice. It may secretly cause hidden resentments. #TruthAnyways. Point is, I don't choose to be something I'm not. And I'm certainly not intrigued by Voyeuristically watching mindless "FAKE-NEWS" - like the douches mentioned above. And yes, I can be a dick. Whatever. Go pretend to be perfect somewhere else. BYEEEEE #Keepitreal