#can’t even consume media anymore like wtf

[clouds]

someone please tell me that grad school is not representative of real life and when I start working I won’t be spending every minute under a hydraulic press level of stress

[lyssophobiaa]

No RIGHT because where were ANY of us talking about an urge to rape REAL PEOPLE, like now you have completely tipped the scale and it isn’t even contextual anymore, now you’re just flat out wrong, we were talking about dark fics and media (That I have written my own fucking share of, I was a popular creepypasta blog owner ffs, of course I’ve written some dark shit 💀 I literally agree with OP that someone’s fic can’t hurt you cause you can get out of the cunt, there’s no gun to your head forcing you to read it but the OTHER people who brought up sexual urges and kinks? WTF?)the thing is that yes, maybe there is something wrong if you are gaining pleasure from reading about rape, CSEM, incest, abuse, etc, enjoying dark FICTION is contextual, there is no OBJECTIVE truth, it is all SUBJECTIVE, but when you bring up the topic of having urged to violate real fucking people then it is a completely different conversation. You can read and like dark media and fiction, no one’s telling you that you can’t, people are pointing out however there does become a point where it’s fucking concerning when it is the only media you consume and you are gaining PLEASURE from seeing those acts depicted

Maybe don’t judge people for their interests who cares if someone’s interested in rape or fantasises about doing it to people so long as they only write it

If you’re fantasising about raping real people, seek help 😭

[ratfuck]

Guess I'll just straight up come out with my own response to @i-am-a-fish name dropping me and making a pathetic response they fucking tried to build up as this big clapback to the people who compiled the evidence and made these accusations

This post is meant for you, Fish!

It really says something when you block every single person opposing you, make your acount private after your dirty laundry is shown by someone who has a titanic following on twitter that shadows your own, then bring it back up with a half-assed "response" to your allegations that do nothing but fail in it's attempt to just pass the blame onto others

Like, you don't even bring up the cp blogs you followed, or your hand-chosen moderators being MAP supporters, or you still following other creepy fucks like Gaud even though you state how much you "hate" pedophiles

Wtf do you even mean by the "raid" on your discord? Did the people that do the raid become moderators who used their power to support MAPs and ban anyone who said it was gross? Was the singular person who took those screenshots the raid? If not, the raid must've been the people who were talking to the mods to get them to expose themselves as freaks. Okay, why were they supporting MAPs in the first place and condoning the open discussion of sexual content before then?

You didn't even push the lame "it was an ACCIDENT I followed those pedo blogs" excuse like you did last time, because everyone saw through that as fucking stupid, and you yourself know that was a stupid thing to say

Also, I LOVE that little self-promo at the end of your explanation! "i hate pedophiles because i post positivity, check out my account for proof", that is probably the lamest fucking attempt to save one's self I have ever seen in my life. Saying you hate pedos doesn't fucking vindicate you.

The evidence in support of your defense is even "weaker" than the sources in my, and OTHER people's posts. Word-of-mouth isn't fucking credible. The excuse that you accidentally followed 20+ freaks because of "follow for follow" makes no sense because

Those blogs never followed you in the first place

It's not fucking hard to skim through someone's page to see if they post problematic material in the first place. One of those accounts openly says "shota" in it's header.

There is no way that you can spend all your time on social media and not ONCE see one of these accounts post something bad, especially when they post their content at least once every day.

You never "follow-for-followed" because before you nuked your following list, you followed around 2,000 accounts, contrasted to the estimated 20.2k followers you had at the time.

I follow some 2,000 blogs spread between here and twitter, it's not that fucking hard to notice someone posting abhorrant shit.

The best thing about last night, I think, was when you openly just dropped my blog right there at the beginning. You knew full well that some of your followers would get outraged and come right after me, which they have. If your ship is sinking, might as well take the people who blew it out of the water down with you too, right? I guess I wouldn't say I completely beat you down there though, as it appears your twitter follower number grew some 200 people after Veggietales Facts dropped your ass in front of a quarter of a million people and you briefly went private to hide in guilt. It's pretty fucking telling that the people sending me hate mail aren't even doubting the authenticity of the accusations anymore, but trying to debate how I'm wrong because drawn cp is totally okay because "hurrrr it not real child being exploited", or people calling me evil because I Hate Positivity >:(((. Even in my callouts about you, I asked for people to restrain themselves and not harass you with dumbass suicide bait shit that was neither funny or necessary in the first place.

Wonder why those 200 people would follow you immediately after you got outed for your scummy antics by an extremely popular twitter account? Maybe it's because pedophiles will rush to defend other pedos like flies drawn to pig shit?

the FUNNIEST part though is how you dead ass refered to me by "they" rather than She. You mean to tell me that you could remember my blog name that people constantly slip up, but not remember/care about my gender? Didn't you write an essay for college about the MAGICAL POWER of "preferred" pronouns? Maybe that was you just trying to get more clout online from kids, because nobody would fucking turn a piece of dog shit like that in for a grade.

like, if you're gonna send your groupies after me while you cower and pretend none of this shit happened, at least fucking nut up and unblock me so I can directly tell you why you're a grooming, performative, weak schmuck rather than cast this out there like a bottle in the ocean and hope it runs across you while you search yourself online to see if it's safe for you to come back yet

I don't expect you to delete, I never did in the first place. Right from the beginning you seemed like one of those people who relies on self-gratification and the adoration of thousands to even function. You just can't give it up. You're not some perfect little angle who just wants to "spread positivity", you do it because it fuels your own self worth. You're fucking addicted to social media, and you use and target your content towards kids because lord fucking knows no grown-ass adult would want to hear your lame "ur a smol potato... who has RIGHTS" gimmick.

You may not actively diddle them or DM them for nudes like the more aggressive sexual predators that got outed on here before, but you knowingly consumed cp material. You knowingly alligned yourself with MAPs. You still are friends with Gaud. You made that creepy "use me as your fucktoy, oops wrong blog don't let me stop you tho!" post because it's how you get your sick kicks. Even if you weren't, you'd still be guilty of wrongdoing by exposing minors to this content because of how irresponsible and arrogant you are. You're a stupid fucking putz who got caught being careless, and you're paying for the price.

You're an adult, you have fucking responsibilities to the people who look up to you. Act like one for fucking once rather than your childish "im just a small fish who luvs u!!" schtick

anyway if you're reading this Fish, thank you for your time and for advertising my blog on your twitter. I got like 300 followers in one night. Rot in Hell

[eirenical]

5, 15, 23 for the salty asks!

Thank you, @diddelysquat! (...don’t know why it won’t let me @ you. :P)  I wasn’t sure which fandoms you’re here for, so I just went with the biggest two.  If you had different fandoms in mind, though, please let me know and I’ll answer for those, too.  ^_^

[If anyone else wants to send asks, you can find the ask meme here.]

(Remember guys... this is a salty ask meme.  So... I tried to keep it polite, but I am salty.  VERY salty.  But keep in mind that these opinions are IN NO WAY judgments of people who like the things I don’t like.  You’re all free to do fandom in your own way and so am I.  But yeah... salty!eirenical is salty.  Read at your own risk.  ^_~)

5. Has fandom ever ruined a pairing for you?*

OMG, yeah.  TT^TT  More than once, at this point.  It's usually my first step out of a fandom, actually.  I end up stepping away from the main ship into the fringes of less popular characters and less popular ships and if I can make a home there, then I stay in the fandom, but if not… it's on to greener pastures.

The three biggest ships this happened with in recent times for me are e/R and Courferre from Les Mis and Wangxian for TUD.  I'm STILL holding on to Courferre with tooth and nail because I LOVE THEM, but I hardly ever read fic for them anymore, because infantlized Courfeyrac is NOT my cup of tea.  e/R is… it's done.  I'm fried. I don't even find them interesting anymore.  Like… no thank you, moving on.  

And Wangxian… *sigh* …I still love the ship, but many of their shippers scare me.  And it's not even the kinky crowd that scare me.  It's the anti/purity crowd that scares me.  So I generally don't engage unless I trust the source, but my encounters with that crowd DEFINITELY put me one-foot-out-the-door on TUD, in general.  But I'm happily living in the fringe land of stanning JC and LXC and NMJ and Wen Ning and all my favorite juniors and JZX and Wen Qing and MIAN MIAN and JYL and there are SO MANY OTHER SHIPS OUT THERE, so I'm not totally gone, yet.  ^_~

15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

I… don't think I have one? Les Mis is SUCH a sprawling media set and there are absolutely versions of it that NEED TO DIE (like… DUDE.  Denny.  WTF, man. WTF.), but on the whole I love most versions of it I've consumed (YES.  EVEN SHOUJO COSETTE.  I STILL STAND BEHIND THE FACT THAT THAT'S ONE OF THE BEST ADAPTATIONS AROUND. XD).  And kind of same song, smaller verse with MDZS/TUD?

…oh wait.  No.  No, I have an unpopular opinion if we step outside of novel and dramaverse canon.

…I don't like either of the animated versions.  (THIS IS JUST A PERSONAL PREFERENCE ISSUE.)

I just… there's something about the character designs that just… rubs me the wrong way?  IDEK what it IS, but my eyes nope away from it. It's not even the animation style. It's literally the character designs. And MDZS Q?  NOT FOR ME.  Like… it's cute and all, but I just can't watch it.  Again, I don't even know WHY.  It's just this visceral NOPE reaction every time I see it on my dash.  :P

23. Unpopular character you love?

I just answered this for LM above (though, honestly, I could go down the list of forgotten amis pretty easily ;D), but how about one for TUD?  I don't know if they're unpopular as in people don't like them, but I don't see a lot of content for Wen Ning?  Maybe I'm just following the wrong people, but he is THE LITERAL BEST BOY and I love him SO MUCH and I wish there was more of him on my dash.  TT^TT

[ofcloudsandstars]

Amber and orchard for the fall asks!

amber - share an unpopular opinion that you may have.

Hahaha this is like cracking open pandora’s box. I feel like I have too many. 

I think my primary one though is I absolutely despise capitalism’s affect on witchcraft. I DO NOT think it’s made it more accessible for people, I feel like the only very minor positive thing is that you can now tell people you are a witch and into tarot cards and they won’t find you as weird anymore. Otherwise people don’t realize how capitalism is a force that actually strips culture of it’s meaning in order to sell it for profit and it’s affects on this practice has left a lot of damage not just to some aspects that are sacred but towards the earth since it’s a practice that works really closely with nature. 

(added a read more to spare you poor scrolling souls from my rant lol)

Anyway what crapitalism does is it takes a culture and turns it into an easily consumable concept- almost like a brand, so that as long as you slap something ‘witchy’ seeming together then it qualifies as that brand. It boils everything down to an aesthetic. And no one has to actually believe in it anymore, or practice it or make any effort towards learning it or incorporating it into their lives. As long as they buy into the brand or embody the aesthetic then they count. Sometimes you can try to express that some traditions and materials and such do have meaning (I mean of course they do no one just sat around and made this shit up) people kind of have this nihilistic view that’s fed from this weird modern capitalist society that like: nothing truly has meaning anymore. But it’s like they are feeding this consumerist culture by repeating this mindset and gaslighting others when they appropriate magical practices or other cultures that are still very much alive and still tended to (often by indigenous people still being prosecuted) that are focused on working with the earth. 

Then you see this ripple effect on places like instagram or the big mainstream like magazines and shit and do not get me wrong cause there are a lot of cool and creative people that practice this that are on there but there is so much cashing into this field now and oversaturation that comes with seedy and shady background stories that show creators being completely disingenuous because they really just want to make money. And then going back to my point that this practice works closely with nature, capitalism exploited the fact that we like working with certain herbs, woods, crystals etc and is overharvesting and mining and tainting the very tools that we want to work with, with greed, pollution, child slavery etc. And it’s irritating cause you can make your own tools and don’t have to import anything and you can tell everyone how bad some industries are but they don’t listen cause they are buying into capitalism’s lie that they can sell you anything at a price, even if it’s sacred. Then if you try to defend your point they tell you that this is the only way it can be accessible to everyone, but it’s NOT accessible to everyone, it strips it away from people that could be working with these tools for generations and protecting the climates that these guides and resources for the tools grow in. It also disempowers people in their craft to begin with because witchcraft is about finding that connection to your own power and magic and the bridge with the universe’s power and magic and when you venture down into this practice you will find tools and guides local to you and find ways to make your own magical tools but capitalism disempowers us by telling us that we are not legit until we can put a price tag on it. So people don’t believe in their ability to find the sacred in themselves or nature, they just keep consuming whatever herb bundle or tool capitalism spits at them because it’s the only way to feel legit in this culture. 

And then since it’s seen more of a title or aesthetic and less of a way of life or set of ethics or practice, you have people interested in this spiritual or witchy community that don’t do any work or want to work on themselves that bring their shadow baggage into it. So you get racism seeping into it, homophobia, I also am so fucking confused how TRANSPHOBIA has made its way into here like transfolx are magical by just existing they are walking manifestations and works of alchemy like wtf; and like if you guys were friends with any queer people and hung out with them, they get the idea of magic, ritual and manifestation so well cause so much of their daily life already embodies some of that. But that’s a whole other topic. I vibed well with my queer friends on this and they were the only ones I could talk to about it before witchcraft became mainstream. 

 Then in general it’s seen as like radical if you tell people that are supposedly practicing witches that our energies should be focusing on restoring balance and we should put our energy towards healing nature or towards human rights (since humans are apart of nature) you will literally have witches being like: don’t tell me what to do!!! Like!! Gurl wtf lmaoo I don’t know how people claim to be empaths or into this but they don’t see that maybe if there was a so called “Great Awakening” to “Empower Ourselves” that’s probably what the fucking point was? Not to say that you need to spend every waking moment protesting (another contribution of capitalism- showing some kind of documented proof on social media that you stand for something instead of little daily actions embedded into your everyday life) but you can find ways to change your daily patterns to make space for the societal change that’s coming to bring in a more compassionate world and better community. But since we are so indoctrinated in this consumerist culture, so many people don’t know how to incorporate their values into their everyday lives anymore. It’s all about quantity and showing off on social media. And that negatively impacts witchcraft cause witchcraft is a daily practice you do little things for everyday that just gets embedded into your everyday life, but people get confused and think to be legit it’s something you gotta buy into or show off as proof with stylistic rituals and of course for many people that’s exhausting or financially inaccessible. 

And for the sake of clarity cause the internet hates using critical thinking sometimes, of COURSE you can have a fun and flashy craft I’m not saying you can’t, but there is a massive imbalance here I am pointing out with how people are developing insecurities because they cannot attain this aesthetic overnight without dropping a shit ton of money. Yes witchcraft is very aesthetic-heavy but that’s because it’s a really creative practice that people pour their creativity and energy into and capitalism saw a way to put a price tag on it and now it’s confusing everyone else that’s mistaking this as something else to consume in exchange for money. 

And then I hate that I feel often I cannot talk about this cause instead of people using their critical thinking braincells and realizing how bad capitalism is, they somehow turn this conversation into thinking that I just don’t like when a culture becomes mainstream cause not everyone should enjoy a culture or whatever and it’s like fucking hell of course I would LOVE more witches and to have more people into celebrating nature or finding their own magic and connecting to the universe and whatever, but capitalism isn’t helping at all. It’s separating us from it’s connection and the meaning behind it’s practice. (Also one day I dream of living in a witchy town or community so yeah, the more the merrier, but right now with capitalism, this method is not the way to get into this practice lol). 

You really see the negative effects of capitalism marketing witchcraft because people now treat it as like this commodity they can jump into without finding a way to genuinely connect with it cause it’s all just a gimmick until the next zeitgeist. This either manifests in two ways where they think they can just buy a book or read some posts and not do any work on themselves or thinking on stuff like cultural appropriation so when they start experimenting they might bring harm to themselves by evoking spirits that do not want to work with them, or taking in some sacred herb or substance that can fuck them up leaving deep psychological damage or death- or they can harm others in a myriad of ways. 

Then the other way it manifests are people feeling like witchcraft is suddenly inaccessible because you need money to practice it because capitalism put that veil over their eyes. It’s now another thing gatekept by money. So they try to reclaim it by being like: it’s just a title you can slap on yourself; but they give capitalism more power because that’s what capitalism was doing all along by stripping the meaning. Stripping it down to a concept that only matters as a label that evokes a brand or idea but not an actual practice. In a way it’s very counter culture to not buy into the aesthetic or put in effort anymore. Even if you want to put in effort you feel like you are not good enough cause you will never fit capitalism’s standards of quantity and money to spend to showcase it on the internet to feel legit. So people develop this no-effort approach to it. And ONCE AGAIN for clarity for the internet’s lack of critical thinking and jumping to conclusions I am NOT referring to anything like spoony witchcraft or energy based witchcraft (I am an energy witch primarily thank you very much) I am talking about people calling themselves witches but then when you want to sit down and chat about the craft they have a blank stare cause they were never serious and sometimes judge you for how much you cared about it cause they don’t really believe in it anyway. Not even cause it’s woowoo it’s cause capitalism doesn’t make you believe any anything anymore. The only thing it wants you to believe in is money and what you can consume with it.  

And then when people online try to talk about this and point out it’s a practice these guys get angry with you like you are gatekeeping but it’s like BITCH it’s a FREE FUCKING PRACTICE like GO TALK TO A TREE go COLLECT A ROCK YOU FOUND IN THE CLEAR STREAM OF A BABBLING BROOK and maybe you’d CALM THE FUCK DOWN. Capitalism making it seem like you gotta buy all this shit to be seen as legit is not what this practice is about and it makes me upset how there is like this massive group of people that want to access this culture but are so lethargic about actually doing anything because they are disenchanted and it’s really because they are mentally bogged down by capitalism’s grip on it making them feel like they aren’t shit cause they can’t afford all that bullshit that ain’t gonna help them anyway so they just call themselves witches to get them 2 drops of serotonin and feel included but never really go anywhere beyond that cause capitalism strips the fucking joy and meaning out of everything. The only reason why this bothers me is cause I could be staying in my lane drinking my herbs and shit and chilling but then people either judge me for the effort I put into my practice’s aesthetics thinking I am shallow and buying into this or they think I am being reckless and dangerous believing in something not real by practicing a craft that tbh has a lot of dangerous aspects to it so it’s not rated E for everyone. Like you can fit it to what you want it to be since it’s your journey but it’s always been a bit edgy in some ways and it’s annoying when you get people judging you now for your lifestyle or they wonder why you are so invested cause they don’t get it. 

Anyway that was a rant but you asked for it lol. 

orchard - share one thing that you’d like to happen this autumn.

Get some more weed 

Thanks for the asks lol. Kept the last one short haha but it’s true I have been trying to manifest for a while after my quarantine rations went out. Here are the autumnal asks if anyone else wants to ask or reblog them!

[procrastinatingnerd]

Aye I seen some people being rude to you about your addition to that sex scenes in movies post, just wanna say I totally agree with you. Sometimes they’re justified but 90% of the time it’s just cuz sex sells more and it’s so pointless and uncomfortable. I feel like I can’t even watch anything with my friends or family anymore without it feeling like I’m watching porno with them //:: so fucking weird. They’re always so long and drawn out and graphic now too like wtf!! Stop!! Too much!! I’m not even ace and I think it’s gross lol

Thanks anon, and I get that, it feels like a lot of adult media lately sees those kinds of scenes as compulsory.

Oh your TV show/film is aimed at older teens or adults? Gotta have a fuck ton of sex scenes in there, because clearly we can't make anything without them!

I'm going to reiterate in case some of the people from the original post find this because I know they won't read this properly either: What anon and I are saying here is purely personal preference/opinion. If you want sex scenes in every single piece of adult media you consume, that's valid and no one is stopping you. That being said, they aren't necessary, and you can write adult fiction without relying on them.

[awed-frog]

Taking that ask me 'anything' literally... you've always shown knowledge in history & languages, I was wondering what do you think historians will make out of these memes/internet speak because it obviously follows linguistic rules (we know if something is smol or small, we know how to write a recognizable cow-lik-bred-poem) but they're not clear for e.g. elder people so I’m wondering what you think will become of these things in the future? Maybe you have examples of similar things in history?

Hi there! What an awesome (and complicated) question! So, I’m more of an archaeologist than a historian - from my perspective, the issues are 1) will those things survive and 2) will they be understood?

1) This is something there’s a lot of discussion about, because - as I’m sure you’re aware - everything we use today is made out of materials that generally don’t stand the test of time. If you think about ancient civilizations, the only reason we still know something about people who’ve lived thousands of years ago is because they lived in stone buildings, wrote laws on stones and graffitied everywhere. Because, well, you’d think that of course the great works of literature will be handed down - but for one thing those don’t tell us a lot about how people lived and, more importantly, even the trasmission of important masterpieces should not be taken for granted: according to some estimates, we only have around 10% of Greek literature, and we’re lucky to even have that - without Christian monks and Jewish traders and Arabic doctors, without a population that managed to procede more or less on a straight line all the way to the Renaissance, those works would have been lost forever. A couple of plagues, a victory of the Mongols, a few earthquakes in the wrong place - culture is incredibly fragile. 

Now, our culture is particularly vulnerable - concrete sometimes starts to fall apart 20 or 30 years after construction, most of what we write in stone are lists of dead soldiers and names of buildings - researchers looking into us one thousand years from now could be hard pressed to understand how English worked, and never mind internet memes (if there’ll be researchers in a thousand years, that is - scientists like Stephen Hawking are now speculating we might become extinct even sooner than that). Some people, of course, are optimistic, and say our culture and language will be preserved just like we’re consuming it now - in binary form and on the future equivalent of USB sticks. That’s a possible outcome, but, on the other hand, we’re already seeing how hard it is to make a back-up of what matters and transfer knowledge from, say, slides and floppy disks to our current laptops - how common to lose everything, all of your photos and unfinished novels and old letters (emails) because of a single bug. And that’s not even considering the effort it takes to preserve anything: in the coming years, decades or centuries we might suddenly be too busy fighting wars or surviving natural catastrophes to remember to save our epub copy of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods to our newly implanted brain chip.

2) If everything goes well and tumblr memes are transmitted to future generations, well - that’s when it gets interesting. 

I’m sure a ‘proper’ linguist, or someone who works with history and literature full time could give you a much better answer (and if anyone wants to add to my ramblings, please jump in), but I think the problem with these memes is that, right now, they’re been created and shared within a confined (and relatively small) community. As you say, someone who’s not on tumblr or reddit or 9gag doesn’t even know what you’re talking about. That means that, on the plus side, we recognize ourselves as a sort of community in that we share a common language, but the problem is that it’s hard to communicate outside that community and also - since memes evolve so quickly - that if you blink and stay off tumblr for six months, you come back like a caveman wondering why there are pictures of caterpillars and lava lamps everywhere and what does zumping even mean??? 

[pictured: something that won’t make sense in five years’ time]

And, sure, mass media will occasionally mention this stuff, but they either get it wrong, or write some learned article about language being a multiformed and ever-changing thing and that’s about it. 

Since you’re asking of past examples - there are many that come to mind, and I think they do help us understand how future generations won’t be interested in this stuff at all - or, in the best scenario, not find it very funny. 

A famous case of non-traditional language phenomena that lost all meaning pretty quickly are Latin abreviations - mostly used in letter writing and when carving stuff on rocks. Today, very few people study Latin, and even someone like me, who graduated in ancient literature and routinely translated and analyzed ancient texts back and forth for nine years, isn’t taught about this stuff.

(In the entire course of my studies, I took lessons in epigraphy exactly once, and hated every minute of it. Whenever I visit old churches with family, I’m always asked to translate tomb inscriptions, and I mostly make stuff up because there are a lot of abreviations I just don’t recognize.) 

Language morphs and evolves according not only to the culture surrounding you, but also the medium you’re using to express your thoughts. For people writing on stone and using a telegraph and trying to type a message on an old Nokia, shortening words was the only way to prevent madness; but if you’ve got a smartphone keyboard set on auto-complete, sending messages about SWAK and WDUM and wk and bk makes you sound like an idiot. Also, memes are often based on images, but images aren’t universal. People who don’t know a specific movie or have no cultural context for a specific quote may miss the point entirely - as any non native speaker knows when seeing the atrocities that are memes in our native language shared on Facebook by oblivious friends. 

(That question of medium usage is sometimes overlooked, and instead it is truly paramount to understanding how language evolves: if tumblr mobile stopped to support gifs and images tomorrow, our communication culture would change overnight - just as it changed overnight when social media started to allow for reaction gifs and emoticons and everything else.) 

Memes are also a means of expression that doesn’t age well. For instance, the Bitches don’t know bout my dick meme is from 2006, and personally I don’t even know what it means anymore. Same thing goes for the 2004 ROFLcopter, which even spawned a game, and wtf? These rapidly changing cultural references, and how language is updated to keep up with them, is one of the things many people have most trouble with in today’s world. For instance, you often see people on this website making fun of anti-PC relatives and equating the sentence So what, I can’t say Asians are good at maths anymore? with Why the hell can’t I be racist anymore? but in my opinion the thing goes deeper than that, because of course there’s some racism and sexism involved there, and it’d be foolish to deny it, but what older people are also saying is that they’ve been using some words or expressions for years and years - their whole lives - and now, all of a sudden, they can’t do it anymore, and they don’t understand why. I understand how that can be unsettling, to be honest, because I’m alf their age and I’m unsettled every day by new words popping up (collateral damage, dilation and evacuation, and, just last week, the Trump administration new definition for climate change: ‘weather extreme’).

(This annoyance at language changing around us, by the way, is shared members of minority groups as well - I know many older gay people who shake their heads at how attentive language is becoming and the flood of letters added to LGBT pamphlets, and also many people with disabilities who’re fed up with our quest to come up with ‘non offensive’ ways to discuss their lives. As an interpreter, this is something I’m very cautious about, and also very interested in: as recently as last month, I was preparing a conference on Down syndrome and spent two hours on the phone with various members of a local organization to understand what terms I should use - turns out that what they wanted was ‘Down kids’ and ‘parents of Down teens’ - none of that ‘people living with Down syndrome’ stuff I’d been taught in school).

So, there you go - I’m not sure this was of much use to you (and I apologize for the novel). As a last point, maybe I can interest you in the fish example?

Many people today recognize the fish as a Christian symbol, and it’s likely that those who do question what fish have in common with their religion think it must have something to do with Jesus feeding 5000 guests with two fish and the miracle at Cana. In reality, though, fish became a shorthand for Jesus because the Greek word for fish, ἰχθύς (ichtus), conveniently spelled Jesus’ ‘titles’: Iesous Christos, Theou Yios, Soter (Jesus Anointed, God’s Son, Saviour). In Roman times, fish graffiti would be scrawled on walls or doors to mark a secret church; today, you can buy the same image as a bumper sticker and find it in countless parodies.

[cheese-is-life]

Netflix, wtf is wrong with you?

When I first got you years ago, I thought my pirate days were finaly over. No more annoying buffering, no more porn ads, no more shitty quality... I was happy for a while. The price was decent, considering my country pays the highest price for netflix worldwide, but okay. Not like we’re not used to paying more than anybody else for everything... But over the years the quality has gradualy become less and less good, a lot of series vanished or flat our never even arrived in my countries Netflix version. Series that had already 5 new seasons in America remained the same for years, never updated for us. To the point where we could be lucky if we even got the Netflix originals. At the same time, the monthly price has been raised two times, and for what? I asked myself that more and more lately.

So I finaly caved and got myself a decent VPA. If I’m going back to torrenting I might as well do it right this time. So I get myself a cozy set up, work out how to best stream the downloaded stuff to my tv and I am happy again.

Until I go back to Netflix to quickly look something up. The descision to let the subscription run out at the end of the month has already been made at this point. And what do I see? The American version of Netflix. Now, that wasn’t qite unexpected, as I am connected to an American server via VPN at the moment, but I’ve had been under the impression that Netflix had done it’s utmost to block all VPN access. As I’ve been doing that years ago with a free VPN before, which was blocked at some point.

Well now that’s nice, so I scroll through all the shows and tv series that I nver even dreamed of being on Netflix. I always thought Netflix doesn’t have the funds to afford stuff like that. Very recent blockbuster movies for example, and not just the trash that we get in my country. A ton of anime and documentaries that I’ve heard of but never realised they could be accessed via Netflix.

So... what the hell is wrong with you Netflix? Why do countries outside the US have to pay huge fees for absolute trash? Is it the local private tv Networks that already have some licenses? Well I dont give a damn!! Fucking try and provide the best assortment of entertainment possible for your customers, your HIGH paying customers!

At any rate, I dont care if I can access the American assortment now or if I can’t. I will not support this company anymore with my money. Even though I might be able to do it now, many of my friends, my parents and colleagues don’t know what a VPN is or exclusively watch Netflix on the tv. They don’t know that they are scammed and they are still being fucked over by this company.

Fuck you Netflix, and fuck all those new streaming platforms that spring out of the ground like weeds recently. You have ruined something that could have revolutionized the way we consume media, but you fucked it up with your greed and stupidity.

Fuck you for making me a pirate again Netflix, but it seems it was inevitable.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Chapter 16: Sometimes I Can’t See Myself

Rating: T Fandom: The 100 Pairing: Bellamy x Clarke Chapter: 16/? Word Count: 1327 Words

Chapter Summary: The one where Clarke and Bellamy interrupt movie night again.

Also on AO3

They had to reschedule movie night for the middle of the week, because Harper had picked up an extra shift at work and Octavia had a performance on the weekend that everyone hadn’t factored in. Jasper and Monty showed up with a message from Clarke asking everyone to start without her. Bellamy felt a little guilty then. He had forgotten that she had a late lab on Wednesdays, but she hadn’t protested the change in date.

She walked in without knocking near the end of the first scary movie with a plastic bag in hand, took one look at the screen, shuddered dramatically, and walked into his kitchen. When she reappeared a couple of minutes later, she had a gigantic burrito in the middle of one of his plates and some silverware, and took her usual seat on the floor at the coffee table. Bellamy was about to protest her using his stuff without asking, but got distracted by how enthusiastically she started shoving food into her face.

“Oh, shit, Clarke, did you go to Taco del Mar without us?” Monty even pouted.

“You know that’s my favorite place,” Jasper said.

“I know, sorry,” she said around a bite of food. “I had to stop by Jackson’s office to see if I could switch my schedule around next week after painting. So, I didn’t get any dinner. And I’m starving.”

When she mentioned her painting class, Bellamy noticed a streak of light green and purple paint under her ear. He was about to say something when she shoved another huge bite in her mouth. Bellamy Blake had never been speechless in his life. He could barely register Harper switching out the movies. Watching Clarke eat had him in a trance. There was enough food on that plate for three of her and she had consumed half of it in less than ten minutes.

She started slowing down after that and he glanced up to find Miller watching her with awe. Bellamy assumed his own face looked the same. He caught Octavia’s eye, who was also watching Clarke as though she had never seen her in her life, but his sister just shrugged with wide eyes. Harper was the only one who seemed to be accepting the behavior as normal and kept motioning for everyone to leave Clarke alone.

In less than thirty minutes, her plate was nearly empty and he couldn’t hold back anymore. “I can’t tell if I should be horrified or impressed by your very unladylike table manners, Princess.”

“Fuck you.” She shoved another bite in her mouth.

“You’re eaten a little too much to still be hangry,” he said. She rolled her eyes, shoving the last bite in her mouth. “Seriously, are you stoned?!”

Octavia and Monty shared a look and burst into laughter. Jasper just studied Clarke to see if he could find any proof to back up Bellamy’s suggestion.

“Fuck off, Bellamy.” Clarke flipped him off. “I was hungry! I’ve been going since 8 this morning with hardly any breaks.”

“You have some paint on your neck. Are you just saving that for later, or…?”

Clarke took the remaining wrapper and balled it up, then threw it at his forehead. He earned himself a shove from Harper when he started laughing, but the way Clarke rushed out of the room to clean her neck was worth it.

 ***

A few moments later, they were sitting in relative peace. Clarke leaned back against the couch after elbowing Bellamy’s leg out of the way and rubbed her stomach gently. She always forgot that she didn’t need all that food, even if she was starving. But it was so good that she couldn’t not keep eating. When she noticed Bellamy still eyeing her out of the corner of her eye, another stupid smirk on his face, she pulled out her phone and tagged him in a new post.

He responded quickly and she snorted back laughter. “Princess velociraptor?! What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Clarke grabbed the pillow Monty was leaning against and threw it back at Bellamy’s head as hard as she could. He skillfully dodged it.

“You devoured that thing like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park when they ate that entire cow. It was terrifying!”

Octavia’s glare from her seat got scarier as the two of them bantered over Facebook. By the time they got home, she would hardly speak anymore.

“I’m sorry!” Clarke shouted from her bed when both of their phones buzzed to notify them of a comment from Miller on her Facebook. She tried to hide her laughter, but was fairly unsuccessful. Miller wasn’t much of a talker in public, but he was almost sociable on social media.

“I don’t just blame you, Princess,” Octavia said from under her pillows. “I blame myself for deciding push notifications were a good idea. I also blame my assface of a brother. I wish you guys still hated each other.”

“I do still hate him.”

“Sure. Whatever you say. Just put your phone on silent!”

Clarke bit back a laugh as she complied.

Clarke Griffin February 18 at 8:52pm Ugh. Bellamy can’t even let a girl eat in peace. WTF?!   Nathan Miller and 18 others like this

Bellamy Blake: Seriously, don't get in between this girl and food. She’ll bite your head off. Clarke Griffin: Watch the fucking movie, Blake. Bellamy Blake: Don’t tag in me in Facebook posts, then, Princess velociraptor. Clarke Griffin: Lots of experience dodging objects being thrown at your gigantic ego-filled head? Bellamy Blake: No. You just have shitty aim. Octavia Blake: That’s such a lie! You would have hit him if he had been PAYING ATTENTION TO THE FUCKING MOVIE!!! Monty Green: Please don’t hate me, Clarke, but that was some of the most skillful dodging I’ve ever seen. Jasper Jordan: Bellamy’s just that good.   Monty Green: Can I have the pillow back yet? Clarke Griffin: Jeez, O, sorrrrrrrry. And stop sucking up, Jasper. :-p Monty, you’re excused. Because it was kind of… dextrous. Bellamy Blake: I win. And the pillow is mine now. Clarke Griffin: Excuse me? Bellamy Blake: I knew you’d give up. So, I win. Clarke Griffin: Puh-lease. You don’t have to live with your sister. I don’t want to piss her off. Bellamy Blake: Puh-lease? What are you? 12? Bellamy Blake: Also, I lived with the girl for 16 years. I can take her. Nathan Miller: Okay, I only support this argument, because at least you’re not yelling over the movie again, but Octavia’s scary. Bellamy Blake: Wuss. Clarke Griffin: Bellamy Blake , you will be nice to Nathan on my statuses or else. Harper McIntyre: Dude, you guys are sitting RIGHT next to each other. Bellamy Blake: Or what, Princess? What are you gonna do? Unfriend me? You can’t get rid of me that easily. Clarke Griffin: It’s just one little click of a button, Blake. One. Little. Click. Bellamy Blake: Rude. And we’ve been getting along so well lately, too. I’m so disappointed. Nathan Miller: They both look like they’re going to murder both of you. Octavia Blake: GET OFF YOUR PHONES YOU ASSHOLES Harper McIntyre: I will take your phones away if I have to! You two are supposed to be the responsible ones! Nathan Miller: But seriously, girl, you can EAT. Bellamy Blake: I’m still not convinced you weren’t high. Clarke Griffin: Nathan, thank you. I will take that as a compliment. Bellamy, can you not say that shit on my posts? Octavia Blake: Seriously guys, go to fucking sleep. Nathan Miller: You are welcome. It was an epic feat. Bellamy Blake: Clarke , I’ve thought about it, and you’re… ugh. You’re right. Sorry. You can delete the comment if you want. You were just hungry…. I guess. Clarke Griffin: It’s fine, Bellamy. Just no more. Octavia Blake: WE HAVE TO BE UP IN 6 HOURS. IF MY PHONE GOES OFF ONE MORE TIME, I WILL END ALL OF YOU.

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Crayola is killing off a crayon and WTF does it think it's doing right now?

Sorry to ruin your lives, but Crayola is acting ~cray~ and we really need to address it.

Last week, the beloved art supply company that fueled all of your childhood creativity announced it would be doing something huge on March 31 (a.k.a. National Crayon Day).

Handing out free art supplies? Organizing the world's largest craft mob���? NOPE. For the first time in over one hundred years, Crayola decided it's time to retire a color from its classic, iconic 24-count box of crayons.

SEE ALSO: This App Makes Coloring Books Come to Life

The company casually announced its ruthless decision on its social media platforms as though it wouldn't crush anyone who has ever colored outside the lines or dared to dream. My gosh. Then, Crayola had the audacity to announce it would be live-streaming the madness and holding an event in New York's Times Square to really celebrate this tragedy.

If you're wondering whether the company will be welcoming a new color to the 24-pack or we'll have to adjust to life with 23 crayons, Joshua Kroo, Director of Marketing Communications & Virtual Creativity Platform, assured Mashable that the 24-count box is safe. So at least we still have that.

"The color will be retired across the entire crayon portfolio including the iconic 24 and 64 count boxes as well as all other Crayon products," he said. "Crayola is all about innovating with color so consumers can expect that there will be a new, exciting color coming soon! Of course, the 24 box will always have that number of crayons."

Have you seen our larger than life crayon box in Herald Square in NYC?! Tag us in your photos & click the link in our bio to find out #whosleaving the box on 3/31/17!

A post shared by Crayola (@crayola) on Mar 26, 2017 at 5:24pm PDT

Everything wrong with this heartless decision:

The general timing of this ordeal: Do we really need this added drama in our lives right now, Crayola? No. And you choose to celebrate NATIONAL CRAYON DAY, of all days, by killing a classic crayon off? How do you plan to sleep at night?

You're pitting us against one another: Aside from harsh social media hashtags associated with this event such as #WhosLeaving and #ShareYourFave, Crayola is also encouraging crayon lovers everywhere to fight for their most beloved colors to stick around, promoting favoritism and resulting in a bunch of sad crayon posts.

Is there a color you can't live without? Share a photo w/ #ShareYourFave on Instagram! https://t.co/9otXTPwWUg pic.twitter.com/JSozNdcJhh

— Crayola (@Crayola) March 27, 2017

This brutal, gut-wrenching COUNT DOWN on Crayola's website, which shows the company is clearly a monster disguised as a fun-promoting, childhood-loving farce for all these years.

Coloring book of the dead

So the 24-count box currently includes the following crayon colors: red, yellow, blue, brown, orange, green, violet, black, carnation pink, yellow orange, blue green, red violet, red orange, yellow green, blue violet, white, violet red, dandelion, cerulean, apricot, scarlet, green yellow, indigo and gray.

It seems like the primary and secondary colors would remain, along with everyone's go-tos, black and brown. But who even knows anymore?? 

"We know from polls across America that blue is the most popular color, but of course, everyone has their favorite Crayola color!" Kroo said.

This means color combos and variations of classics might have reason to worry. But if we were the notoriously useless white crayon, we'd be sweating our wrappers off right now.

Whatever happens, we'll always remember our classic 24-pack.

WATCH: Create hundreds of different color tones with this magical art tool

[medicalquack]

AMA and United Healthcare Combine Efforts to Once Again To Push CMS To Institute Algorithmic and ICD Coding To Rip Off Patients/Deny Access–It’s the Next Chapter of Excess Scoring in the US To Keeps Inequality/Segmentation Rolling

If you have not seen the latest with these two, take a look at to how they want to use segmentation for profit.  It is so much of a "One Trick Algo” World out there anymore, the can’t hardly create enough bullshit commentary to cover up what’s really going on.  These two have been doing stuff like this for years, as I’ve written about a lot of it during the active years of my blog.  Way back in the early days of small developers creating EMRs before the government got involved, there were many of us that just sat back and wondered why the AMA always showed full on preference for anything United Healthcare (namely the Ingenix subsidiary which was being run by former CMS director Andy Slavitt at the time) came out with.  It just went on and on and you too can search in the web’s archives and find a lot of it, as well as just searching my blog for that matter.  AMA has been making money selling Ingenix (now Optum) coding books forever on their site.  Here’s a link from 2010 below as an example of the cushy AMA/UNH relationship over the years. ClickFreeMD Selling Software EHR, Practice Management Bundled Records Solution–Emphasis on AMA Endorsement And Software “Powered” by Ingenix–Tethered or Untethered Now we have this data plague as I call it of an issue of Excess Scoring.  I wrote about that a few years ago as our entire country is totally whacked out on the fact that everything needs to be scored, and that’s not true at all, some of the best things in life are NOT scored.  Here’s some back links.  Excess Scoring of US Consumers, US Citizens-Scored into Oblivion By Proprietary Algorithms and Formulas, Never Duplicated or Tested for Accuracy-Profits of Big Business And A White House Executive Command To Continue the Abuse.. The End of “Consumer Common Sense” in the US-Fueled by Excess Scoring for Profit, Sustained By Media Publications Serving To Further The Inability For Simple Every Day Life Decisions… United Healthcare Now Offering Employers Wearable Wellness Devices- UnitedHealthcareMotion–More Data To Mine And Sell With Related Risk Assessment Scoring Processes About You-Excess Scoring Actually when I was communicating with a former CMS executive about this, they said it was right out of United Healthcare's 2010 report, the stratification report, which also went way over the top on telling people how UNH thought they should raise their kids and indeed this is right on the same line of thought with these ICD Codes.  Doctors, nurses alike think the the AMA and United Healthcare are out of their minds and can see especially with Part D, its a way to lop on more risk so UNH can bill the government more money, called RISK FIDDLING. So get a load of this nonsense on how the AMA and United Healthcare want to code you, so they can use the result sin run you through a ton of other data bases to deny or allow access.  That’s what this is all about if you haven’t figured it out yet.  You should also know that once you get coded or tagged with this nonsense coding and US caste system type of scores, that it never comes off.  You will be stuck with one of these balls and chains forever, so hey WTF, let’s score everyone with Z60.82 for Inadequate social interactions.  This is such a piss poor model that I bet even the Quants that created it must be cringing, you know they don’t have to like or believe all the crap their employers want them to do but they have families to feed.

You are already getting the crap scored out of you every time you fill a prescription, and yes it’s the PBMS using this scoring system that was created with Ingenix algorithms that were sold to Express Scripts in 2010, yeah another Andy Slavitt algo game for cash, as UNH made him and his former partner, Senator Warren’s daughter, Amelia quite wealthy in 1999 when UNH bought their company, which was basically nothing more than a script discount operation and they made money from the PBMs.  So here’s how the pharmacists are directed to “score” you or they can lose their jobs.  Patients Who Pay “Cash” When Filling Prescriptions Are Now Called “Outliers, Pharmacists Required to Fix Outliers as They Show Up As Non Medication Adherence Compliant With 5 Star Systems Full of Flawed Data… The bottom line here is that the AMA and United Healthcare are making complete fools of everyone thinking that some brainchild coding is going to change anything, as it won’t, it will more than likely end up costing more money as of course it will end up requiring software updates, right…LOL…and the AMA will get paid royalties for creating new CPT codes that will have to go along to match the ICD diagnosis codes so doctors can get paid to throw you under the Bad Algo Coding bus where you will not only see potential limitations in care today, but this will follow you forever and make it harder for you to jump through more algorithmic hoops that the Quants will model.  If you’re not getting this, then watch my video at the link below and then continue on to watch the 4 videos from others and see how far down in the algo toilet you might be.  Algorithms, Scoring Metrics, Privacy and more in today’s Healthcare business world–The Healthcare Algo Cartel Again I’ve been writing about algo abuse and and cheating code for years, and it’s happening everywhere, as with software you can do something about anything, create little virtual worlds where folks function and create new little virtual values, but what happens when the real world comes knocking?  The dupes sadly go click on One Trick Algos for even a deeper saturation of perception deception.  That’s what this coding BS for care here is all about and somebody needed to say it, as they are virtual values that will not end up helping you one bit, but the AMA and UNH will profit royally as they have practices algorithms deception for years.  I think today it’s only 15% of the MDs in the US are members of the AMA, so many have dropped out as it’s more of a lobby for money now versus representing doctors in the US and this movement has been going on for years.  UNH is and has been the king pin for Quant modelers for years so everything modeled mathematically from that corporation needs extensive scrutiny as it geared for shareholders first, patients second, the massive number of algorithmic subsidiaries tells that story well.  We need to index and license ALL data sellers so we can get an idea of what’s really going on in the black box scoring algorithms executing code unknown everyday, and remember we just see the front ends so remember there’s a whole other reality in how those algos collect your data, score you, screw you, etc. for the sake of corporate profits.  “One Trick Algo World” Needs to be Licensed and Indexed–Spurious Correlations “For Profit” Are Out of Control

via Blogger https://ift.tt/33ut09g

[brainvalve-blog]

An Early Eulogy for Text-Based Social Media

Chatting

Social Media, as a method of sharing our lives with others, has almost always been text-based. Before the internet, we shared their lives with distant friends and relatives through written letters. we would declare major life updates, crises, and events through local bulletin boards at the center of town, or through the local newspapers. Sure, we would sometimes share our albums with friends, but those pictures and home videos were never the core message.

Arguably, it was text which created the modern distinction between “direct” social media (sharing your life directly to someone) and “indirect” social media, where we post in a public space for others to view on their own time. Before text, sharing one’s life had to be in the moment of speech--sound couldn’t just stay in the air and wait until someone came along to hear it. Major announcements required town criers and scheduled gatherings where everyone could hear it at once. England still has them, for royal births.

Imagine Tweeting, except this man would scream it at your neighborhood

Text, though, offered a way to hold onto information through time, separating direct from indirect social media. This lineage remains in our jargon, even as we leave pen and pencil behind: You don’t “post” a text or SnapChat to a friend, but you do “post” something to your Tumblr or Facebook in the same way that hundreds to thousands of years ago, one would quite literally post an announcement or update on the town notice board.

Even as the digital revolution came, we shared our lives through text: Direct social media of letters transitioned into digital text in the form of the first email sent in 1971. This would be done more instantaneously and portably when the first mobile text message would be sent in 1992. And, since we’re on Tumblr, we should acknowledge the digital transition of indirect social media through the first blog’s creation in 1994. 

Blogging as a form of social media--the almost diary-like blog posts we used to demeaningly attribute to middle aged adults who weren’t cool, hip or young enough to transition to MySpace or Facebook--would hit its peak near the early 2000′s, prompting a response from Facebook in the form of Facebook Notes in 2006. Tumblr itself would launch later in 2007, presumably to ride in on the popularity of the new medium.

But really, though our generation made fun of the quaint, long-form text-based social media of a blogpost, we weren’t too far off. MySpace and Facebook, which launched in 2003 and 2004, respectively, was a distillation and centralization of the fundamentals of text-based social media. If we begin the evolution of (digital) text-based indirect social media with blogs, then Facebook was its next logical step: A place for us to post shortened text and accompanying picture to notify others of what we thought were important in our lives. A vacation. A new dog. A birthday.The only real difference between the blog of the stay-at-home and our own cool-kids Facebook post was that ours was shorter, and confined to our friends instead of the general internet.

In an odd coincidence, 2006 was also the year that Twitter launched. If Facebook was a distillation of the blog, then Twitter was the bare essence of Facebook. The purest form of text-based social media. Before its implementation of picture-embedding in 2011, Twitter was, in essence, a 140-character blog. It caught on like wildfire, much as Facebook had before it. 

Though pundits, alarmed at this trend and increasingly bemoaning the perceived growing impatience of newer generations, they only really saw the decrease in the length of text involved in social interactions: Kids aren’t reading books! They’re too stuck to short Facebook posts, Tweets, and text messages!

The fact remained, however, that the cornerstone of social interaction was still text in the 2000’s: The legendary all-consuming texting sprees between youth was a long-running joke for our parents and a reality for us involved. Apart from the occasional photos, the way we chose to share our lives with others--whether more indirectly in a Facebook post, or more directly in an IM/Facebook chat/text message--was based on written text. A whole new sub-language formed around this use of text, with ASCII emojis like :) or >:O, abbreviations like lol, lmao, wtf. To anyone who doubts the text-heavy focus of 2000’s social media, one only needs to look at the massive phone industry push for full QWERTY keyboards to support our voracious appetite for typing. QWERTY keyboards on phones far predated ease of internet surfing on phones--the massive texting marathons of our childhood days could be the only cause.

We had jumped into a digital age, but we still weren’t all that far removed from the handwritten letters of our parents. Now it was just faster. More streamlined. Perhaps with more profanity and memes. But still, in the end, text. Back in those days of furiously typing texts between multiple different friend groups, long-winded Facebook posts and comment threads, and nearly daily status posts from friends, social media then didn’t kill text--social media was the peak of text. At no previous point in history was the collective populace generating, exchanging, or consuming so much text. Perhaps it wasn’t Shakespeare, but our gradeschool dramas were getting pretty close.

SnapChatting

Time skip to the present day. A mind-boggling 1.4 billion people still use Facebook daily. Twitter and Tumblr  don’t release daily active user data, but Twitter still outputs 300 million tweets daily while Tumblr outputs 30 million blogposts a day.

And yet, open your Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitters. And try to remember what they looked like in the 2000′s, if you had an account then. How much of your feed is now pictures, videos, and GIF’s? How many posts or messages do you see nowadays that is actually only text? Instead, how many messages do you see that have a picture or video attached with it?

...

As popularity is only measured by user count and not what they share or use, it is hard to track the exact decline of the text-based social media. However, we can track the rise of audiovisual-based social media as a proxy: Even if one contests that people are using text less as a medium of communication, we can’t deny the invasion of videos and images on the feed, and we can most definitely see ourselves pull out our smartphones not to hit the Facebook app, but Snapchat or Instagram instead.

And by making a timeline of site/app launch dates, we can construct a timeline of the rise of text-based social media and the rise of audiovisual-based social media which followed: Text-based social media launched in its own cluster: MySpace launched in 2003, followed by Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, and Tumblr in 2007. 

Then 4 years passed, and a new cluster: Kik launched in 2010, Instagram in 2010, Snapchat in 2011, and Twitch.tv (more on that later) in 2011.

And, like a rash in response, perhaps alarmed at the rapid rise of Snapchat and Instagram, another cluster from 2013 to 2016: This time of Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr adapting to be more audiovisual-focused, introducing many of the features that distinguished the audiovisual social media that launched 2010-2011.

This is why earlier, I referred to the 2000’s as the peak of text: By the turn of the decade, the horsemen of the apocalypse had arrived...and stayed. And grew. Even the old champions of text, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, had changed since. The millionth embedded video of cute dogs and memes are testament to the horsemen’s coming.

...

A few years ago, when I told my little sister, only 3 years younger than me, that I didn’t have Snapchat or Instagram, she said “What?” in the way that I used to when my parents asked what Facebook was. She barely uses Facebook anymore. When I asked a few of my friends with younger siblings, they also reported that they either didn’t use Facebook at all, or mostly used Snapchat or Instagram. I’m sure that you’ve heard similar stories.

It’s not just anecdotal. ComScore, a giant digital media analytics company, releases annual reports analyzing the latest trends in consumption of everything from TV to social media. They collaborate with other companies to do a big panel on this kind of information that you can find here. In their 2018 report, they reported the following statistics about age demographics of various social media sites:

The picture doesn’t scale down very well, but the numbers tell a clear story: Only 25% of Facebook’s users are in the 16-24 age group, and about 55% are between 16 to 34. Meanwhile, Snapchat sits at 57% of users in the 16-24 range, and what seems to be near 80% of users between 16-34. 80%. Below 34. Sheesh. Kik, another app anecdotally popular with newer generations, shares remarkably similar user age demographics to Snapchat. The fact that it’s a messaging app doesn’t necessarily mean the saving of text: Kik’s youth usage (50% <34) is notably higher than other messaging apps like Messenger (35% <34), Whatsapp (31% <34), probably due to Kik’s combination of anonymity with its base integration of pictures, videos, and embedding of said visual media compared to the aforementioned text-focused messaging apps. Even a quick browse through Tumblr, boasting very similar user age demographics to Instagram, will reveal the majority of the posts on the “blog” site to be more audiovisual than text.

We can only wonder what the user age demographics for Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter would have become had they not implemented audiovisual media features from 2013-2016.

We shouldn’t be surprised. If the purpose of social media is to share your life with others, isn’t the audiovisual medium, therefore, the pinnacle of efficient social media? Instead of writing an essay of how your day looked, felt, and what you did, a 5 second Snapchat video will convey all that and more. A text Facebook status, at its best, leaves 99% of the work to your audiences’ imagination in recreating context. An image or video, meanwhile, is your life, no recreation required. In this way, SnapChat has risen to the occasion for direct social media, whereas Instagram has risen for indirect social media.

The youth may not always be right, but maybe without intending to, they are simply flocking to more efficient modes of social media communication, the same way our generation moved from the physical letters of our parents to text messaging and to Facebook.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And a thousand words is inefficient.

Stream Chatting

An IRL livestream on Twitch.tv

Video as a digital medium is nothing new: Youtube launched in 2005, and it has seen an explosive growth, with the combined number of views for the top 5 videos of each year going from 400 million in 2005 to 1.53 billion in 2006 to an unfathomable 12.88 billion views in 2017, officially surpassing the total human population of the world. 

However, the videos responsible for Youtube’s early growth could moreso be categorized as amateur recreations of pre-existing video genres: Lectures, critiques, reviews, original theatrical content. But underneath the unparalleled popularity of music videos (accounting for almost every most viewed videos every year), video blogging (”vlogging”) has been becoming more and more popular. 

The most successful (and controversial), Jake Paul of the Paul brothers, easily boasts 2+ million views per vlog on Youtube, with his more popular videos breaking 9 million views. Even as Tumblr and Wordpress continue to grow, the sudden and rapid gain in popularity of vlogging cannot be ignored.

And in 2011, vlogging saw itself evolve once again.

In 2011, Twitch.tv launched, and made live-streaming efficient and accessible the same why Youtube did for standard videos in 2005. 

Not streaming in the sense of one streaming a Netflix movie, but a livestream involving thousands, if not sometimes millions of concurrent viewers tuning in at a time to watch and interact with their favorite streamer as the streamer does everything from playing games to going about their daily lives (the latter now called “IRL” streams). There are 15 million daily active viewers as of 2018, which only keeps growing as livestreaming, like any other new media, grows, expands, and matures in producing unique content. Twitch.tv’s pressure is evident in just how many other platforms quickly implemented live-streaming features, even in the home of vlogging: Youtube.

It is much more difficult to get demographics data for Youtube or Twitch streaming (as that information is only available to the content creator or streamer), but it is widely understood in both communities that the most popular streams are fueled by the young, mostly under the age of 20. If you are inclined to search Youtube, there are videos aplenty of other streamers or content creators bemoaning how younger viewers are somehow unfairly boosting the popularity of other streams. Whether it is fair or not that the youth have so much say in the streaming world is debatable, but the widespread debate is still based on the assumption that the youth are largely backing the latest evolution in the audiovisual-based social media.

If this word-of-mouth assumption were to be true, it should not be any more surprising than SnapChat’s user age demographics. In many ways, live-streaming video is the pinnacle of social media, its core intent made manifest: It’s not just a direct, real-time sharing of one’s life to others, but Twitch and now Youtube both have live chat fields for interaction with their audiences. Snapchat lets you share seconds of your life. Live-streaming shares entire hours of yourself. 

Live-streaming’s greater demand on the time and resources of the content creator (compared to the seconds it takes to generate a Snap) may keep the number of creators from exploding the same way Youtube’s channels did. Even so, as the number of viewers grow, it might not matter.

Over My Dead Body Paragraph

It should be made clear that text in social media is not dead, nor will die. Kik still has text messaging, and the vast majority of Snaps still have some text on it. Even that 10000th dog video on your feed probably has a burgeoning meme-filled comment section. Twitch.tv’s chat is still text-based. With 1.4 billion daily active users, Facebook still outpaces Snapchat’s 186 million and Instagram’s 500 million daily active users. Even memes, GIF’s, and video loops would not be nearly so effective without text. 

And yet, the numbers don’t lie. Even as Facebook continues to grow, audiovisual social media like Snapchat’s meteoric rise in popularity with the younger generations should be heeded as the swell before the wave. 

Facebook and Twitter seems to have definitely done so, with the addition of new audiovisual-heavy features as mentioned before. Though the text-based social media giants have survived in the literal sense, their focus has changed, as evident in how they present themselves to the world:

Facebook, from 2007 to 2018, has shifted from sharing raw information to marketing itself as photos first and foremost, with no longer any explicit mention of “information.”

Even for Tumblr, a blog, the successor to the direct progenitor of text-based social media, shows just how far even blogs have come from the text-filled diary-like blogs of yesteryear. These are login screens, also from 2007 and 2018:

And what exactly, does a blog look like anymore, according to Tumblr?

Only Twitter remains aloof and vague, remaining closer to its text-based roots than the others.

And our very expectation of what social media is has changed, too--like the chicken or the egg, maybe Tumblr and Facebook have so drastically rebranded themselves to match what consumers today expect social media sites to be able to do. When Facebook added GIF support in 2015, it was met with exasperated “FINALLY”s by tech commentators, instead of “cool!”. Twitter’s photo limit increase was met with impatience, not excitement. And we betray this paradigm shift within ourselves in how we use social media today. 

The wave is already here. We are it.

A Full Circle. Almost.

“GATHER AROUND AND LISTEN YE TO THE TALES OF MY SHOPPING TRIPPE”

As tempting as it is to scowl as the social media torch passes from text to the audiovisual, we should remember that the context of social media goes even further back. Text isn’t where social media started. Far from it.

As noted in the very beginning, all text really did was allow information to pass more indirectly; direct social media had been audiovisual long before humans wrote. Even when written language was developed, sharing of one’s life to others remained an oral tradition even out of the BCE’s until widespread literacy was achieved very recently. Even still, through the rise of books, letters, text messages, emails, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitch, the deeply personal and direct oral foundation of social media never died: It remains today in the form of the family dinner table, where close people convene to share their lives over food and drink. It lives on around the cubicle corner where pregnancies are declared, pipe leaks are complained of, and sports is discussed in person. 

It revives every time you make the conscious decision to hold off telling your friend something until you decide to meet them next in person, or whenever you wait an extra week or two to see a movie together with a friend at the same theater.

After all, even the most eloquently worded text status or text message to your friend cannot match actually seeing and hearing that friend. 

In this context, perhaps text wasn’t so high and mighty after all, but in a certain interpretation, a devolution. Remember your childhood friends, separated now by long distance. Text and post as you may, it will never compare to being together in the same space, directly sharing an experience. In many ways, text is a cruel and limited distillation of the human action of social interaction, leading to misunderstandings and frustration at having to write so much what could be conveyed in a few words and a gesture. It is undeniably useful, when faced with the alternative of nothing at all, but in retrospect, it’s odd we ever thought it sufficient for social media.

The shift to the audiovisual format alleviates this somewhat--instead of trying to imagine how a friend is doing, we can see their face, at least, and see how their surroundings have changed. As a social medium, and from a humanistic perspective, I think it’s hard to cling onto text as some bastion of civilized interaction. Keep text for academia, but human socializing shouldn’t be restrained to words alone.

..and yet, memes about millenials’ inability to socialize in public aside, never forget that modern social media itself is a crutch, only a half-decent bastardized replacement for actually being with somebody else. Maybe instead of pining for the olden glory days of text, or worrying about how good the lighting looks in our latest Snap, we should remember the reason we’re on it in the first place and take a moment to hug the ones we care about while we still physically can. 

Don’t just share your life to others. Focus on sharing your life with others.

[myinspirationlog]

Been a while since I did one of these and I'm bored, so here we go.

(1) Do You Sleep With Your Closet Doors Open Or Closed? - Closed.

(2) Do You Have Freckles? - Yes, more so as I’ve aged. Mostly on my shoulders, sometimes on my face.

(3) Can You Whistle? - Rarely.

(4) Last Song You Listened To. - Cardi B - Bodak Yellow

(5) What Is Your Favourite Colour? - After spending a good 10 minutes trying to find that one Ex Machina quote that puts it so eloquently, I give up. I do not have one.

(6) Relationship Status. - Forever Alone™

(7) What Is The Temperature Right Now? - Outside 12 degrees. Indoors, maybe 20-25?

(8) Did You Wake Up Cranky? - Lol I didn’t sleep.

(9) How Many Followers? - Are they truly followers because they clicked a button? Nah. I have no real following yet.

(10) Zodiac Sign. - Aries, babe.

(11) What Is Your Eye Colour? - Grey with a few brown freckles.

(12) Take A Vitamin Daily? - Usually B12 or multi.

(13) Do You Sing In The Shower? - No.

(14) What Books Are You Reading? - No one right now.

(15) Grab The Book Nearest To You, Turn To Page 64, Give Me Line 14. - “She smiled.”

(16) Favourite Anime? - Not a big anime consumer. Prefer manga. (Sailor Moon forever though.)

(17) Last Person You Cried In Front Of? - On the phone with my mom.

(18) Do You Collect Anything? - Sadness and despair.

(19) What Did You Have For Lunch? - Ha. Some kind of butter-less McGyver sandwich out of random stuff I have at the house. Trying not to buy too much new food since I’m moving soon.

(20) Do You Dance In The Car? - I DO NOT OWN A CAR.

(21) Favourite Animal? - Used to be cats, but honestly... I just love them all.

(22) Do You Watch The Olympics? - No.

(23) What Time Do You Usually Go To Bed? - Never o’clock.

(24) Are You Wearing Makeup Right Now? - Nope.

(25) Do You Prefer To Swim In A Pool Or The Ocean? - Ocean. 100%. Nothing beats the waves.

(26) Favourite Tumblr Blog? - None right now, if I’m honest.

(27) Bottled Water Or Tap Water? - Tap. I’m not made out of money, bruh.

(28) What Makes You Happy? - Art. Growth. Adventure. Travel.

(29) Post A Gif Of What You’re Currently Feeling Right Now.

(30) Do You Study Better With Or Without Music? - Without, usually.

(31) Dogs Or Cats? - BOTH.

(32) If You Were A Crayon What Colour Would You Be? - Black. Simple, not showy, full of potential and beauty when handled right.

(33) PlayStation Or Xbox. - Dude... either one is fine.

(34) Would You Swim In The Lake Or Ocean? - Both.

(35) Do You Believe In Magic? - Neh.

(36) What Colour Shirt Are You Wearing? - Not wearing a shirt ooooooooh......

(37) Can You Curl Your Tongue? - Yes.

(38) Do You Save Money Or Spend It? - Hahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahahhahah ahaha....... I normally save it but am currently on a binge since I’ve spent 4000usd on a driver’s license I haven’t even passed yet so I’m going crazy :)))))))))))))

(39) Is There Anything Pink Within 10 Feet Of You? - Perfume bottles.

(40) Do You Have Any Obsessions Right Now? - Alice Isn’t Dead.

(41) Have You Ever Caught A Butterfly? - As a child, yes. Never would now.

(42) Are You Easily Influenced By Other People? - More so now than I used to be. Trying to get back my old independence and self-confidence.

(43) Do You Have Strange Dreams? - I don’t really dream anymore.

(44) Do You Like Going On Airplanes? - It is only one of my favorite things in the world.

(45) Name One Movie That Made You Cry. - Katie Says Goodbye.

(46) Peanuts Or Sunflower Seeds? - Sunflower seeds.

(47) If I Handed You A Concert Ticket Right Now, Who Would You Want The Performer To Be? - Made In Heights.

(48) Are You A Picky Eater? - Not at all.

(49) Are You A Heavy Sleeper? - Not at all.

(50) Do You Fear Thunder / Lightning? - Not if I’m in a safe place, no. I find it very calming actually. Reminds you that our planet is alive. It’s like nature’s period. (That was a weird analogy but it works.)

(51) Do You Like To Read / Write?  - Yes, but I never do it anymore. Trying to find myself again.

(52) Do You Like Your Music Loud? - Loud enough.

(53) Would You Rather Carve Pumpkins Or Wrap Presents? - Pumpkins.

(54) Put Your Music On Shuffle, What Is The First Song That Came Up? - Made In Heights - All The Places (Instrumental)

(55) What Season Are You In Right Now? (Weather) - Fall AKA the dreary gray.

(56) What Are You Craving Right Now? - Affection and human intimacy. And my intelligence back.

(57) Post A Screenshot Of Your Tumblr Feed.

(58) What Is Your Gender? - Female! :D

(59) Coffee Or Tea? - Both.

(60) Do You Have Any Homework Right Now? If So, What Is It About? - I wish. I miss school so much.

(61) What Is Your Sexuality? - Girls by Beatrice Eli is my sexuality.

(62) Do You Make Your Bed In The Morning? - No.

(63) Favourite Pokemon? - Mew was always my fave.

(64) Favourite Social Media? - I hate all of them. I suppose Vimeo is nice though.

(65) What’s Your Opinion On Instagram Stories? - Why is everyone trying to be snapchat???? 

(66) Do You Get Homesick? - Only for places I haven’t lived in.

(67) Are You A Virgin? - Nope.

(68) What Shampoo And Conditioner Are You Using Right Now? - Generic store brand.

(69) If You Were Far From Home And Needed To Sleep For The Night, Would You Choose To Rent A Crappy Motel Room For $60 Or Sleep In Your Car For Free? - Depends on how much money I had and how sketchy the motel was.

(70) Are Both Of Your Blood Parents Still In Your Life? - Nope. Don’t want them to be.

(71)  What’s The Next Movie You Want To See In Theaters? - Hmm... Maybe The Beguiled.

(72) Do You Miss Your Ex? - Yes. I do. I miss our friendship. I often come across things I know she’d appreciate with me, and in those moments I mourn that we no longer speak.

(73) What Is Your Favourite Quote Right Now? - I can’t think of one.

(74) What Eye Colour Do You Find Sexiest? - It ain’t about the color of the eyes, it’s about the look in them.

(75) Did You Like Swinging As A Child? Do You Still Get Excited When You See A Swing Set? - I was gonna make a sex joke but eh. Yes, I love swinging. Still do.

(76) What Was The Last Thing You Ate? - I already answered this.

(77) What Games Do You Have On Your Phone? - “Really Bad Chess”. That’s it.

(78) Would You Give A Homeless Person CPR If They Were Dying? Why Or Why Not? - Depends on how they were dying. Like if someone just shot them in the head I doubt CPR would help. But yes, I would. I couldn’t bear the idea of watching another person die and do nothing.

(79) Been On The Computer For 5 Hours Straight? - Not currently but yes.

(80) Stalked Someone On A Social Network? - Ha... yes.

(81) Do You Like Meeting New People? - YES I DO. SHOW ME THE NEW PEOPLE. WHERE ARE THEY??

(82) Do You Wear Rings? If You Do, Take A Picture Of Them. - Not usually.

(83) Do You Sleep With Your Bedroom Door Open Or Closed? - Closed. Unless I’m hanging clothes to dry on it.

(84) What Are Three Things You Did Today? - Got a massage, purchased bananas, sat on a bench.

(85) What Do You Wear To Bed? - Usually just underwear.

(86) List All Of Your Different Beauty Products You Have Right Now. - This list would be too extensive. Skincare is important yo.

(87) Are You A Day Or Night Person? - Both, actually.

(88) List All Of Your Video Games On Your Phone, Console Etc. - Have none. Just Really Bad Chess.

(89) Tell Me About A Dream That You Had And When It Happened. - I just found an old journal where I wrote down a dream where apparently I was the boss at some job and I had a bed in my office that I was trying to coax my employees to have a fourway with me in.... idk wtf that was about. I don’t think we hade the fourway.

(90) Favourite Soda Drink? - I don’t drink soda.

(91) What Sounds Are Your Favourite? - Wind. Rain. Water rushing. Birds. A nice 80′s synth.

(92) Do You Wear Jeans Or Sweats More? - Please. Neither. I am a lady. (No but in all honesty I’ve been wearing sweats like every day at work for the past year.)

(93) How Do You Look Right Now? - Indifferent.

(94) Name Something That Relaxes You. - Clean sheets and no obligations.

(95) What Tattoo Do You Want? - The mathematical symbol for “equal or greater than”.

(96) Favourite YouTuber? - Natalie Tran hands down. Hate youtube currently though.

[dawnajaynes32]

Bill Gardner on Logo Design: Simplicity Rules. For Now.

Bill Gardner knows logo design. The founder of LogoLounge, the definitive encyclopedia of logo design, he reviews countless logos that site users upload — more than a quarter million to date. LogoLounge is a visual search engine that’s not just for logo designers, but for marketing and creative professionals who want to stay ahead of trends in typography, iconography and color.

We recently asked Gardner, who’s presenting “A Year of Good, Great and WTF? The 2017 LogoLounge Trend Report” at HOW Design Live, about what he’s seeing, what he’s loving and what he’s over.

How did you become the “logo guy?” What led you to develop LogoLounge? Gardner Design had always been heavily involved in branding and developed a strong rep for our logo design work. Our offices were packed to the brim with great books on identity and logo design. I’ve got a pretty good memory and our designers would often ask me which book a certain logo they recalled was in. Or worse, they would start looking through the library for a certain reference … not only was searching for logo reference a time vortex, but our books started to look like a carnival with all the multicolored Post-it notes flailing from the pages.

It was 1997 and eBay was two years old. It dawned on me that if someone could upload a teapot to their site and anybody could type in the keywords to find it, why couldn’t I do the same thing with logos? A few years went by to let the idea and technology catch up with each other and the site was launched in 2001 with 2,000 logos from some of the most highly respected designers and corporate branding giants: Chermayeff & Geismar, Landor, Michael Vanderbyl, Duffy Partners, Hornall Anderson and a handful of others.

Now 16 years later the site has just crested a quarter million logos uploaded by our thousands of enthusiastic members in more than 100 countries. Now 10 top-selling LogoLounge books later, the publications have become the largest selling identity design series in the market.

Your 2016 Logo Trend Report notes that simplicity rules the day in logo design these days. Why do you think that is? After 15 years of creating these reports you tend to see a cadence that cycles through design. It’s a slowly swinging pendulum that may take five or seven years to cross from one side to the other. We have been through a period where many identities were rich in color, detail and texture. These can be really captivating — but often their message is complex and not as quick a read.

This movement to a more spartan design solution is not exclusive to logo design. Websites are being scrubbed to clarify content and boil down the message. Packaging on shelves stand out when the brand allows the consumer eye to rest in a category awash in clutter.

Logo design is matching the environment’s context by simplifying shapes and font solutions. Helvetica and pure geometry rule. All that said, the pendulum doesn’t stand still; when it reaches any extreme, the cycle will reverse and we’ll see a slow return to more detail.

Is there a design trend in identity that you’re ‘over’? Yes, but that doesn’t mean the rest of the world is ready to move on. In the last two years designers have been looking to abandon or evolve the style of mono-line logos. They were born out of the visual language used by interface and icon creators.

We first identified this in the 2011 report, and at its apex, mono-line was being used to define everything from complex crests and 3D shapes to letterforms and simple iconic symbols. It stripped the logos of large areas of tone or color. But as a trend, it’s starting to come full circle, with these mono-line forms being colored in like a coloring book or lines starting to take on variable widths.

I think that mono-line is so heavily invested in the graphic environment that we’ll see the continued use of the technique for identities for years to come. It may wane — like the color of that sweater you won’t wear anymore but you still can’t bring yourself to pitch.

Trends tend to recycle in roughly 20–30 year increments. Is there anything from the ‘80s or ‘90s that you’re seeing back again? I consider the average hibernation period to be 30 years. Two pragmatic reasons for this: First, it’s an opportunity for the consumer to relive their past at a time when they can better afford it. And second, to a younger demographic, the novelty of neo-anything can be intoxicating. But I think we’re highly mercurial today and the cycle may grow even shorter

In the ’80s, we were winding out of an era of fat-line marks. Saul Bass and the Bell logo, Danne and Blackburn’s NASA worm, Chermayeff and Geismar’s U.S. Bicentennial star. Today, take a look at Aaron Draplin’s fat-line marks that are leading a resurgence that era’s style.

What’s the sure-fire recipe for disaster in logo design? I love a quote from Tom Geismar: “Nothing dulls so quickly as the cutting edge.”

I’ll pair that with a Michael Beirut quote: “Some think of logo design as a diving competition when really it’s a swimming competition. It’s not how big a splash you make, but how long you keep your head above water.”

I won’t try to conflate these two, but the essence is to be mindful of the duration of a strong mark. It survives and avoids the brand reassignment pool by being conceptually smart and not brash and arrogant.

Can you point us to a couple of particularly successful new identities or redesigns from 2016? And share a couple of thoughts on why they work?

I was in the minority that loved what Instagram did with their rebrand in May 2016. On a deeper dive I think those that were the most agitated by the change were frequent users that still had a crush on the old skeuomorphic Polaroid mark. Especially in a sector that mandates tiny avatars and favicons and that rations out pixels like compliments, you have to be highly scaleable. The simplified camera holds the equity of the original but with a dramatically clean icon. A new color palette attests to the vibrancy of the Instagram environment with a high chroma fade.

Pentagram smartly reimagined MasterCard by dropping all the visual foreplay used to mate the signature red and yellow hemispheres. The move toward a cleaner solution allowed the purity of two circles to overlap as the consumer has always imagined they should have. The vibrancy reset on the colors was subtle but just vivid enough to capture that critical second look. Pulling the typography out of the symbol was probably the bravest move on the design team’s part, but it opened up the possibility of the mark as a standalone element.

A few other notable designs from last year:

Chris Trivizas, Athens Greece, Kuzinera Pasta/ Love the uber-simple rolling pin for pasta, but did you notice it’s made out of a piece of tortiglioni with a spaghetti handle shoved through it? Made me look twice.

Slagle Design, Columbus, Ohio, EduGo/ I could only imagine this is an educational activity program. Simple figures and clever integration of the letters of GO in the bike wheels.

Outdoor Cap, Bentonville, Arkansas, Sub Sonic/ You never know where a part solution will come from. Love the idea of SubSonic being repped by a snail but look at the posture of the critter and that mixed facial expression of determination and consternation.

  Ortega Graphics, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Fabrixsa/ for a textile company this simple logo shows a beautiful weave and coloration of and unmistakable swatch tried out by pinking sheers. Nicely restrained and informative at the same time.

Sagmeister & Walsh, New York, NY, MeetUp/ Redrafting the MeetUp identity was no small effort but the idea of the amorphous gathering and the other joiners arriving helps convey the personality of the app. Seeing the animation work S&W did on this pays it off at a glance.

Norbert Prell, Budapest, Hungary, Year of the Rooster/ There are a million great rooster marks in the design cannon but this is about as simple and to the point as you get. Tremendous economy of line, scale and color. A comb, a beak an eye and whatever you call that goofy little droopy thing. Nuff said!

That’s just a taste of what Gardner will share when he takes the stage at HOW Design Live. If your work involves identity, branding, iconography, type or color — or if you have an insatiable curiosity about visual trends across media — then you won’t want to miss his presentation. Gardner joins other presenters including Jonathan Hoefler on type, Jim Krause on color and Gemma O’Brien on hand-lettering. Current registration discounts extend until March 21, so sign up now!

Got a logo design you’re proud of? Submit it to the LogoLounge 10 design competition by February 28, and have your work considered for publication in the next edition of the world’s most exhaustive review of identity design. Get more info here.

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