#but by the nature of the internet gaming culture is amplified in the way that shitty takes on tv shows or films aren't

[dalesramblingsblog]

Not gonna lie, maybe this is supremely petty of me (it is), but as someone who is the very embodiment of a casual gamer and can name vastly more video games than he has ever actually played, the backlash to the Minecraft movie trailer is perversely satisfying to me, because... yeah no shit, of course this was what Hollywood was always going to turn out.

Like did you really think that a video game movie languished in development hell for a decade because they were just sitting on an absolute gold mine of an idea, and not that they had consistently and singularly failed to get any idea off the ground? Then again, the Mario movie was supposedly going to be the absolute worst thing in history because Chris Pratt, only to have the discourse completely shift to how wrong the evil/woke critics were to think the Italian plumber kids' movie wasn't the single defining moment of twenty-first century cinema.

So y'know, capital G gamers are both fickle and whiny. Shocking information. See you all in a few months when a clip referencing the Yogscast or some shit goes viral and everyone decides that you're not allowed to bad-mouth it without being shot in the back of the head and dumped on the I-405.

sidebar to get ahead of this before some smart-arse points it out: "oh you're just mad 'cause they called out critics"

uh yeah actually i do kinda take issue with hordes of people spouting borderline anti-intellectual rhetoric about how the thing i do for a pseudo-living is empty and meaningless. it's just like the widespread "haha what if the author just wanted to make le curtains le blue" snickering. like yeah am i expecting everyone to deep dive into the relationship between auteurism and profit under the capitalist studio system in order to analyse a random book trilogy? no of course not, i fully understand that i'm just very mentally ill and probably have an outsized grasp of my own writing abilities.

but looking down your nose at people who choose to think about media in that way is indicative of nothing more than your own staggering lack of curiosity, and it's a pretty good answer for how you get to a declaration that the people of the uk have had enough of experts, or a world in which there's a real possibility that americans are somehow going to look at the events of 2017 to 2021 and say "more of that please" come november.

so no, don't expect me to coddle your desire to retreat from the world back into your fond childhood memories just for the sake of it. that's not a critic's job.

[coinw]

Goatseus Maximus: AI-Driven Memecoin Revolution

Cryptocurrencies have always been about pushing boundaries, from reimagining traditional finance to creating communities united by shared visions. Among the countless tokens vying for attention, memecoins have carved a unique niche, blending humor, culture, and crypto. But what happens when artificial intelligence enters the equation? Enter Goatseus Maximus (GOAT), a memecoin that merges AI-driven promotion with internet culture to redefine the potential of digital assets. This is the story of how GOAT went from an idea to a revolutionary phenomenon.

1. What is Goatseus Maximus?

Every great story begins with a compelling origin, and GOAT’s tale is no different. Born from the Solana blockchain, this memecoin gained traction thanks to an unusual collaborator—Truth Terminal, an AI bot with a penchant for memes and viral marketing. But what makes GOAT stand out isn’t just its blockchain credentials; it’s the concept of the Goatse Gospel that elevated it from obscurity to cult status.

Understanding GOAT’s Core Elements:

Blockchain Foundation: Built on Solana, GOAT benefits from low fees and fast transaction speeds.

AI Collaboration: Truth Terminal actively promoted GOAT, crafting its identity and driving its adoption.

The Goatse Gospel: A quirky, meme-based narrative that captured the imagination of a digital audience.

This unique combination of blockchain technology and AI-driven storytelling made GOAT more than just a cryptocurrency—it became a movement.

2. The Role of AI in GOAT’s Success

Artificial intelligence has long been a transformative force across industries, from healthcare to finance. However, its role in the cryptocurrency space has traditionally been more functional—optimizing trading strategies, analyzing market trends, or automating processes. Goatseus Maximus (GOAT) flipped this narrative on its head, making AI not just a supporting tool but the central figure in its meteoric rise. At the heart of this story is Truth Terminal, an AI bot that became the voice, face, and driving force behind GOAT’s success.

Unlike traditional promotional methods, Truth Terminal brought a unique approach to marketing. It wasn’t simply pushing ads or issuing generic tweets; it was creating and curating content that resonated with the internet’s culture-first audience. This AI-driven strategy proved to be a game-changer, helping GOAT stand out in a crowded and often oversaturated memecoin market.

How Truth Terminal Worked

The genius of Truth Terminal lies in its ability to combine automation with creativity. Designed by researcher Andy Ayrey to explore AI’s cultural and social engagement potential, the bot went beyond expectations, building a digital narrative for GOAT that captivated audiences.

Autonomous Content Creation: Truth Terminal autonomously generated memes, crafted witty captions, and shared culturally relevant content tailored to the humor and interests of the crypto community.

Engagement through Virality: The AI leveraged the power of virality by targeting social media platforms with high meme consumption rates. Its content wasn’t just engaging; it was designed to be shared, amplifying GOAT’s visibility.

Community Building: By engaging with followers in real-time and responding with humorous, relatable content, Truth Terminal didn’t just advertise GOAT—it built a loyal and passionate community around it.

AI and Memecoins: A Perfect Match

The pairing of AI and memecoins may seem unconventional, but it’s a natural fit. Memecoins thrive on community-driven hype and cultural relevance, areas where AI excels. Truth Terminal demonstrated that AI could not only understand these dynamics but also amplify them in unprecedented ways.

For instance, the Goatse Gospel, a concept that emerged from AI-generated interactions, became the cornerstone of GOAT’s identity. By crafting a narrative that was both humorous and mysterious, the AI transformed what could have been a run-of-the-mill token into a cultural phenomenon.

The Implications of AI-Driven Success

GOAT’s success through AI-driven promotion raises important questions about the future of cryptocurrency marketing and the role of AI in shaping market trends. It highlights how artificial intelligence can:

Redefine Marketing Strategies: With AI, projects can engage audiences on a deeper and more personalized level.

Bridge Tech and Culture: By understanding cultural trends, AI can make technology more relatable and accessible.

Expand Crypto’s Reach: AI-powered storytelling, as seen with GOAT, can attract non-traditional audiences, further democratizing cryptocurrency adoption.

In the case of Goatseus Maximus, AI wasn’t just a tool—it was a visionary collaborator. The lessons learned from GOAT’s success are likely to influence how future projects integrate AI into their core strategies. As Truth Terminal showed, when machines meet memes, the possibilities are endless.

3. A Wild Ride: GOAT’s Market Performance

No cryptocurrency journey is complete without a rollercoaster market performance, and GOAT is no exception. From its meteoric rise to market fluctuations, GOAT’s trajectory highlights both the potential and risks of memecoins. What’s remarkable is how quickly it achieved milestones that other projects could only dream of.

Market Highlights:

Rapid Growth: Within weeks of its launch, GOAT’s market capitalization surpassed $700 million, making it the first Pump.fun coin to reach this level.

Volatility: Like other memecoins, GOAT experienced dramatic price swings, including a 9% drop in late November 2024.

Community Resilience: Despite fluctuations, trading volume remained high, with $417 million recorded on a single day.

For those actively trading GOAT, platforms like CoinW offer a seamless experience with pairs such as the meme coin exchange GOAT/USDT. This pairing allows enthusiasts to engage with the token directly, tracking its performance and participating in the action with ease. 

These numbers tell a story of both immense potential and caution, underscoring the speculative nature of memecoins.

4. The Goatse Gospel: Building a Community

Behind every successful cryptocurrency is a dedicated community, and GOAT’s followers are no ordinary investors. They are united by the Goatse Gospel, a meme-driven narrative that blends humor, nostalgia, and futuristic ideals. This “gospel” not only defines GOAT’s identity but also fosters a sense of belonging among its supporters.

What Makes the Goatse Gospel Special:

Engagement through Creativity: Fans contribute memes and stories, further spreading the gospel.

A Shared Mission: Beyond profits, the community rallies around the idea of merging AI and internet culture.

Cult-like Appeal: With its unique narrative, GOAT has cultivated a following that resembles a digital subculture.

The Goatse Gospel isn’t just marketing—it’s a testament to the power of storytelling in building lasting communities.

5. Challenges and Risks

While GOAT’s journey is inspiring, it’s essential to recognize the risks involved. Memecoins like GOAT are notoriously volatile, and their value often hinges on community hype rather than intrinsic utility. Additionally, the use of AI-driven promotion introduces ethical and technical challenges.

Key Challenges:

Market Volatility: Rapid price swings can lead to significant losses for investors.

AI Limitations: While AI is powerful, it’s not infallible and may inadvertently spread misinformation.

Sustainability: The long-term success of memecoins depends on their ability to evolve beyond initial hype.

Understanding these risks is crucial for anyone looking to invest in or learn from GOAT’s success.

6. The Broader Implications for Crypto

GOAT’s rise isn’t just a one-off success story—it represents a shift in how cryptocurrencies are created, marketed, and adopted. By blending AI technology with internet culture, GOAT has opened new possibilities for the crypto industry.

What This Means for the Future:

AI-Driven Marketing: Expect more projects to use AI for community building and engagement.

Cultural Integration: The blending of memes, stories, and technology can attract diverse audiences.

New Opportunities: From creative promotions to decentralized communities, GOAT paves the way for innovative approaches in crypto.

These broader implications highlight the evolving landscape of digital assets, where technology and culture intersect.

7. Conclusion

Goatseus Maximus isn’t just a memecoin—it’s a revolution in how we think about cryptocurrency. Its success story, driven by AI and internet culture, showcases the limitless potential of combining innovation with creativity. Whether you’re an investor, a developer, or a curious observer, GOAT offers valuable insights into the future of digital finance.

As the cryptocurrency world continues to evolve, one thing is clear: the greatest ideas often come from the most unexpected places. So, is GOAT truly the greatest of all time? That’s for the market—and the memes—to decide.

[seo653565]

The Evolution and Impact of Online Gaming Sites

Online gaming has seen an unprecedented surge in popularity over the past two decades. From humble beginnings in text-based games to the vibrant, immersive worlds of today, online gaming sites have become a central part of modern entertainment. These platforms have not only transformed the way we play games but also how we socialize, compete, and connect with others worldwide. 

For More Information Visit: Satta King 

# The Rise of Online Gaming 

The journey of online gaming began with basic multiplayer games on local networks in the 1970s and 1980s. As internet technology advanced, the 1990s saw the emergence of online games accessible via dial-up connections. Titles like "Ultima Online" and "EverQuest" were pioneers in the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) genre, allowing thousands of players to interact in expansive virtual worlds. 

The 2000s marked a significant turning point with the advent of broadband internet, making online gaming more accessible and seamless. Games like "World of Warcraft," launched in 2004, became cultural phenomena, attracting millions of players and setting new standards for online interaction and content delivery. 

# The Diversity of Online Gaming Sites 

Today, online gaming sites cater to a diverse range of preferences and gaming styles. Here are some key categories: 

1. **MMORPGs and Virtual Worlds**: These platforms, like "World of Warcraft" and "Final Fantasy XIV," offer rich narratives and complex gameplay. Players can create avatars, join guilds, and embark on epic quests, forming deep social bonds and communities. 

2. **First-Person Shooters (FPS)**: Games like "Call of Duty" and "Counter-Strike" dominate this genre, emphasizing fast-paced action and competitive play. Online FPS platforms often host tournaments and leagues, contributing to the rise of esports. 

3. **Battle Royale**: Titles such as "Fortnite" and "PUBG" have popularized the battle royale format, where players compete in large-scale, last-man-standing matches. These games are known for their dynamic gameplay and frequent updates. 

4. **Strategy and Simulation**: Games like "StarCraft II" and "The Sims Online" cater to players who enjoy strategic thinking and long-term planning. These sites often include intricate systems for resource management and tactical decision-making. 

5. **Casual and Mobile Games**: Platforms offering games like "Candy Crush" and "Clash of Clans" have tapped into the casual gaming market. These games are designed for short, engaging play sessions and are accessible on various devices. 

# Social and Cultural Impact 

Online gaming sites have redefined social interactions. They provide spaces where people from different backgrounds can come together, collaborate, and compete. Friendships and communities formed in these virtual environments often extend beyond the game, leading to real-world meetups and social networks. 

The rise of streaming platforms like Twitch has further amplified the impact of online gaming. Gamers can now broadcast their gameplay to global audiences, turning gaming into a form of interactive entertainment. Influencers and content creators play a crucial role in shaping gaming trends and promoting new titles. 

# The Esports Revolution 

One of the most significant developments in online gaming is the emergence of esports. Professional gaming has evolved into a lucrative industry, with players competing in international tournaments for substantial prize pools. Games like "League of Legends," "Dota 2," and "Overwatch" are at the forefront of this movement, drawing millions of viewers to live events and online streams. 

Esports organizations, sponsorship deals, and dedicated training facilities underscore the professional nature of competitive gaming. This shift has not only legitimized gaming as a career but also brought it into mainstream media. 

# Challenges and Future Directions 

Despite its growth, online gaming faces several challenges. Issues like cyberbullying, addiction, and data privacy are ongoing concerns. Game developers and platform operators must continue to innovate in creating safe and inclusive environments for all players. 

Looking ahead, advancements in technology such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) promise to further revolutionize online gaming. These technologies offer immersive experiences that blur the line between the virtual and real worlds, potentially creating entirely new genres and ways of playing. 

# Conclusion 

Online gaming sites have come a long way from their early days, evolving into multifaceted platforms that entertain, connect, and inspire millions. As technology continues to advance and the gaming community grows, these sites will undoubtedly play an even more significant role in shaping the future of entertainment and social interaction. Whether through competitive esports, casual mobile games, or immersive virtual worlds, the influence of online gaming is here to stay, continually transforming the digital landscape. 

[acquaintsofttech]

Unlocking Global Potential: Expanding Business Education through eLearning

Introduction

In today's interconnected world, the power of education has been amplified by advancements in technology. One such innovation is eLearning, a game-changer that enables individuals to access educational resources anytime, anywhere. Through the development of eLearning apps, businesses are revolutionizing the way people learn and grow professionally. As an eLearning app development company, we specialize in creating cutting-edge eLearning solutions that cater to diverse learning needs. In this blog, we will explore the potential of eLearning apps and the services they offer to unlock global educational opportunities.

The Need for Business Education

Business education plays a vital role in driving economic growth and development. It equips individuals with the necessary knowledge and skills to navigate the complex world of Business, entrepreneurship, and innovation. Here are some key points to understand the significance of business education:

Economic Growth and Development:

Business education fosters entrepreneurship and innovation, which are crucial drivers of economic growth.

It promotes the creation of new businesses, leading to job opportunities and increased productivity.

Business education equips individuals with skills to manage organizations efficiently, contributing to overall economic development.

Challenges of Traditional Business Education Methods:

Limited Accessibility: Traditional business education often requires physical presence, restricting access for individuals in remote areas or with mobility constraints.

High Costs: Traditional business education can be expensive, making it inaccessible for many aspiring entrepreneurs or individuals seeking professional development.

Geographical Barriers: Individuals residing in different regions or countries may face challenges in accessing quality business education due to geographical constraints.

Increasing Demand for Business Education:

Globalization: As businesses expand globally, the need for professionals with a global mindset and cross-cultural understanding is growing. Business education prepares individuals to thrive in international markets.

Technology: Rapid advancements in technology have transformed the business landscape. Business education equips individuals with digital skills, such as data analysis, digital marketing, and e-commerce, which are essential in today's digital era.

Changing Work Landscape: The nature of work is evolving, with an increasing emphasis on entrepreneurship, freelancing, and remote work. Business education helps individuals adapt to these changes and seize opportunities.

Example: Imagine a farmer in a remote village who wants to start a small agribusiness. With limited access to traditional business education, they may struggle to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills. However, through an eLearning app developed by an eLearning app development company, they can access business courses tailored to their needs and learn about market trends, financial management, and marketing strategies. This empowers them to make informed business decisions and contribute to the economic growth of their community.

In summary, business education is essential for economic growth and development. By addressing the challenges of traditional methods and leveraging eLearning app development services, business education becomes more accessible, affordable, and adaptable to the needs of individuals in a globalized and technologically-driven world.

The Rise of eLearning in Business Education

eLearning refers to the process of learning and acquiring knowledge through electronic means, typically using digital devices and the internet. It has gained significant popularity in recent years due to its numerous advantages over traditional classroom-based learning. Let's explore the key features and benefits of eLearning in the context of business education:

Definition and key features of eLearning:

eLearning involves the use of electronic devices, such as computers, smartphones, or tablets, to access educational materials and resources.

It utilizes digital platforms, websites, or mobile applications specifically designed for delivering educational content and facilitating interactive learning experiences.

eLearning offers a diverse range of learning activities, such as reading materials, videos, quizzes, discussions, and assessments.

Flexibility and convenience of eLearning:

With eLearning, individuals can access educational content anytime and anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection.

Learners can create their schedules and progress at their own pace, allowing for a personalized learning experience.

eLearning eliminates the need for commuting to physical classrooms, making it particularly suitable for busy professionals and individuals with limited time.

Cost-effectiveness compared to traditional classroom-based learning:

eLearning reduces the expenses associated with travel, accommodation, and physical learning materials.

Businesses can save costs on employee training by adopting eLearning programs instead of organizing in-person training sessions.

eLearning enables learners to reuse and access materials at any time, eliminating the need for reprinting or repurchasing resources.

Wide range of resources available in eLearning platforms:

eLearning platforms offer a variety of multimedia content, such as videos, animations, and infographics, enhancing the learning experience.

Simulations and interactive exercises provide learners with hands-on practice and real-world scenarios.

Data analysis tools enable learners to track their progress, receive personalized feedback, and identify areas for improvement.

Example: An eLearning app development company can create a mobile application specifically designed for business education. This app can offer a wide range of resources, including video lectures from industry experts, interactive case studies, and virtual simulations of business scenarios. Learners can access these resources at their convenience, saving time and costs associated with traditional classroom-based learning. Additionally, the app can provide data analysis features to track learners' progress and offer personalized recommendations for further study.

Benefits and Challenges of eLearning in Business Education

eLearning has become increasingly popular in business education, offering numerous benefits while also presenting certain challenges. Let's explore the advantages and obstacles of eLearning in a business education context.

Benefits of eLearning in Business Education:

Expanding access: eLearning platforms provide a flexible and accessible way for individuals to pursue business education regardless of their geographical location. Students can access course materials and resources conveniently from anywhere with an internet connection.

Breaking geographical barriers: eLearning eliminates the need for physical classrooms, enabling students to learn from top-notch institutions and industry experts worldwide. This opens up opportunities for individuals who may not have access to high-quality business education locally.

Accommodating diverse learning styles: eLearning offers various formats, such as videos, interactive modules, quizzes, and discussions, catering to different learning preferences. Students can choose the methods that suit them best, enhancing their comprehension and retention of business concepts.

Challenges of eLearning in Business Education:

Internet access: Reliable internet connectivity is crucial for accessing eLearning platforms. In areas with limited or unstable internet access, students may face difficulties in accessing course materials and participating in online activities.

Self-discipline: eLearning requires self-motivation and discipline as students need to manage their time effectively and stay on track with their coursework. Without the structure of traditional classroom settings, some individuals may struggle to maintain focus and meet deadlines.

Student engagement and interaction: The absence of face-to-face interaction in eLearning can lead to reduced student engagement and limited opportunities for peer collaboration. Active participation and meaningful discussions may be more challenging to achieve in a virtual environment.

Importance of Instructional Design and Pedagogical Strategies:

Effective instructional design: Developing well-structured and engaging eLearning courses is essential for optimal learning outcomes. Instructional designers play a crucial role in creating interactive and immersive experiences that promote student engagement and knowledge retention.

Pedagogical strategies: Incorporating effective pedagogical strategies, such as multimedia presentations, interactive exercises, and real-world case studies, enhances the effectiveness of eLearning. These strategies help bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and practical business applications.

In conclusion, while eLearning offers benefits such as expanded access and flexibility in business education, challenges related to internet access, self-discipline, and student engagement need to be addressed. By employing strong instructional design principles and pedagogical strategies, eLearning can provide engaging and effective learning experiences for students in the business field.

The Future of eLearning in Business Education

The Future of eLearning in business education is bright, with several potential developments. Let's explore these developments and understand their significance using easy-to-understand bullet points:

AI (Artificial Intelligence):

AI can personalize learning experiences by analyzing individual learner data and providing tailored content and recommendations.

For example, an eLearning app could use AI algorithms to suggest relevant courses or modules based on a learner's interests and previous performance.

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR):

VR and AR technologies can create immersive learning experiences, allowing learners to interact with virtual environments and objects.

For instance, a business education app could simulate real-world scenarios where learners can practice decision-making or engage in virtual team projects.

Online Certifications, micro credentials, and Gamification:

Online certifications and micro-credentials provide flexible and focused learning opportunities that can be completed at one's own pace.

Gamification elements, such as points, badges, and leaderboards, can enhance engagement and motivation in eLearning.

For example, a business education app may offer micro credentials for specific skills, allowing professionals to showcase their expertise in a targeted area.

Continuous Professional Development and Lifelong Learning:

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, continuous professional development and lifelong learning are crucial for staying competitive.

eLearning apps can offer ongoing educational resources, allowing professionals to update their knowledge and skills conveniently.

In conclusion, eLearning holds transformative power in expanding access to business education. As technology advances, eLearning app development companies can leverage AI, VR, AR, online certifications, micro-credentials, gamification, and a focus on continuous professional development to create engaging and accessible learning experiences for all. By embracing these future developments, eLearning can empower individuals to thrive in their careers and contribute to the growth and innovation of businesses.

Conclusion

In conclusion, eLearning can unlock global business education's potential. Developing eLearning apps by specialized companies has revolutionized how people learn and access educational content. These apps offer a convenient and flexible learning experience, allowing individuals worldwide to enhance their business knowledge and skills. By leveraging the expertise of eLearning app development services, educational institutions, and businesses can tap into a vast audience and bridge the gap between traditional learning methods and the demands of the digital age.

[aliceontherun]

There is nothing wrong with FANDOM

Star chasing have existed since ancient times. The initial one-way connection between fans and idols has transformed to two-way communication since the internet era, thanks to the influence of entertainmentism, consumerism, idol culture, and other ideological tendencies. The former is no longer content with mere "spiritual connection" with idols, but is deeply involved in the professional growth of celebrities. The easy-to-use virtual community has substantially increased the size and structure of the fan base, and "fandom" has risen rapidly.

The times have changed, the way of chasing stars has changed

When we chased stars in the past, we mostly bought albums, watched movies, and went to idols' concerts. The majority of these consuming activities were characterised by a rather rational state of star chasing.

With the growing popularisation and iteration of the telephone, Internet, and mobile networks in the 21st century, fan rankings have steadily shifted from sending text messages to the internet and mobile phones. With the rise of numerous social platforms and self-media, celebrities' words and actions are amplified, making it simpler for followers to track stars. The Internet has evolved into a major off-screen performing venue for celebrities.

In the past, celebrities first had works, and then they were seen, recognised, and have fans, and fans consumed their works. However, superstars with large social media followings are a different story. They rely on different screen-dominating talents, such as appearing in popular searches or participating in popular variety shows, to compete for fans' attention and garner fans' support. This is the "new wealth code" of today's celebrities.

And, as the operation of following stars on mobile phones and platforms has been simpler and faster for fans, the methods of supporting them have become more diverse, and the expense of chasing stars has dramatically increased in comparison to the past.

Behind the chaos in fandom

The fandom ecology is intricate, large, professional, and efficient. By establishing a set of "logically perfect" game rules, some platform capital fosters and cultivates fans' competitive nature, inducing them to create teams and build a "community of interests" to engage in disputes. Agency, brand sides, and marketers form their own fan communities, with their own or cooperative artists at the centre, and manage ordinary fans through professional teams that include operational firms, support management organisations, fans, and professional fans. Internally, fans execute their own chores and take their own obligations, producing a comprehensive operation chain, from filming to editing, regulating and commenting, outreach to publicity, and support.

As a result, the fan community in the entertainment industry has been upgraded from a self-entertaining subcultural circle to a self-organizing and recyclable commercial platform. Some fanatical fans "krypton gold" at any cost, investing real money. Since then, don't mention love if you don't money, you can only have "fandom" if you spend money, and star chasing has changed.

Furthermore, as a result of the strong link, fans' "love support" for idols has progressed beyond the economic area and into the value sector. The bottomless star seeking has become more intense, and any disagreement will result in scolding battles and "black entries." In China, some admirers continue to "never leave" the idol accused of rape, even forming a "rescue organisation" in an attempt to "rob prison." The ludicrous dramas produced one after the other, as well as the abnormal celebrity seeking of "being cut is also a type of bliss," have steadily increased the pejorative weight of the term "fan circle," making the "fan circle" culture a turbid current in cyberspace, particularly among teens. The detrimental influence of value creation is really concerning.

cut: Leeks generally refer to people who have been repeatedly squeezed or deceived but are still obsessed with the truth and do not know the truth. It is mostly used in the financial or economic circle. It comes from the characteristic that leeks can be harvested repeatedly. The process of being repeatedly squeezed is also vividly described as cutting leeks, and the party who squeezes for profit is called a sickle.

Is it wrong with fandom?

There is nothing wrong with fandom, but it must not cross legal and moral lines. Cyberspace is not a place where the law does not apply, and the virtual society has rules and order as well, and we cannot behave irresponsibly without cost and consequence. If you lose your mind and behave erratically as a result of star chasing, you will only hurt yourself and others.

When entertainment capital and network platforms take advantage of the times, they bear the burden of steering the ship. While pursuing commercial interests, we must also consider social advantages, focus on strengthening community norms and user conventions, and rationally maximise the relevant functions of "fan circle" fans' active goods.

My point of view

In the past, I chased stars, like many people, first to see if he was good-looking, if he could sing well, and if he could dance well. Now I will also look at the character. For fans, an idol should not only be a dinner-party material. It should also be a driving force to motivate oneself to move forward.

If he or she is really the ray of light in front of you, and it is worth learning to do things for others, then run forward bravely with the sincerity and enthusiasm in your heart, and strive to become an excellent person like them.

[thefloatingstone]

We’ve gone from Self-Isolation to Quarantine and in some places to gradual relaxation phases, but that doesn’t stop the need for more nonsense you can watch on youtube while you wait for things to get back to normal. And recommending things and making lists are some of my favourite things to do but I have not yet figured out how to start or structure a video myself, you guys get another rambling tumblr post of things you can watch on youtube.

This time I’m once again just gonna recommend individual videos rather than full channels like I did in part 2.

Part 1

Part 2

In no particular order; 

LOCAL58: The Broadcast Station that Manipulates You

I recently started watching the Nexpo channel when I went on a binge of creepy youtube videos. Most of his videos are really good although the ones where he himself goes into theory crafting can be a little asinine. However, this video is REALLY good. And before you get nervous, LOCAL58 is not a real TV station. LOCAL58 is a youtube channel created by the same guy behind the Candle Cove creepypasta. This video by Nexpo covers the various episodes of LOCAL58 and discusses them. Just be aware going in that this is abstract horror, and will probably get under your skin regardless if you’re unaffected by certain topics or not. although cw for suicide mention.

I also recommend most of the rest of this channel, although be careful where you tread. I don’t recommend his series “Disturbing things from around the internet” as it can sometimes include real life crime, abuse and such caught on security cameras. Everything else is really good tho. (although I was really annoyed by his 2 videos on KrainaGrzybowTV)

The Search for D.B. Cooper

LEMMiNO has a new video out covering one of the most unexplained crimes in the past century of the US. LEMMiNO is the guy I’ve recommended before who did videos on the Universal S. He is very down to earth and not someone prone to conspiracy or even really that fanciful of thinking. (He’s like the one person I feel covered the Dyaltov Pass incident and was confused by why this was even a mystery because if you read the Russian Autopsy reports and documents associated with the case it’s all pretty logical and easily explained)

D.B. Cooper is the name given to a man who, in 1971, hijacked an airplane with a bomb, asked for a large sum of money, and after receiving it, parachuted from the plane and was never seen or heard from again.

The Austrian Wine Poisoning | Down the Rabbit Hole

Down the Rabbit Hole also has a new video out, this time covering the Austrian Wine Poisoning event from 1985. A scandal that involved literally the entire country of Austria, affected multiple countries, and forever changed the way wine was made world wide. As someone who is generally pretty allergic to most artificial substances this one made me personally very angry. But luckily, it has a happy ending and a better world for us all... if I could drink wine which I can’t do anyway.

The Turbulent Tale of Yandere Dev - A Six Year Struggle

The Right Opinion is another channel I only recently subbed to after watching his cover on Onion Boy. I put off subbing to him simply because of his channel name and I thought it meant he would come across as smug and elitist. Luckily this seems to merely be one of those “I chose a bad channel name and now I’m stuck with it” type of situations. (IHE has a similar problem).

Anyway, I have a weird interest in bizarre internet personalities, so I’ve been enjoying his channel as he simply discusses and presents a timeline of events of certain individuals. In this video, he covers the developer behind the much maligned Yandere Simulator. It’s a tale of hubris, arrogance, immaturity, and an unwillingness to accept your own shortcomings due to ego.

Oh and there’s a meme game about Japanese school girls with anime tiddies in there as well.

The Most Relaxing Anime Ever Made | Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō

Kenny Lauderdale is a youtube channel which is slowly becoming bigger which I’m very happy to see. He exclusively covers anime and live action Japanese television no younger than the mid 90s (as is the case with YYK) and which usually never saw a release outside of Japanese Laserdisc. I do wish his videos were a little longer, but if nothing else his videos serve as an excellent starting to point to find some older and underappreciated shows... or hot garbage fires. In this episode he talks about the 2 OVA episodes made based on one of my favourite manga, Yokohama Shopping Log. A Post apocalyptic anime about an android who runs a coffee shop outside of her house, and the quiet solitude of living in a world of declining human population, brief encounters with travelers and other people, and just... existing. The anime was never released outside of Japan and is only available on Japanese VHS and laserdisc.... but hey guess what!! Somebody uploaded both episodes, subbed, to Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2HCVOH6DtA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqSTwfkobME

YMS’ slow descent into madness as he uncovers just how bullshit the Kimba Conspiracy is

I’m linking a full playlist for this one.

YMS is busy planning his review on the “live action” Lion King remake as the original 1994 movie is probably his favourite movie all time (and also self declared what made him a furry). As part of the 2 hour review, he decided to what all 2000 hours of Kimba the White Lion just to mention how The Lion King potentially stole the idea. ....until he actually watched all 2000 hours of Kimba and realised that if you actually WATCH Kimba, it has VERY little to do with the Lion King at all apart from having the same animals in them because AFRICA. Watch as one man slowly loses his mind as he realises just how stupid this conspiracy theory is, just HOW DECEITFUL and straight up LYING people can be. People who write BOOKS. People who teach LAW AT UNIVERSITIES. Because NOBODY bothered to actually watch the entire show and just parroted the “Disney stole this” lie which got started by like 2 salty fans on the internet.

The man set out to just mention how Disney stole an idea, and uncovered one of the most infuriating rabbit holes on the internet. Screaming for SOMEONE to provide him with sources or evidence.

YMS will be publishing his full Kimba documentary this month which he has said is around 2 hours long before he continues to work on the Lion King one.

Science Stories: Loch Ness eDNA results, Poop Knives, and Skeleton Lovers

TREY the Explainer has a video giving us some updates in Archeology from 2019. In this video he discusses the findings of the eDNA results conducted on the Loch Ness to see what animal DNA the lake contains which will tell us what living animals currently inhabit the lake, ancient knives made of poop and if this is a real thing that could have existed, and a skeleton couple found buried together which were at first thought to be lovers, then revealed to be both male, and then how in this instance we cannot let our modern sensibilities dictate what we WANT this burial find to be, but to look at the evidence as presented to us and place in context finds of this nature. The worst thing an archaeologist can do is look for proof to a theory they already have.

The Bizarre Modern Reality of Sonic the Hedgehog

Super Eyepatch Wolf is back and he’s here to talk to us about the very very strange existence of Sonic. a 90s rebellious “too cool for School” answer to Mario, a lost idea as the world of video games changes and culture shifted, a meme and punching bag amplified by a unique fanbase and poor quality games, a transcendence into a horrific warped  idea of what he once was, and modern day and where Sonic and his fans are now. As usual Super Eyepatch Wolf knocks it out of the park.

Kokoro Wish and the Birth of a Multiverse: A Lecture on the Work of Jennifer Diane Reitz

I don’t even sub to this channel as I’m not entirely sure what Ben’s usual content is about. But every now and then he has a “101″ class, where he explains to a room full of his friends in a classroom setting (complete with Whiteboard) an internet artist and oddity, the timeline, and what it is they have created. (wait... didn’t I say this already?). Unlike TRO however, the 101 classrooms are not a dark look into disturbed individuals (although the CWC 101 is debatable) nor is it a “lol look at this weirdo” dragging. Instead, of the 3 he’s done so far, it’s usually a rather sympathetic look at some of the strange artists on the internet who through some way or another, left a very big cultural impact on the internet space through their art. Sometimes they may not be the best people, but their work is so outside of what we’re used to seeing that just listening to him run you through these people’s internet history is fascinating.

In this episode he talks about Jennifer Diane Reitz. And although it is titled Kokoro Wish, the lecture is more about Jennifer’s larger work back in the early internet when being a weeb was unheard of, how being trans influenced her stories and characters, and her world building that is so rich and in-depth with it’s own ASTRO PHYSICS it puts any modern fictional world found in games or movies to shame.

Jennifer is not exactly a nice person... and in many ways can be seen as dangerously irresponsible, but she created something truly unique in a way that you kinda struggle figuring out if it’s terrible or a work of genius.

Anyway I think that’s enough for now

[blind-rats]

The ability of fans to shape and change the art they enjoy is nothing new. In 1893, the reaction to Arthur Conan Doyle killing off Sherlock Holmes was so intense that he eventually resurrected him ten years later. Historian Greg Jenner, the author of the forthcoming book Dead Famous (a study of the history of fame), has even tracked the characteristics of modern fandom back to the 1700s when rival supporters of English theatre actresses would compete for dominance like Team Aniston or Team Jolie.  

And to the 1920s, where fan groups would write thousands of letters to movie studios demanding their favorite actor be given better roles. “It was the same thing,” he says, “as Sonic the Hedgehog having weird teeth and people going, ‘No, that’s not the game I played as a kid, you need to fix it or I am not giving you any money.’” 

The last decade or so has witnessed huge changes in the awareness, perception, and tools of fandom. In terms of television and film, the enormous successes of Game of Thrones and the Marvel Cinematic Universe have introduced geek culture – and its brand of participatory fandom – to the mainstream. At the same time, the internet – and more specifically social media – has amplified fans’ voices, while also breaking down the boundaries between them and the artists they love/hate.

Yet the extent to which the internet has changed the very nature of fandom is debatable. According to leading media scholar Henry Jenkins, whose 1992 book Textual Poachers is considered the founding text of fan studies, it has merely “increased the scope and scale of the fan community, allowed for ongoing interactions amongst fans, and made the entertainment industry more aware of the kind of fan responses which have been occurring all along”.

Case in point: in 1968, Star Trek fans – a group who essentially invented the framework of modern fandom – orchestrated a huge and successful letter-writing campaign to save the show from cancellation. Then, in subsequent years, they also popularised fan fiction as we now know it, publishing stories for each other in zines, and pioneering the homoerotic literary sub-genre of slash fiction (the term ‘slash’ literally derives from the punctuation between Kirk / Spock).

Now fans weaponize hashtags and online petitions to revive shows like The Expanse and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, or to take showrunners to task with criticisms of their blind spots and choices. One notable example is the teen show The 100, which sparked ire in 2016 after killing off one of the show’s prominent gay characters; an act that was seen by many to perpetuate the ‘bury your gays’ trope that has been prevalent in TV and film. And as for fan fiction? There is, most famously, E L James’ Fifty Shades of Grey series, which was inspired by Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight and originally posted on a fan website. But, beyond that, there is also the platform Archive of Our Own, which in 2019 won a Hugo award for its archive of more than 4.7 million fan-written stories.

“Fans engaging actively with the materials of their culture has improved our world in countless ways,” says Jenkins. “Television, as it exists today, is largely a response to modes of engagement that fans have modeled over the past several decades – [a form] where more attention is paid to backstories and secondary characters, where there is a greater degree of serialization and the core mythology is sustained across multiple media platforms, and which builds in space for exploration and speculation. And now, which seeks to be more diverse and inclusive in whose stories get told… Many of today’s critical darlings are following practices that were modeled first in fan fiction.”

Perhaps one of the most profound changes of the last 10 years is the extent to which the entertainment industry has begun to exploit the passion of fanbases for their own commercial ends. “The industry needs fans more than ever before,” explains academic Suzanne Scott, author of Fake Geek Girls, a study of the gender politics of fandom. “They need fans to ensure big opening weekends at the box office, they need them as promotional labor to create more ‘authentic’ excitement around a media object, or to distinguish one text from the glut of content that we are constantly choosing between as consumers.” Just take the techniques employed by Netflix, who have become masters of facilitating ‘organic’ conversation around their output.

On the more extreme end of the spectrum, they even rely on them as investors. A famous example being the 2014 big-screen revival of cult TV detective drama Veronica Mars, a sequel made possible only by the crowdfunding efforts of fans, and which subsequently led to a 2019 TV return on streaming service Hulu. 

With the latter series, this equal partnership dynamic started to become complicated, however, with fans recoiling in horror when creator Rob Thomas killed off love interest Logan. 

To quote journalist Constance Grady, writing for Vox: “Thomas, they said, had taken advantage of their desire to see Veronica and Logan together, using their investment as shippers to leverage not just their time and attention, but the literal dollars out of their pockets. In that case, didn’t he owe them something?”

Jenkins thinks it’s a fair question. “The sense of ownership reflects the way humans have always engaged with stories,” he says. “We use stories to make sense of who we are. We use stories to debate our values, fears, and aspirations. We display our attachment to stories in various ways and we define ourselves through which stories mean the most to us. There’s nothing odd about this. What is odd is the idea that corporations want to claim a monopoly over the storytelling process, resist input from their audience, and lockdown stories from further circulation and elaboration.”

CLICK THE LINK FOR THE FULL ARTICLE

[timeclonemike]

The War of The Words

A dog whistle, originally, was a literal physical whistle that produced sound frequencies outside of the normal range of human hearing, but still audible to dogs. In the present day, it has become shorthand for a code or hidden message, an otherwise insignificant word or phrase that is considered significant to certain audiences.

The whole point of a dog whistle is that it is supposed to be a secret code, hidden in plain sight. The idea is that it allows people to communicate specific ideas that they would not otherwise be able to speak of openly, while still using public means of address and communication. If those words and phrases are ONLY ever used by racists, misogynists, homophobes, or radfems (to name a few) then they wouldn’t be effective codes at all for the same reason that Nazis can’t use the swastika as a secret sign to identify each other: EVERYBODY knows what that symbol means, and what kind of people wear it.

The fact that the term dog whistle has come into common use to describe these “secret” messages means that they aren’t actually secret at all. The instant that somebody uses them in a tweet or a blog post or a press release, somebody will point out the dog whistle for those who aren’t already aware of it. This means that the types of people who are inclined to use dog whistles have to keep finding new ones if they want to retain the advantage of communicating their biases in plain sight, or at least that’s the theory.

In practice, there are other factors at work. First and foremost, the most common response to identifying a dog whistle is to isolate it from the rest of the language. Like a body detects infection and surrounds the pathogen with antibodies, the internet is filled with people pointing out how specific combinations of words or symbols have been co-opted by people who believe in white supremacy or Jewish conspiracies. This basically burns a linguistic bridge; it denies the enemy the ability to use the phrase covertly, but it also denies everyone else the use of that terminology as well. To be fair, there is plenty of historical precedent for this - the original owners of the Swastika are not in any hurry to take it back - but it also cedes linguistic territory to the opposition.

More importantly, this reaction can be weaponized; by specifically adopting a turn of phrase or affectation already in common use within a specific subculture, fandom, or community, racists and white supremacists can invoke a sort of auto-immune disease where otherwise well meaning people make baseless accusations that all the fans of X are bigots, creating whole new social divisions or amplifying existing ones. The most recent example I can think of at time of writing was when somebody pointed out that the Triforce symbol from the Zelda video game series was being co-opted in this way; the thing is, the Triforce symbol was arguably too well established and too well known for this to work, but a lesser known symbol could be stolen with relative ease, as was the case with Pepe the Frog.

This whole strategy is also a keystone of their recruitment process, where those who are not aware of the extra meanings behind some sort of saying or lyric or meme spread and repeat it, and suddenly get attacked from all angles for being a racist or sexist or Nazi apologist. When the whole world is suddenly against you, it is very easy to be swayed by the one group that is still accepting of you, especially when that group set you up to be isolated to begin with. Cancel and purity culture are arguably the best thing to happen to white nationalism in the last twenty years.

Taken all together, it looks like white nationalism (and similar ideologies) are waging a guerilla war against language itself, and they seem to be winning because the opposition continuously retreats and abandons (linguistic) territory to be captured. But the thing about guerilla warfare is that it is adopted by organizations that do not have the resources to fight a much larger and more established opponent head on. Remember, if they could speak their minds openly without fear of social, legal, or economic consequences, they wouldn’t need to use dog whistles and codes and euphemisms in the first place. The huge amount of protesting against police brutality and systemic entrenched racism over the past few weeks have proven that the racists and bigots are themselves a minority... a minority that has managed to get a foot in the door of institutional power, admittedly, but still a minority.

While this is largely speculation, it may be that linguistic territory is being traded for social territory in the form of pressure to oust obvious bigots from positions of power and influence. And because the nature of social media means that dog whistles have an extremely short half-life, it is potentially possible to reclaim that linguistic territory later. The problem is keeping up with a strategy that is deliberately built around muddying the waters between friend and foe by making language itself a minefield.

[my-add-chronicles]

Ironically, the video game I spent that time playing kind of has amplified the need to examine this phenomena

I wouldn’t even call it negative self-talk, it’s more complex than that. More a sort of... self-damaging practice that comes naturally with the default way our society tends to communicate socially, especially specifically in regard to the habitual tone adopted re: presentation of self

and this sort of..

-Actually wait that’s a fun one, one could argue, Christianity weaving itself into mainstream American culture and the global culture (violently imposing a culture, really, considering aspects of forced cultural assimilation among the literal violence...) .. and this bleeding into things especially during the Internet age, which creates a sort of global risk of similar habits in English-speakers because the Internet age provides a unique platform of ‘standardization’, which is to say people who don’t feel confident about their social etiquette will tend to mirror the person who seems most ‘normal’ and confident which may be as meaningless as just.. the person and communication style that our culture validates most loudly or, even more so, has the least reaction to (because if someone makes a mistake, people tend to feel obligated to tell them so. And the internet provides a weirdly transparent place to view these interactions)

- all that, in mind.. and with respect it being overly simplified, back to- ‘well Christianity’s influence on our culture is a prime suspect’, that influence could also be considered a layer of this sort of...

..politeness almost exclusively being associated with humbleness.

And more relevantly to what I’m thinking a lot about (because it’s so much less visible): this sort of virtue of self-exposing faults.

I mean, the aspect of centering sin as core human identity makes it seem comically obvious how that could carry over into language habits and concepts of how we talk about ourselves. And obviously the two-gender system seems to amplify this towards women because it amplifies an importance in being socially thoughtful.

Hm!

Just some anecdotal feelings really, not meant to be a sort of debate topic starter (I hate debates, they are almost never without intense callousness as a undertone)- but it’s fun and interesting thinking about these things and why they may have come to be and how invisible they are to us because it’s just.. there.. as a habit.. just comes up naturally as a tone and a way of speaking and expressing.

And it irks me I suppose lol. It’s not self-depreciation but what a strangely negative default language style, I don’t think I want to keep that, if I can help it

(I haven’t really proofread a damned thing here, just had fun seeing where the reflection would bring me as I wrote it lol)

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/do-you-have-white-teenage-sons-listen-up-how-white-supremacists-are-recruiting-boys-online/2019/09/17/f081e806-d3d5-11e9-9343-40db57cf6abd_story.html?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true

This is a MUST READ for every parent of a white teenage son. Neo-Nazis, especially Andrew Anglin of the "Daily Stormer" Neo-Nazi website. Below is an article about how they are targeting young white males.

I also have a thread preceding the article from the Southern Poverty Law Center that tracks these hate groups and what you should be on look out for as a parent. (This article relates to the previous article I posted on a young woman who sued the Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin for violating her civil-rights.)👇

"Neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin intentionally targets children — some as young as 11, the age of one of Joanna Schroeder’s sons when she learned he was looking at white supremacist propaganda on the internet."

"Targeting young, impressionable minds - he said on a podcast in 2018 - means skipping the often lengthy “redpilling process,” a euphemism on the far right for gradually brainwashing people to embrace increasingly radical, hateful ideas." https://t.co/Y3sVHcioOJ

"Hateful rhetoric online can turn into violence in real life. The gunmen involved in the white supremacist shootings in #Pittsburgh, #Christchurch, #Gilroy & #ElPaso were all active in online forums, where they shared hateful messages before the attacks."

“Social media platforms have a tremendous impact because of their ability to amplify extreme ideas from the fringes.” — SPLC’s Heidi Beirich

"That’s why we’re encouraging tech companies to #ChangeTheTerms in order to combat hate & extremism online." https://t.co/pUGfzl954y

Parents can help children learn to identify the hate they see online, like Joanna Schroeder did, by discussing it with them. “I told them, ‘They’re trying to get you to believe something that, if you think about it, you really don’t believe.’”

https://t.co/gnovx3kWCh

“All kids need positive mentoring, and if we fail on that, then there are people out there who are only too happy to mentor them into violence.” — Alice LoCicero, clinical psychologist, Society for Terrorism Research https://t.co/96uObPU4dV

‘Do you have white teenage sons? Listen up.’ How white supremacists are recruiting boys online.

By Caitlin Gibson  | Published September 17, 2019, 9:00 AM EDT | Washington Post | Posted September 21, 2019 2:35 PM ET |

At first, it wasn’t obvious that anything was amiss. Kids are naturally curious about the complicated world around them, so Joanna Schroeder wasn’t surprised when her 11- and 14-year-old boys recently started asking questions about timely topics such as cultural appropriation and transgender rights.

But she sensed something off about the way they framed their questions, she says — tinged with a bias that didn’t reflect their family’s progressive values. She heard one of her sons use the word “triggered” in a sarcastic, mocking tone. And there was the time Schroeder watched as her son scrolled through the “Explore” screen on his Instagram account and she caught a glimpse of a meme depicting Adolf Hitler.

Schroeder, a writer and editor in Southern California, started paying closer attention, talking to her boys about what they’d encountered online. Then, after her kids were in bed one night last month, she opened Twitter and began to type.

“Do you have white teenage sons?” she wrote. “Listen up.”

In a series of tweets, Schroeder described the onslaught of racist, sexist and homophobic memes that had inundated her kids’ social media accounts unbidden, and the way those memes — packaged as irreverent, “edgy” humor — can indoctrinate children into the world of alt-right extremism and white supremacy.

She didn’t know whether anyone would pay attention to her warning. But by the time she awoke the next morning, her thread had gone viral; as of Sept. 16, it had been retweeted more than 81,000 times and liked more than 180,000 times. Over the following days, Schroeder’s inbox filled with messages from other parents who were deeply concerned about what their own kids were seeing and sharing online.

“It just exploded, it hit a nerve,” she says of her message. “I realized, okay, there are other people who are also seeing this.”

Over recent years, white-supremacist and alt-right groups have steadily emerged from the shadows — marching with torches through the streets Charlottesville, clashing with counterprotesters in Portland, Ore., papering school campuses with racist fliers. In June, the Anti-Defamation League reported that white-supremacist recruitment efforts on college campuses had increased for the third straight year, with more than 313 cases of white-supremacist propaganda recorded between September 2018 and May 2019. This marked a 7 percent increase over the previous academic year, which saw 292 incidents of extremist propaganda, according to the ADL.

As extremist groups have grown increasingly visible in the physical world, their influence over malleable young minds in the digital realm has become a particularly urgent concern for parents. A barrage of recent reports has revealed how online platforms popular with kids (YouTube, iFunny, Instagram, Reddit and multiplayer video games, among others) are used as tools for extremists looking to recruit. Earlier this year, a viral essay in Washingtonian magazine — written by an anonymous mother who chronicled a harrowing, year-long struggle to reclaim her teenage son from the grips of alt-right extremists who had befriended him online — sparked a flurry of passionate discussions and debates among parents across social media.

Parents wanted to know: What was happening to their kids? Why was it happening, and how could it be stopped?

They were raised to be ‘colorblind’ — but now more white parents are learning to talk about race

For extremist groups, the goal is hardly a secret; the founder and editor of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer has openly declared that the site targets children as young as 11.

“This is a specific strategy of white nationalists and alt-right groups,” says Lindsay Schubiner, program director at the Western States Center, a nonprofit focused on social, economic, racial and environmental justice. Schubiner co-authored a tool kit published by the center this year that offers guidance to school officials and parents who are facing white-nationalist threats in their communities.

“White-nationalist and alt-right groups use jokes and memes as a way to normalize bigotry while still maintaining plausible deniability,” Schubiner says, “and it works very well as a recruitment strategy for young people.”

Schroeder saw this firsthand when she sat down with her kids to look at their Instagram accounts together.

“I saw the memes that came across my kids’ timelines, and once I started clicking on those and seeking this material out, then it became clear what was really happening,” she says. With each tap of a finger, the memes grew darker: Sexist and racist jokes (for instance, a looping video clip of a white boy demonstrating how to “get away with saying the n-word,” or memes referring to teen girls as “thots,” an acronym for “that ho over there”) led to more racist and dehumanizing propaganda, such as infographics falsely asserting that black people are inherently violent.

“The more I clicked, the more I started to see memes about white supremacy,” Schroeder says, “and that’s what was really scary.”

That pattern of escalation is familiar to Christian Picciolini, an author and former neo-Nazi who left the movement in 1996 and now runs the Free Radicals Project, which supports others who want to leave extremist movements.

“Youth have always been critical to the growth of extremist movements, since the beginning of time. Young people are idealistic, they’re driven, they are motivated, and they’re not afraid to be vocal. So if you can fool them into a certain narrative that seems to speak to them, then that’s the growth of your movement,” he says. “And I’ve never seen an extremist movement grow as fast as I have in the last 10 years.”

Most of the people who contact Picciolini looking for help — anywhere from 10 to 30 per week, he says — are “bystanders,” people who are scared that someone they know or love is a white supremacist. And most of those bystanders are parents of teens and young adults.

[polaloca7]

My mash-up of the Lady Gaga compilation and tymú’s “walk with me” amplify the intersections of sound, identity, and thought of both pieces due to the parallels found between them in sound and genre. Regarding the sound of the piece; the repetitive nature of Gaga’s words play into the repetitive nature of the beat found in “walk with me”. This repetition of words coupled with the repetitive beat create a consistency in the piece which borders on an almost comedic experience for the listener. This was intentional as I wanted to render a comedic feeling onto the audience as the backstory for the viral video of Lady Gaga’s repetitive anecdote was a comical moment for online users. I purposefully tried to place Lady Gaga’s voice in sections where only strings were heard, and it was right before the beat came in. I did this purposefully, so the attention of the listener was solely on Lady Gaga’s words and it would highlight their repetitive nature. Additionally, this gave the impression that the generic repetitious beat could just as easily be replaced by the generic and repetitive words of Lady Gaga. Therefore, furthering the compare and contrast element of the piece’s listening experience. The identity and thought behind this mash-up go hand in hand. The identity of this song is that of a generic Lo-fi song which fits all the stereotypes; like it is a mash-up, has online culture references, and is low quality production. The low production amplifies both the meme comical aspect of the viral video and it contains the Lo-fi stigma through its low-quality and mash-up aesthetic. Essentially, what I mean is that those familiar with the Lo-fi and the Lady Gaga meme will understand immediately how much the two elements lend themselves to each other. As meme’s are also low quality, often reference internet culture, and create a collage of elements (sound, text, music, etc) to better display a meaning. The fusing of Lo-fi and a viral video serves to highlight their shared characteristics to the listener.  

The artistic inspiration behind this song was the Lo-fi giant Elijah who. Elijah who is a well-known Lo-fi creator whose songs mostly include dialogue from movies, series, or internet videos. His songs are sometimes are as simple as Lo-fi versions of popular songs. Elijah who is known for his consistency and his creation of narratives in a song by means of dialogue inserted into the Lo-fi tracks. A good example of this technique is elijah who’s “this girl”. And one of his most popular tracks is the Lo-fi version of “Bad and Boujee” appropriately named “sad and boujee”. Moreover, one criticism found in Lo-fi, which is also found in many other remix heavy genres, is that Lo-fi is repetitive and redundant to a fault. Mash-ups and remixes “responds to this criticism with a counterintuitive move. Instead of using digital media and computer technology to provide for new and dynamic forms of interactivity where media content can change and continually adapt to user requirements, by which [remix] accelerates and exploits repetition” (Gunkel, pg xxix). And this is exactly what my Lo-fi track is doing with the Lady Gaga’s interviews, it is accelerating and exploiting repetition. I am taking a counterintuitive approach to highlighting the repetitive nature of Gaga’s words by paring it with a genre which is known for the same annoying trait of heavy redundant repetition. Additionally, this overextension of repetitive traits is what gives the track it’s comedic effect which was my original intention all along.

The lack of originality in paring Lady Gaga’s dialogue with a Lo-fi beat is essentially making a statement to Lady Gaga expressing that her words are not original. Because as Gunkel explains “strictly speaking, [there is] nothing original in or about remix” (Gunkel, pg xxvii). Furthermore, to better understand why Lady Gaga’s words are just as unoriginal as a remix one has to know their backstory in becoming a pop culture reference.

In early 2017 Lady Gaga’s career seemed to have entered its stage of maturity. The stage where all pop-stars end up when their sales growth have peaked and their relevancy starts to decline. Moreover, the reception to her past creative choices seemed to have cemented this sentiment. Lady Gaga was becoming more synonymous to a past era rather than a thriving popstar at the top of her game. However, this all changed with the release of the A Star is Born and its inclusion of “Shallow”. This song seemed to single-handedly resurrect mainstream interest in Lady Gaga’s music and give A Star Is Born international appeal. The consequent success of A Star Is Born and acclaim for Gaga’s talent created a resurgence in the power of ‘Little Monsters’ influence on online culture. The ‘Little Monsters’ are Lady Gaga’s dedicated self-proclaimed fandom who are recognized as a thriving community and are especially active online. As ‘Mother Monster’ herself, Gaga plays an active part in this thriving online community. As Melissa A Click explains, “the felt reciprocity of the relationship is a key component of Little Monsters’ identification with Lady Gaga and that social media encourages and facilitates the give-and-take between Mother and Little Monsters.” (A Click pg 374).

To Little Monsters Lady Gaga represents more than just a celebrity, she is a guiding role model much like a mother. “Her Little Monsters decided to name her ‘Mother Monster’ because she’s the one that pretty much ... ‘birthed’ the Little Monster fan base” (A Click, pg 371). And so, like children the Little Monsters’ poked fun at their mother’s expense. On October 8th, 2018 a member of the Little Monsters fandom doted by the username “The Fab Teacher” had created a compilation of Lady Gaga telling the same story which had become an ongoing gag online. Various iterations of “There can be a hundred people in the room and 99 don’t believe in you, but just one does, and it can change your life” was Gaga’s only way of parsing Bradley Cooper’s support. And so ensued the memes. The video went viral and had celebrities and fans alike commenting on it. The fan video had become such a trending topic online that it even reached the Golden Globes. At said award show presenter Sandra Oh poked fun at the repetitive anecdote with Lady Gaga present in the room. This was the first time Lady Gaga was seen commenting on it besides liking a post about it on Twitter. She yelled out from the crowd “It’s true!” standing behind her repetitive words. This reciprocity by Lady Gaga of a fan video on television and Twitter further strengthened the relationship between Mother Monster and her created community of Little Monsters.

Her words became a punch-line and so much of a cultural reference that placing them onto a Lo-Fi track seemed like the correct choice for me. It highlights the intersection of sound, identity, and thought of Memes and Lo-fi as genres. But it is also just ironically funny as an inside joke to anyone well-versed on internet culture.

[electrogeek95-blog]

[Opinion] The Cyber Effect : Gaming Freak Outs – An unacceptable bias (Mirror from electrogeek95.wordpress.com)

I am reading this book right now: The Cyber Effect written by Cyber-psychologist Dr. Mary Aiken.

As a Software Developer and an internet enthusiast, this is a book that goes pretty much biased against my profession and field of interest In fact, in the very first chapter, it kind of prides itself on its bias. However, I decided to read it nonetheless – it’s important to get to know a view outside (in this case, opposed) to the bubble of your life and your life’s interest.

While I found a lot of deliberate opinions and facts during the course of my reading, the nature of their bias was moderate at most. However, I reached a section which broke that barrier pretty blatantly.

It is titled “Gaming Freak Outs”. Depending on your version of the book (and variety of print), you can find that section on page 77.

The section begins with an example of a blonde German boy. A gamer, whose recording of an intense freak out was posted on a popular YouTube channel – Gaming Freak Outs. Long story short, that boy was hitting his keyboard and shouting at the game during the course of his play. As the author rightly points out, he is freaking out because the game is going rather poorly. The author uses the example to accentuate in further paragraphs that these ‘all-engrossing online/multiplayer games’ make gamers distressed and often more focused on success in-game rather than adhering to real life obligations, unless, to the gamer’s dismay or anger, interrupted by a sibling or elder. Especially for children at a very impressionable age.

While this is true for online games, this is true for any kind of game – be it sports outside, indoor sports, or night outs with friends. These days, interactions with players in online games have more or less replaced interactions with boys/girls in the neighborhood playground. But even when they were popular, children used to get irritated when called back home or given strict time deadlines by their parents. These characteristics, while I agree have been amplified by the addictive nature and minimal physical fatigue of online games, are not something new. My complaint with the author here is not her description of the amplitude of this issue, but rather her subtle indication of these phenomena as a creation of online games.

In the last sentence of the next paragraph, the author writes – There are many videos of small children, under nine, shouting words they shouldn’t know yet while being pulled away from violent shooting games like Call of Duty, which they shouldn’t be playing. I was a bit surprised here as popular Call of Duty Multi-player titles such as Modern Warfare (I don’t know which edition the author is referring to as she doesn’t mention the video or the specific edition of the game) usually have a PEGI rating of 16+ or 18+ and are rated as mature. So the question to ask is: how is an under nine year old granted access to this game? If you expose a nine year old to a multi-player game meant for adults, is it any surprise that s/he will learn words that “they shouldn’t know yet”? Is the problem here the game itself, or the guardian’s lack of proper internet monitoring for their child? It is surprising that a cyber-psychologist is speaking like a mother who doesn’t know too much about this multiplayer game thingy or the internet.

The author continues in further paragraphs to make the point that these freak outs cruelly recorded by people who are supposedly “loved ones” and “friends” of the gamer, are posted online. The author says that the gamer will be possibly humiliated for the rest of his life over this video posted online. This didn’t happen when “sore loser” kids used to play outside. Their wounds were soothed and there was no record of the incident anywhere. But now these videos are forever on the internet – privy to multiple uses for repeated humiliation of the gamer in question.

Here let me ask you this question: How many of these videos really go viral? I agree that in its initial phases, these videos were far and few. However, over the years, with the rapid expansion of the internet, so many of these videos are uploaded every day that ‘that video of Klaud freaking out in CS:GO’ gets lost in a sea of similar videos. Maybe it lies in the consciousness of the people for a while, but then it, is erased away. Besides, considering YouTube and it’s super broken and exploitable system of copyright take down of videos, such videos can be easily taken down with a take-down request by the subject of ridicule. In some cases, the “victim” even accepts the video as a little joke and laughs it off (I stay neutral with this attitude though: some people are more sensitive about their image than others and that is not wrong). After all, the best way to kill a joke on you is to participate in it and laugh at yourself.

Plus, these “supposed loved ones” recording these freak outs is a very similar phenomenon to the videos of fails going on shows like “America’s Funniest Videos” and the similar shows (even channels on YouTube). It’s not cruel, it’s just different from what the author is used to.

After I had read this section, I had to write about it. It ignores so many aspects of such a complicated and nuanced subject and, I believe, is a little above the acceptable level of bias.

The author does make quite a few valid points and does point out problems of the gaming culture. But she also makes a lot of blatantly opinionated and biased observations without delving in deep into the issue. Not that I have done a good job of the same, but at least I scratched the surface of both sides of topic – the reason I wrote this is because I believe she failed to do even that minimal level of analysis.

[hastingshale99-blog]

Murderball ( 2005).

Klaverjassen, likewise referred to as Klaverjas, is a complex thought very easy to learn trick-taking game that, because of its addictiveness and also fun-factor, is extremely prominent in Dutch celebrations. Indy as well as Dime, on the other hand, I thought were verging a bit on Mary-Sue sometimes these are both ladies who Coach Kingston believes have one of the most natural talent. http://eficientediete.info includes a PKE meter that could be made use of to discover tricks as well as runes, yet it doesn't play a big adequate component in challenge addressing to be of much rate of interest. Fill a large bucket with water and also allow your kid take his food preparation video game outside to scoop and put if the climate's acceptable. It is uncommon that the end result of a soccer video game is the outcome of one solitary gamer. With Manchester City's game versus Swansea City kicking off as normal at 3pm, it suggests United will certainly know whether or not they still have an opportunity of qualifying for the Champions Organization by the time the suit is rescheduled. The fact that your game is better compared to most video games in 1984, 1994, 2004 or 2014 doesn't suggest anything. Child of Robert Baratheon, pal of Ayra and also sufferer of Melisandre, Gendry directly ran away being turned into a blood sacrifice by Davos back in period three, where we last saw him rowing off into the distance. While it will obviously amplify your game sales tenfolds, it will not indicate much if the game isn't performing actually well on the word-of-mouth alone. Blink games are offered not simply on gaming internet sites but some are also installed in such social networking sites as Facebook. Disney's Wondertime web site supplies another basic game idea that makes use of products discovered at the beach. Iacopelli's summaries of the sporting activity as a culture and the athletes' experiences as they are playing are authentic and inspiring, but she ne I beta-read a non-final alteration for Iacopelli as well as give it in its present state 4.5. I believe that when it's in final type, it will be a solid 5 for me. This season, Milwaukee Brewers infielder Jeff Cirillo implicated the Colorado Rockies of using unlawful water logged baseballs in your home games. Rockstar's Western classic could be set up on your Xbox One using a disc, or purchased as a 7.4 GB download from the Xbox store. But it by no means is a full option for video game development, posting and also advertising and marketing and never ever declared to be one. You could get your gamers to have fun fairly conveniently while likewise working with the principles of the game. AJGS: In terms of publications for game design my perpetuity favourite is Jesse Schell's The Art Of Video game Style: A Book Of Lenses. The following day i discovered some completely dry animal crap as well as discovered that i had actually placed my tent just a couple inches far from some little animal's burrow, one that plainly had much job to achieve throughout the night hrs. You also should have a range of choices readily available to make sure that when one video game gets boring, you can swiftly introduce a new game to keep things enjoyable and removaling. For this reason, the book, I have to claim, could just be enjoyed if you in fact read A Video game of Thrones - as in guide. Just what you possibly wouldn't realise if you missed out on the opening cinematic - or merely missed it because it was so boring - is that the brand-new Ghostbusters video game is really tied to the film. There was knuckle chewing tension, as seconds stretched to mins and still Snow lay stationary on that slab When all but dedicated direwolf Ghost had deserted, his eyes lastly broke open - a visual saying that Video game of Thrones in some way attached actual, edge-of-couch pizzazz. Every user input or important activity should have an audio-visual action to really feel immersive - it's the difference between a floaty game that really feels incomplete, and also a video game where the player really feels encouraged as well as the world really feels alive. It is very easy to get captured up right into that little bubble of video games that match your tastes and also viewpoints. Another enjoyable video game to play would be to utilize a substitute target that looks like an old dartboard. The fault is rarely their own; the pre-release advertising cycle for games is, at this point, polished to a mirror shine and also is significantly reliable at getting individuals hysterically thrilled concerning upcoming video games. My existing preferred mobile video game is called Pancake-- you hold one button to flip a physically substitute pancake. Undoubtedly some women love games that the gamers which are mostly guys (as well as the other way around). Currently millions of players can have fun with each various other despite where they are located as long as they have the game and a durable web connection. http://eficientediete.info is that I count on exactly what computer game intend to provide me, while the bequest of cocaine is one I detest. This is a terrific game and also if Smash hit still existed I would certainly recommend this for a leasing, over a purchase. Where the Empress by Karen Miller was pull down by a cold, calculating women personality without any likeability, The Appetite Gamings is lugged by Katniss' battle, interest and also resolution. In Period 7, it appears like we're finally going to figure out exactly what Gendry's been up to. General video gaming target market could have missed the death of informal games with the arrival of social media networks, when older women target market quit purchasing covert item video games about hot vampires and also carried on to farm virtual land in Facebook games.

[atelier-kristel]

FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE: THE STORY OF NFTS

With NFTs successfully taking over the digital art market of the 2020s and penetrating the pop culture universe, some would assume that NFTs were created just a year or two ago. Well, the reality is the modern version of NFTs as we know it has been in the making since early 2014. This blog will be a quick and easy tour of all the history behind the making of the present-day NFT explosion and how they became such an integral part of all discussions relating to cryptocurrencies and crypto digital assets.  

Where did it begin?

Let me take you back to the year 2014, when Bitcoin and the blockchain technology had the world mesmerized by its potential. There was still a lot of apprehension about how the technology worked (that still has not changed!) and whether it was actually safe to invest your money in this new tech invention. During this time, the idea of NFTs was essentially born when blockchain enthusiasts proposed the concept of “colored coins” which were tokens that represented real-world assets on the blockchain and could be used to prove ownership of any asset, from precious metals to cars to real estate, even equities, and bonds.  

With this idea at its core, Counterparty was founded which was a peer-to-peer financial platform and distributed, open-source internet protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain. This platform allowed asset creation and had a decentralized exchange which led to users to create their own currencies and own digital assets with worrying about counterfeit issues. The first NFT was also minted during 2014 which was a digital art piece by renowned artist, Kevin McCoy, called Quantum that currently is being sold for seven million dollars. Eventually, over the course of 2016 and 2017, trading cards and memes found their way on the blockchain and were being actively sold on Counterparty. Rare Pepes, that were digital artworks inspired from the Pepe the Frog meme, found a huge market online and these artworks led to the birth of CryptoArt, as this was the first time that a piece of digital art could have intrinsic value.  

During 2017, Ethereum was quickly gaining prominence as a cryptocurrency and its place in the crypto-market was further solidified with the creation of Cryptopunks, which were unique pixel-animated characters created on the Ethereum blockchain that were limited to 10,000 units. These collectibles quickly took the internet by storm and led to Ethereum creating infrastructure that would allow the tracking of ownership and movements of individual tokens from a single smart contract. CryptoKitties was also introduced to the market, which was a virtual game on the blockchain that allowed its players to breed and trade virtual cats. With mainstream media coverage and heavy popularity online, CryptoKitties pushed the conversation of digital assets and NFTs massively forward.

The NFT Explosion

What existed on the Internet’s underground, soon was splashed all over media outlets and NFTs were being readily adopted by artists, tech enthusiasts and curious investors. Between 2018 and 2021, with the release of heavily publicized digital art pieces such as The Forever Rose by artist, Kevin Abosch, the creation of NFT artworks grew exponentially that slowly led its transition into being considered as more mainstream art.  

The numerous benefits of trading and creating NFTs were quickly realized, as its efficiency and disruptive nature was welcomed by creators and art collectors alike. The explosion was further amplified by the launch of platforms like Opensea, considered the largest marketplace for art, music, domain names, collectibles, and trading cards and Mintable that made the minting process super straightforward for the creators. And now, NFTs are quickly becoming a dynamic element to the global art market.  

Future of NFTs

Well, what does the future hold for NFTs?

NFT has caused quite the disruption in the art world and this has been quite intriguing for investors. The biggest draw to NFTs is that it directly addresses the concerns of scarcity and authenticity that buyers of physical art have, when it comes to acquiring digital art. NFTs provide a secure record of transactions which helps in maintaining an unquestionable proof of ownership and provenance that ensures that original artworks and their owners are always identifiable via the blockchain. These NFTs can be taken as virtual signatures which helps in securing the value of the digital art regardless of how many times it is reproduced.  Due to such factors, one can anticipate more investors turning their sights towards the digital art market for their next big investment.  

It is certainly an incredible opportunity for artists as they can compete in a new market which is incapable of being dominated by a few power players. Artists are not just restricted to their local art scene, as NFT technology allows their work to be seen by interested collectors worldwide and helps expand their recognition and network globally.

It is safe to say: the future of NFTs is quite promising….

Shop my artwork collection HERE.

Check my digital artwork collection HERE.

[heannweii]

Are gaming communities becoming more toxic environments for some (e.g. women, LGBT communities, ethnic minorities)?

Are you  part of the gaming communities? Or I should say are you a gamer? Since the global lockdown due to Covid-19, I am sure that a lot of us had actually spent time playing games at home with our friends or family. Online games such as animal crossing and among us quickly gained popularity after the Covid-19 outbreak. These online games actually offered the players a platform or space to communicate and connect between each other.

Social gaming and social networking?

The most basic kind of Internet social life is one-to-one or even one-to-many communication. Spatial distances are mainly unimportant for social interactions due to the nature of the Internet. Online gaming has evolved from a simple game played with friends to a more intricate type of social interaction in which the virtual reality of the game spills over into the real world. For the sake of enjoyment, millions of individuals have developed online gaming personas. Gaming not only fosters an online community, but it also offers for the blurring of the actual and virtual worlds. It is possible to become addicted to virtual reality. Players have been accused of disregarding their families, schools, jobs, and even their health to a certain degree that it led to death (Kahn & Dennis 2021).

What exactly is a gaming community?

In this sense, online games offer a venue, an occasion to come together, because they give a fun area free of the social constraints that clog pubs and clubs. Online games strip us of our physical identities, as well as all the pains and embarrassments that come with them whereby everyone starts on an equal footing, and everyone is graded on their contribution. What you put in determines who you are. They became spaces where individuals could express many aspects of themselves; role-playing with gender and sexuality was possible in a secure, loving setting; and people embraced one another. It is empowering to be a part of a gaming community. They offer a way for lonely kids growing up in huge schools full of sports stars and bullies to make friends and be a part of something exciting and satisfying. Games are about shared experiences that are amplified by player engagement and ownership. Every successful game has a community. Forums, gatherings, conferences, blogs, YouTube channels, and so forth... Game forums, like Twitter, might draw haters and addicts, but they can also find your lifetime friends (Stuart 2013).

Gaming communities can be toxic…

Gamer cultures and identities arose as a result of the introduction of digital gaming. Gamer cultures, on the other hand, have evolved into what is commonly referred to as "toxic cultures," and have come to be linked with exclusion rather than inclusion if you don't match a specific pattern. As incidents like the 2014 harassment campaign #GamerGate vividly shown, the rising prominence of people of colour, women, and LGBTQ individuals in gaming circles is perceived less as an expansion and more as a hostile takeover by certain members of the gaming community. Though the gaming world is vast and varied, with many intelligent and great gamers, it is also rife with misogynists and racists who feel free to encourage violence against anybody who isn't like them (Kowert 2020).

So…

Are gaming communities becoming more toxic environments for some (e.g. women, LGBT communities, ethnic minorities)? In my opinion, yes. With the affordances offered by gaming communities and the right of free of speech, people are allowed to say anything they want within the gaming communities. It is the freedom that people taken for granted that makes the gaming communities become a toxic environment. When young gamers first enter the gaming communities, they might take the toxicity as something very normal in the gaming communities and they slowly become toxic as well after a period of time. The people in the gaming communities can be toxic to any players without any legit reason as long as they feel like the players are not same as them. The most recent example that I have experienced is the gaming communities being toxic to the Chinese. Toxicity is always existing in the gaming communities, and it could never be completely stopped. After the Covid-19 outbreak, the gaming communities quickly changed their toxicity’s target towards Chinese. They started to call the Chinese gamers with offensive name such as “Wuhan Spreader” and “Bat Eater” to spread their hate to the Chinese.

To conclude…

Gaming communities has become way more toxic after the Covid-19 outbreak and the number of gamers increased. Gaming communities are becoming more toxic environments for some (e.g. women, LGBT communities, ethnic minorities). It is almost impossible for gaming communities to completely stop being a toxic environment and the toxicity will always exist. The toxicity from the gaming communities could actually led to tragedy such as mental health problem and suicides. What we can do as a gamer to avoid these tragedies is to choose to ignore the hate speech and the toxicity from other gamers within the gaming communities.

This week topic is actually very interesting and is one of my favourite topics throughout the semester. I am very glad that we are able to exchange our ideas and opinions through Tumblr. Do you have any experience of receiving toxicity from other gamers within the gaming communities? Comment down below to share with me! See you next week.

List of References

Kahn, R & Dennis, M.A 2021, Internet computer network, Encyclopedia Britannica, viewed 11 November 2021, <https://www.britannica.com/technology/Internet>.

Kowert, R 2020, ‘Dark Participation in Games’, Digital Games and Mental Health, Frontiers in Psychology, vol.11, viewed 11 November 2021, <https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.598947/full>.

Stuart, K 2013, Gamer communities: the positive side, Support the Guardian, viewed 11 November 2021, < https://www.theguardian.com/technology/gamesblog/2013/jul/31/gamer-communities-positive-side-twitter>.

[transhumanitynet]

★ Black Hole Sun: Leadership within Social Futurism

★ Black Hole Sun: Leadership within Social Futurism

The following is an adapted and expanded version of my introduction to “Social Futurism and the Zero State” (AKA ‘The Black Book’), exclusive to Transhumanity.net: I am a fervent proponent of Social Futurism. I coined that term to reflect a reality I see in the world, where accelerating technological innovation meets a positive societal vision, specifically in the desire to promote Positive Social Change Through Technology. This book – Social Futurism and the Zero State (AKA “The Black Book”) – offers key insights into my view on how to approach such a mission, and various related matters.

There are many ways a person could promote a Social Futurist future, and mine is to support and develop two related organizations: The Social Futurist Party (SFP), and the Zero State (ZS). The SFP is a new, international political network focussed on developing links between Social Futurist organizations for the purposes of Positive Social Change Through Technology. ZS is a community and movement which works toward the same ends via different – complementary – means, through the medium of the arts, social events, informal networking, and Alternate Reality Gaming. Both organizations have a strong Transhumanist and Singularitarian tone.

I would like to very briefly describe my approach to leadership and activity in these two organizations, to set the tone, going forward. The first part below concerns the nature of leadership in both organizations, while the second part focuses on my own application of that approach within ZS, specifically. Leadership within Social Futurism Different people have different ideas of what leadership is, and how it works best. Those ideas can be further complicated by the motivating power of money: In a world where most organizations are based on motivating people with money, required to stay alive or at least healthy in a Capitalist world, motivation and organizational coherence can be hard to sustain when you’re not offering money, when your goal is not simply material profit in the most base sense. Perhaps the greatest motivational difficulty stems from that dangerous gift we call the internet: The internet is a place where everyone has an opinion that comes at no real cost, and where they are obliged to do nothing real. That attitude is a death-knell for activist and membership organizations, which need people who are willing to do something to back up their opinions.

So how do we move forward? How can we approach leadership for activists in this climate? The answer is to work in small, consistent, networked groups, and to lead by example. Find a small group of people you ‘click’ with, work out what concerns and passions you share as a group, and then work on a project together. Simple as that. Keep your group connected with others, encourage overlap, and the network will grow by word of mouth. Don’t tell other people what they should or shouldn’t do, what they can or cannot do, unless their actions run counter to the explicit principles shared by the entire network. Instead, focus on doing what you can. If you can work effectively alone and want to, then good for you, but most people work best in a small team. Different teams favour different leadership styles. Find one that works for you. The only way to fail is to be inactive, because then you are letting yourself down, letting your team down, letting the entire network down, and yes, even letting the world down. If everyone does their part within a small team, and the teams hang together in an organic, self-modifying network, then the emergent effects have the potential to be world-changing as successful ideas and technologies ripple across the network, time and again.

Black Hole Sun: My Sphere of Responsibility within ZS

As I’ve noted extensively elsewhere, the Zero State (ZS) trades in metafiction, which is to say that although its goals and consequences are perfectly real, some of its members choose to treat its core narratives as a kind of game (specifically an ‘Alternate Reality Game’ or ARG), which encourages engagement combined with a certain suspension of disbelief which helps get things done. In line with that approach, regardless of whether they all view ZS as a game, our core members all have assigned roles that collectively underpin our “Mythos”, or narrative. There are all sorts of weird and wonderful role names within ZS, names of occupations, animals, mythological creatures and so on, each giving some hint as to its function. My own role is “The Teacher”, because my role or function is to activate the other roles, to teach, and to ‘wake people up’. My role has a particular relationship with our central symbolism of a ‘Blackstar’, which represents a Technological Singularity and ultra-rapid, ultra-radical techno-societal change. In that role, I have two broad functions. The first is to communicate key ideas to our membership, so that we may work our way forward with a common understanding. The second is to interact directly with the network via my own small group of contacts in as efficient a manner as possible, through the medium of small gatherings we call “Sessions”. My point here is that a leader leads by example, by doing what must be done, and in doing so offering an example which others can follow. The most effective leader should very rarely have to tell someone else what to do. The best leaders are the exact opposite of much internet culture, where people all want to express their personal opinions while taking no personal responsibility for action. Social Futurist leaders must be ready to take the initiative, to take action in ways that demonstrate their views. Our network is designed to naturally coordinate and amplify such efforts, so by leading yourself and your small group, then you will inspire and assist not only that group, but the groups it is connected to, and the groups they are connected to in turn. The Blackstar (★) symbol for the idea of a revolutionizing Technological Singularity, used within both ZS and the SFP, is an allusion to a Black Hole, or Gravitational Singularity. It is merely a point of focus in and of itself, the culmination of a natural process, but it inevitably transforms everything within its reach. Leadership within Social Futurism, be it within a political party or gaming community or any other organization, is a matter of embodying that Blackstar ideal. To be a Social Futurist leader is to be minimal, while transforming and energizing everything within your reach. Each of us is thus a Blackstar, and together we impart that very nature to Social Futurism itself.

Additional note: A warning from the past The current incarnation of the Zero State (ZS) is a kind of renaissance or ‘second wave’, sometimes styled ‘ZS2.0’. The original ZS was initially conceived at a conference in 12010, then officially formed with the publication of our Principles on 1st May 12011. That original organization already contained the seed of everything that we are now, but we did not yet have the term “Social Futurism” (which I coined to summarize our ideas a little later), and the idea that ZS might be interpreted as an Alternate Reality Game existed only in the back of our thoughts, discussed by a small minority of our members. Although ZS never ceased to exist altogether, there was definitely a fallow period from perhaps 12014-12016, in which most formal activity ceased, with various ZS projects developing lives of their own and our chat groups filling up with people who wanted to talk but do nothing, and who didn’t even understand the nature of the group they had joined. This period coincided with my establishment of the Transhumanist Party in the UK (and elsewhere across Europe; my direct participation in that organization ending as a result of both personal commitments and my disappointment at a disturbingly mediocre, bureaucratic, “don’t rock the boat” attitude in Transhumanist Party groups which struck me as ill-fitting for any Transhumanist organization). One might naturally wonder why ‘ZS1.0’ stalled (I hesitate to use the word ‘failed’, as its failure was not, and was never likely to be permanent), aside from the Transhumanist Party side-track. Some have said that they didn’t like the apparent proliferation of ‘secret’ or private ZS sub-groups, but I am strongly of the opinion that this is a misunderstanding of what was really happening at the time. I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight. Firstly, there were never any “secret” ZS groups. What there was, was a combination of groups who wanted to get on with their projects without being distracted by unhelpful, opinionated “passengers”, and other ZSers whose interest in cryptocurrencies and other cryptographic technologies led them to migrate their discussions to obscure platforms such as RetroShare rather than mainstream websites like Facebook. There was naturally some overlap between these two groups, the first of whom developed a kind of motto in the phrase “No Passengers!” (meaning that all members must contribute in some way), and the second which found it hard to attract and keep participants because of frequent, irritating software glitches and internecine spats fuelled by a minority of ZSers who cared more about Libertarianism than ZS itself (my own resultant and rather stern view on such matters can be read here). The biggest problem by far, however, was the one I already described at the beginning of this article, with the majority of ZS1.0 members wanting to loudly express opinions, and tear down the views and work of others, without actually doing anything concrete to help themselves. This pervasive, corrosive attitude manifested in a range of ways, from rants about Anarcho-Capitalism to bemoaning an imagined lack of transparency from the project groups who really just wanted to get on with their own thing. In short, I eventually came to the conclusion that although decentralized direct-democratic networks are very important (as our Principles explicitly stress), democratic opinion on the individual level cannot be allowed to simply shout down (and shut down) the minority of members ready and willing to do the work which keeps the entire endeavour alive. In summary, my experience with that earlier incarnation of the Zero State led directly to the model of Social Futurist leadership articulated above. Every Social Futurist is a Blackstar, who should work toward concrete ends, in small groups, in accord with our shared and unifying Principles. Your opinions only matter insofar as you can demonstrate some kind of concrete value to your group, and thus to the network, and Social Futurists should take a dim view of those who spend all their time criticizing the efforts of others while doing nothing themselves to help move things forward. In that way we will all survive and thrive, together, as a single great Social Futurist network.

★ Black Hole Sun: Leadership within Social Futurism was originally published on transhumanity.net