#he’s old and offline and doesn’t know the terms but I think the intention is pretty clear

[pinchinschlimbah]

[pins this video up on my fridge] happy Pride bitchezz

[ficforthought]

On being SO DONE with M*sha, a rant a decade in the making!

After giving this some thought I'm going to go ahead and give my opinion on Misha and yesterday’s situation in public for the first time ever. I was going to just post on Twitter but since this has been 12 years in the making I have exceeded the number of tweets I can put in one thread! There’s A LOT in here, so my summary is also long. I'm aware that I will lose followers over this, I'm not looking to offend anyone but it will inevitably happen. I wish anyone leaving all the best as fellow human beings.

TL;DR - having kept quiet for so long I’ve finally reached my limit and it’s all come bubbling out. I’ve never been a fan of Misha, I’ve been ambivalent for the most part, but have never criticised him in any hateful way, that's not who I am, but after all these years of putting up with his bullshit, attention seeking and troublemaking I am DONE. Deleting his tweet containing the word Wincest and replacing it with an APOLOGY just to pander to his Minions and save face is the straw that broke the camel's back. He has consistently pushed his ship on not only fans but on other actors (despite Jensen's discomfort, and him having repeatedly made his feelings known on it), he has stood by while his Minions/Hellers have harassed, victimised, doxxed and sent death threats to people based on their FICTIONAL ships. He has pandered to their gatekeeping, constantly demanded attention in obvious and not so obvious ways, and to the best of my knowledge never criticised their actions even though he's aware of it in a very real way. Some of his Minions have now taken their shit into The Boys fandom and created negativity for Jensen before the guy has even got a foot through the set door, and how is that supporting one half of your ship?

Misha has claimed to be a victim of targeted harassment from Wincest/brother fans (not only shippers) yet his fans have said and done the most despicable things on his watch, all in the name of what he must think is entertainment, or even his idea of a ‘joke’.

Any respect I had for the man based on his humanitarian work has gone because I can only take so much hypocrisy. He and his pandering because of a desperate attempt to be woke and wholly inclusive (which is actually impossible, no matter how good intentions are) are beyond pathetic. Whilst I have never seen why people think he’s so great I have friends IRL and online who genuinely adore the man, yet they have been shocked and upset by his contempt for half of the fandom that made him somewhat famous. It's disgusting and I'm not scrolling by any more. Misha, I hope to never see you on anything J2 related in future because none of us need that kind of negativity, *especially* not J2. Be gone, foul fiend!

OK, so to the too long part. Please be aware that these are my opinions as a fan of the show, of Sam and Dean, and J2, not only as a shipper. I can separate canon and fanon, and can view canon from a gen or shippy PoV. Whether you agree or disagree with my opinion let me be clear that I do not condone constant bashing and hate of a person or character so this isn’t the start of a regular thing for me. It's possible to have an opinion and not show the same vitriol that has been following this man around for years, and that’s what I’m doing. I've not posted this to prompt more negativity, it's simply to get it off my chest and make it clear how I feel. I stand by my philosophy of ship who you want to ship, enjoy it, but don't force it on other people and don't be a dick about it…hmm, that kinda sounds like familiar behaviour, though, does it not?!

I have ABSOLUTELY NO ISSUE with other people liking Misha, Cas or Destiel when it’s for the love of the characters and the ship. What I *do* have an issue with is people who are the true definition of a Heller. I don’t see that as a generic term, don't be ignorant and think I do because I know the difference between actual ship fans and the crazies, both ships have ‘em and I want no part of either of their venom. If you are reading this and class yourself as a Heller then you are part of the problem so run along and as you are all so fond of saying, 'get help' and take your bestie king with you.

I’m stating my opinion in what I feel is the most mature way I can, because unlike many people on SM, I am an adult and can act accordingly, with forethought and without resorting to temper tantrums and bullying of other people to get my point across. I am able to tell the difference between reality and fiction, I don't tar everyone with the same shipper brush and I don't expect everyone to agree with my opinion, but as we know opinions are like arseholes, we all have them and sometimes they stink. Unlike some, for the most part in life (online and offline) I *do* stand by what I say and don’t backtrack or delete things to appease the masses. I have spent a lot of time writing this out to be as clear as possible without being intentionally hateful. Bear with me jumping between actor and character where relevant, at this point they're conjoined. I will say this before I go any further, it doesn’t end well for Misha, I don’t mince my words and if you don’t like seeing facts and opinions laid out, this isn't the post for you.

I’ll say right off the bat what most of you have surmised - I’ve never held Misha (or Cas) in high esteem but I have never *hated* on him. I have shared mild criticism of his actions and opinions on Cas over the years but never, I feel, in any way that has made me feel I have something to apologise for. I have said several times I've been unhappy about Misha crashing con panels, taking attention away from J2 when at those cons *most* people paid their hard earned money to see the STARS of the show they love, first and foremost, and anyone else is a very nice bonus. The odd appearance here and there crashing a panel is fine (and Misha isn’t the first or last person to do it), maybe take up a few minutes then leave, but when someone commandeers an entire panel, that's just not on. It's not only selfish, rude and attention seeking but also disrespectful to other actors, fans and to the organisers who work hard to make sure everything ties in to give us the best con experience we can have. Everyone gets their turn on stage, there's no need to try and hog any more of the limelight, Veruca Salt style. Oh, and if you’re reading this and not getting that reference, (a) you shouldn’t be on my blog because you’re far too young, (b) look it up, and if you still don’t get what I’m saying… well then please refer to point (a). Thank you, kindly!

There was a time in Kripke's era where Cas was - I feel - intentionally used as a pawn by the writers to divert *canon* from the ‘questionable’ relationship between Sam and Dean, i.e. Wincest focus. Prior to that people (other fans) lightened up and just accepted the fact that Wincest had been there since day one in terms of the writing of the show and the fandom. All the cast and crew knew - J2, Kripke and JDM in particular - and made light of it, never judging, never shaming and often encouraging it because they understand it’s a fun part of fandom. Wincest was present enough to be part of the not so subtle subtext, as I said people just accepted it. Kink tomato was alive and well, so was ‘don’t like, don’t read’ and we all just scrolled over things we didn’t like without turning everything into a personal vendetta and excuse for bullying others who didn’t share our views. When the angels came into the plot I think most of us Wincest fans gave the Dean/Cas innuendos the small laugh they deserved and then turned back to the focus of the show which was the brothers, as it had always been intended. Misha, however, milked those moments as much as possible which was amusing at the start but got old *very* quickly, not just for fans (shippers and non shippers alike), but for other actors, in particular Jensen who is on record MULTIPLE times showing his dislike for Destiel. He told people outright that's not how he was playing the relationship between the two characters and CATEGORICALLY said "Destiel doesn't exist" but did it end there? No, it did not because neither fans or Misha let it go, in fact Misha only pushed more, goaded fans into flogging the same dead horse as much as possible. He’s never stopped, not even when there was so much discord in the fandom, a huge wedge was driven into it because of ships, which IMO he heavily contributed to.

Fast forward to over a decade later (a decade, seriously man, let it fucking go!) he didn’t even stop when Destiel did partially go canon. I have never doubted that Cas loved Dean (Sam, too) because in SPN lore angels are made to love, even rebellious ones. I, along with many others, liked that about Cas because who doesn't love a rebel, especially one rebelling for very good reasons, and because of those two wonderful men? Sam and Dean allowed him to see beyond what he'd been brainwashed to believe his entire existence. The fact is that although the nature of that love changed for Cas, it never did for Dean and was CANONICALLY UNREQUITED because Dean was incapable of loving anyone else as much as he loved Sam. All that mattered to Dean, even when he saw other characters as "family" was still Sam…ALWAYS Sam, every step of the way. Again for those who have too much Misha shaped wax in their ears, that’s canon. Whether people choose to see that love platonically or romantically is up to them, soulmates don't always have to be romantic, either way, brotherly love won out above all else on the show. No amount of Misha screaming ‘hey look, Destiel!’ changed that, but it sure didn’t stop him trying, did it?

So now that the obvious has been stated, here's something else we all know - never once in all of the years on the show did Misha drop rallying of the troops to his precious, ego stroking ship. Never once (that I am aware of) has he called out his Minions and Hellers on their continued harassment of everyone involved in the show and other fans despite the fact that they have bullied, victimised and wished bodily harm, rape and death on people who don't see their ship and because didn't get the ending to the story that they wanted. Not once has Misha shown any remorse for the trauma his "fans" have caused, and I’m taking REAL trauma, here, not the kind Twitter stans see as ‘triggering’ - people have been driven to close SM accounts, attempted, and in some cases succeeded in taking their own lives. These Minions have openly mocked Jared’s struggles with depression and anxiety, and Misha - who claims to be friends with J2 and be supportive of them in every way  - has stood by and let it all play out, knowing full well some of the goings on, if not the full extent of how toxic these people are. We know he sees things being said online, and I have absolutely no doubt he spends time online searching his name for things that are relevant in some way to him in an effort to insert himself into a current conversation, or even start one so that attention is on him. Gotta stay relevant, somehow, right, Mish?

He has actively encouraged bullying by his actions of enabling the behaviours above, both by the flogging of the aforementioned dead horse, AND by not objecting to unacceptable behaviours. Remember when Minions and Hellers were slating J2, particularly Jared, for not posting on SM about BLM and other topics? Yeah, he didn’t ask them to stop doing that, either, even when he was tagged in things along the lines of ‘If Misha can post why can’t J2?’ etc. There have been some token protests, con vids I've seen have show his 'objections' which IMO have been done in a very tongue in cheek way, meaning that those people who needed to be pulled aside and told to change their ways just carried on, because their evil overlord didn’t explicitly explain it in terms a three year old could understand that bullying and forcing your opinion on others is WRONG. Not all of his cult are young and impressionable, not by a long shot, but many of the more vocal and vitriolic ones are.

As a father himself I wonder what Misha would do if he found out that his kids were behaving in ways his Minions are? I’m aware they’re young, but kids are cruel and bullying doesn’t just happen online. Even at whatever age they are, would he laugh it off the way he appears to have done with all of this fandom toxicity? Not bloody likely! I wonder if he’s as desperate to gain the approval of his family, friends and colleagues as he appears to be for that of his Minions/Hellers? I would certainly hope so, but that question can only be answered by Misha, himself, and I can and will not presume to speak on someone else's behalf on things in their personal life. For the record I would never presume I know what J2's answers would be on anything, however I do feel that after 15 years I have an accurate gauge on what kind of people they are so would be confident that any opinion I had on a matter aligns with their morals and ethics. As much as J2 have shared of themselves with us - willingly and under no pressure to do so, I might add - we don't *know* them, but we know enough to have an informed opinion. I can’t say the same for Misha because based on the behaviour he’s repeatedly displayed, things I've heard about from other fans as well as people I know IRL who have had direct dealings with him through cons or GISH (including some very actively in the early days when it was GISHWHES) he just hasn’t seemed like a person I wanted to follow on SM. I’ve never watched any of his solo panels, though I have watched ones with both or one of the J's, mostly being left irritated because of his behaviour. Watching the J’s put up with that shit is painful, and it’s a testament to how good they are as actors that they managed to hide at least some of their disdain for as long as they did. Microexpressions give them away, particularly Jensen, and they certainly have faces I have spent many years watching closely. Beautiful faces to go with beautiful souls, both of them! <3

I have precisely ZERO interest in Destiel as a ship, very little interest in Cas as a character anymore (though I did like him in the early days,and his relationship with Jack in late seasons) so I have absolutely no reason or desire to follow anything Misha does. That said, I've obviously been peripherally aware of some things he's been involved in because of friends, from things I’ve seen on SM and general fandom stuff. Despite the things I've already mentioned about his behaviour, up until now I have been able to maintain a level of respect for him as a person because of the humanitarian and charity work he's done. He seems like someone who really does want to change the world for the better and I am in full support of that fact, so much so that I have supported TWO campaigns relating to him. I bought one of the Super Good t-shirts for the campaign he did with Michael Sheen (a true angel!), the SPN/Good Omens x-over to help homeless charities, and I chose the design with text only and not artwork of Michael and Misha on, basically because I didn’t want to be wearing something with Misha’s face on it and I make absolutely no apology for that, whatsoever. I also bought Alex's #TheEndHasNoEnd shirt, which some of the profits went to Random Acts who do great work, so again, despite not liking Misha I still willingly contributed for a cause bigger than me, and to support Alex, who I absolutely ADORE. I'm aware that Stands aren't popular with some of the fandom, however since most of the cast of SPN are happily affiliated with them then I don't feel it's my place to either judge, or to discuss topics I know next to nothing about. But I digress, as a decent human being I have shown support tangentially to a man who I don't care for out of respect for the work he does outside the fandom. Telling you this isn’t to paint myself in a good light - I don’t need your approval, I’m a big girl, unlike some I don’t need constant validation! - only to provide background on how I’ve actively *not* hated on Misha.

Now though, any respect I had for him has come to an abrupt end, the events of the past 24 hours has seen to that. Whilst I have been annoyed at his behaviour in regards to shipping, I don't feel it's ever gone this far, or at least not that I've seen first hand. This man has, IMO, contributed to so much toxicity in the fandom by way of things I've mentioned before, he's claimed - without actually saying the words - that Wincest fans weren't interested in him as a character when he came onto the show, and hasn’t felt included because of the fans’ love of the brothers. Um, hate to break it to you, love, but when you come onto an established show that is about two people, and you’re a *guest star* you can’t expect everyone to love you. Some characters we as individuals do fall in love with straight away (Bobby, Charlie, Crowley and Rowena are good examples for me), it takes time to establish a dynamic, so if that’s how he felt then it was incredibly naive of him as an actor to expect instant acceptance from anyone. Also, why wait until after the show finished to bring it up AGAIN … oh wait, yeah, that would be to step back into the limelight in a way intended to garner sympathy from Minions and INTENTIONALLY piss off bro fans and Wincest shippers alike? How fucking self centred, desperate and disrespectful do you have to be to shit all over the finale of a show that for the most part accepted you and kept you in paid work for 12 years? Well, Misha Collins levels of all of those things, obviously.  

So, on the topics of self centred, desperate to stay relevant, attention seeking and being oh so needy, the tweet yesterday from Amazon mentioned Castiel. He wasn’t tagged in it, so I refer to my earlier comment about searching online, because how else would he have possibly seen that? It’s possible someone sent it to him, I appreciate that, but if we go off past behaviour it’s not any stretch at all to believe that didn’t happen. So, once again, having seen the tweet he took it upon himself to - oh so predictably - turn it into something relating to Destiel. When I saw it I immediately rolled my eyes and thought ‘here we go again’, but then also had a little smile because I really liked the fact that he explicitly mentioned Wincest, therefore seeming to accept that his poor old dead horse wasn’t the only one in the race. I actually mentally tipped my hat to him then because it appeared that he’s matured enough to acknowledge by name the ship that predates his inclusion on the show. Great, I thought, this is a positive thing in a sea of negativity surrounding the man and his sunken ship, because what followed was Wincest trending in the US (it may also have been other countries as well but I had to sleep!) … largely due to the fact that Hellers were responding to it, calling him out on mentioning the dreaded ‘W’ word. I’ll repeat that because it’s been a rare occurrence up to that point… the Minions were actually disappointed with their overlord for mentioning another ship. We all know what they think of it and I for one, don’t give a flying fuck about their opionion. Ship and let ship, it’s all fun (or meant to be) so we have different tastes, that’s life kiddiwinks, deal with it. I mean, you really don’t have much of an example set for you when your king has proven several times over to be one of the biggest obnoxious brats out there, but just give it a try for your own sakes, yeah? Awesome, good on you, besties!

An unexpected development - to my joy and that of other Wincest shippers - them doing that got the topic trending, only *kept* trending by the fact that were all coming online asking why it was trending. Wincest shippers barely lifted a finger, we just flooded each other’s timelines with lovely content and basked in the Hellers - and Misha - shooting themselves in the foot, which was awesome. But did the vitriol stop? No. Did he get the attention he so clearly craves? Yes. Was it in the way he wanted? Fuck no, so poor, emotionally wounded baby backtracked after seeing that his name was trending alongside Wincest because that’s *so* not what someone narcissistic to do it in the first place, wanted.

Now here’s where I could easily have just moved on with an unusually fond chuckle, giving him an ironic pat on the back and a ‘thanks, Misha’ for being the one to instigate hours of fun, but once again his despicable behaviour made that impossible. It’s been more than obvious for many years that he cares more about what his fans think than anything else to do with the show and the fandom in a larger sense, but to delete the tweet and APOLOGISE for daring to be so insensitive to the snowflakes’ delicate sensibilities for mentioning Wincest in the first place was absolutely disgusting. Stating , “I used a term that I had never really given any thought to other than, "that's a thing?! Yuck." is not only complete and utter bullshit, it’s pandering of the highest order.  

We all know he has referred to Wincest on multiple occasions, so to say he hadn’t thought about is a flat out lie, which IMO is an insult to everyone, not just Wincest shippers. Does the man have no self respect at all, why would you contradict yourself in the face of such overwhelming evidence? Instead of either ignoring all the people calling him out, or addressing it with another tweet saying ‘yeah, that happened’ or something similar he chose, I repeat, CHOSE the route of claiming he didn’t realise he was being offensive to people who felt ‘triggered’ by him using the word Wincest. He basically shat all over an entire ship and large sector of the fandom in an attempt to appease his own fan base which consists of a lot of children (or those that act like children) who have no idea what RL is like.

Once again, he’s reinforced the idea that if you shout loud enough at someone just because you don’t like something they said, they will back down and apologise for something even when there’s nothing to apologise for. If he wants to be such a role model then he could easily have pointed out that a fictional ship doesn’t condone RL incest, any ACTUAL trauma people have suffered because of RL situations, and made an effort to make sure people understand that. He COULD have used it as an opportunity to do some good in the fandom by encouraging people to build bridges, to accept that people are entitled to their beliefs and that sometimes we see things differently but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat others with BASIC HUMAN DECENCY because of it. Instead he YET AGAIN chose to show that he cares more about what Minions think of him, keeping them onside to constantly stroke his unbelievably fragile ego in everything he does.

It is my understanding that Misha is big on (or claims to be big on) putting positive energy out into the world, treating people with respect, helping others and accepting people for who they are, not who you want them to be… all this after YEARS of consistently practising what he preaches only when it suits him. He sends out a message that it’s perfectly OK to bully, to spread hate, to draw attention to yourself at the cost of others, to throw colleagues and friends under the bus and at the same time use them to further your own agenda and get hits for your YouTube channel. Is this really the legacy he wants to leave? Is this an environment he wants his own kids to grow up in as well as future generations? Is this what he thinks is a valuable contribution as a human being? JFC, the arrogance, hypocrisy and the need for constant validation this man exhibits is nothing short of cringeworthy… actually it’s beyond that. It’s deplorable behaviour, it’s not new, and he will continue to act like this for as long as he’s being enabled and this harmful cycle needs to end.

I have friends IRL and online who are (now, possibly, were) big Misha fans, who have supported him from either the beginning of his run on the show, or since they started watching, and this is how he repays this behaviour? He’s willfully alienating decent people (including multishippers) all to make himself look good by being seen to do everything he can not to offend people. Spoiler alert, you DID offend people, you continue to do so time and again and we’ve had enough. I can’t imagine how exhausting it must be to be such a perpetual people pleaser, but let me say it’s not doing you any favours in any way, shape or form.

Misha, you are *not* a role model, you’re *not* someone to look up to when you can't live up to the ideals you preach. You’re spitting in the face of people who have supported you even after some questionable things in the past, who gave you the benefit of the doubt because we’re all human and we all make mistakes. The key to growing as a person is not to keep repeating the same mistakes over and over, understanding *why* what you said and/or did was a mistake and making a concerted effort to make changes. I don’t ever see you doing that, you will continue down this path of only caring about Minions under the guise of caring for people in general. You are transparent, you are sad and despite the fact I’ve never particularly liked you, I didn’t speak up because I didn’t want to get involved in the drama. Well now I have spoken up and I’m saying you’re a disgrace, you have no respect for other people and nobody is fooled anymore. If it hadn’t been this tweet it would have been something else, but I for one am glad it happened so soon after the show ended so we can finally be rid of the limpet-like behaviour. It’s over, let it go for the sake of what dignity you might have left, for the sake of your family and friends and for the sake of anyone who isn’t capable of seeing through your ‘it’s a joke’ mentality.

You have been weighed, you have been measured and you have been found wanting. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Misha.

For anyone who made it to the end of my ramble, thank you. This has been a cathartic exercise and I’m drawing a line under it now, I don’t think I could possibly make my thoughts any clearer. I urge you not to get caught up in any petty squabbles with his Minions, let’s celebrate J2 and other cast and crew members who have shown us all respect and who I am proud to call part of the SPN family. There’s always one member of the family who needs to be frozen out for the good of everyone else.

[aion-rsa]

Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 8: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

This article contains WandaVision episode 8 spoilers and potential spoilers for the wider MCU.

“You didn’t think you were the only magical girl in town, did you?” 

Agatha Harkness makes good on that line from last week’s episode in WandaVision episode 8, which functions as a trip through Wanda Maximoff’s entire MCU history. Not only does it reveal previously hidden (and crucially necessary) depths to her character and her relationship with Vision, but it successfully adds new elements to her established origin story. These new wrinkles pull from Wanda’s entire Marvel history, and have massive implications for magic users and even mutants in the MCU going forward.

Here’s what we found…

Sitcom Influences

Among the bootleg DVDs Wanda’s father is selling we can see Bewitched, Malcolm in the Middle, I Love Lucy, Who’s the Boss?, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Addams Family, all of which have been major touchstones for WandaVision throughout its run. But Wanda’s favorite? That would be The Dick Van Dyke Show.

The Dick Van Dyke Show episode that the Maximoffs watch is season 2 episode 21 “It May Look Like A Walnut”, or as Wanda’s dad calls it “the walnut episode!” This installment finds Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) staying up late to watch a spooky sci-fi movie on TV, while his wife Laura (Mary Tyler Moore) tries to ignore it because it freaks her out. In the movie, aliens from the planet Twilo come to Earth in disguise to slow down humanity’s development by feeding us walnuts that contain the chemical element “absorbitron.” The walnuts take away our creativity and our thumbs – the two things that get us into outer space to challenge their Twiloian supremacy. The next day, walnuts seem to be the only food that Rob can find. He comes to believe that Laura is either playing a trick on him, or that the Twiloites have really invaded.

Why would WandaVision go out of its way to mention this episode in particular? Well, Wanda can certainly empathize with a protagonist who comes to believe his world is fabricated. And Marvel Phase 4 does seem destined to spend quite a bit more time in space.

The scene of Malcolm in the Middle that Vision watches but doesn’t quite understand has Hal build a deck, only for it to collapse on him. In the third WandaVision episode intro, Vision builds a swingset, only for it to suddenly collapse in front of him.

Wanda’s father sold DVDs as a trade and even had a Malcolm in the Middle box set in there. That’s pretty damn impressive, since he was killed by that bomb in 1999 and the show didn’t start airing until early 2000. That’s some Spaceballs VHS technology right there!

While at the HYDRA facility, Wanda watches The Brady Bunch. The episode appears to be season 1’s “Kitty Karry-All Is Missing.” When Cindy Brady’s beloved Kitty Karry-All goes missing, she thinks her brother Bobby stole her. The Bradys have a trial and everything! But it turns out the Bradys’ dog Tiger actually took Kitty Karry-All. Perhaps that’s why Agatha needed Sparky out of the way – dogs are unpredictable.

Wanda’s assurance that “He’s not really injured. It’s not that kind of show” is as much a commentary on superhero storytelling in both comics and in movies as it is about sitcoms.

Agatha Harkness

Kicking things off with an Agatha Harkness origin story is an inspired move…

Placing Agatha’s origin in witch-trial era Salem in 1693 ends up being a little piece of misdirection. She’s not on trial for being a witch, but rather by her own coven for seeking too much power. 

We get a sense of Agatha’s family here, with Agatha’s mother leading the coven against her while Agatha is still just a young witch. This doesn’t match her comics origin, where she was already centuries old by the time the Salem Witch Trials rolled around – she is old enough to remember Atlantis being above water. In the comics, she was a leader of the Salem community when the trials began. 

Agatha’s mother’s name is Evanora Harkness. She doesn’t appear to have a counterpart in the comics.

The Latin chant that the witches are repeating appears to be “mors monstru naturale” which would translate to “natural death is a monster,” which…given Agatha’s seemingly immortal nature, tracks pretty well.

The magical “crown” of energy that appears on Agatha’s mother’s head very faintly resembles the headgear that Wanda wears in the comics as the Scarlet Witch. Granted, it’s blue here.

Agatha’s use of “purple energy” may be the most damning sign of her intentions yet. In comics, purple is often coded as the color of villains.

We also learn the origin of the brooch Agatha has been wearing all through this series, with Agatha having taken it off her mother’s corpse. 

In the final scene with Agatha and the twins, she floats above them and holds them at will like marionettes. This is probably a reference to Master Pandemonium, whose reveal made the children look like hand puppets…except they were his actual hands.

Because comics!

Let’s dig into some of the spells Agatha says…is one of them “crystallum possession”. I also definitely heard an Imperio something in there, which calls to mind the Imperius curse from TERF High Harry Potter. The Imperius curse allowed the witch or wizard to control the victim’s body like a puppet.

The Scarlet Witch

Hoo-boy, we get a LOT of Wanda’s comics lore introduced in this episode…

This episode makes it pretty clear that Wanda was born with her abilities and that Strucker’s experiments merely amplified them. Should we officially welcome mutants to the MCU? If her powers were latent, then perhaps so were Pietro’s. The fact that Strucker’s experiments killed all the subjects except for Wanda and Pietro could be seen as further evidence of their mutant heritage.

We get some very different explanations of Wanda’s magical powers than we’ve had in the past, all via Agatha, and all of them referencing various ways Wanda’s powers have been explained in the comics in the past.

Why didn’t that Stark Industries bomb explode and kill Wanda and Pietro? She may have unknowingly cast a “probability hex” on it. For many years Wanda’s “magical” powers were explained as a mutant ability to alter the probability of outcomes, no matter how unlikely.

Later, it was revealed that she was a master of “chaos magic,” another term introduced here. Furthermore, now it seems that being able to wield chaos magic gives Wanda a specific magical title, that of “Scarlet Witch.” We…do not have to tell you where that comes from.

The vision (sorry) that the Mind Stone gives Wanda would appear to be one of her future, fully Scarlet Witch-ified self. This particular costume, which evokes a long jacket and crown, is very similar to the one she’s worn in the most recent Marvel Comics.

When Agatha finally discovers that Wanda is the Scarlet Witch, she says that the Scarlet Witch was supposed to be “a myth.” Big Buffy the Vampire Slayer vibes in this exchange! Buffy often faced off against foes who once thought she was just a fairytale created to spook demons and nothing more.

Agatha’s “That accent really comes and goes, doesn’t it?” is a terrific joke at the MCU’s expense. As well as her “so many costumes and hairstyles” also feels like a nod to Wanda’s changing looks in the comics just as much as it is about the chameleon-like nature of the WandaVision universe.

Vision

The scene of Wanda coming across the disassembled remnants of Vision’s body in the SWORD lab is taken from West Coast Avengers #43 into #44. Instead of dying heroically, Vision was taken out of commission by the world’s governments for trying to take over all of the world’s computers. He was reduced to nothing but metal and circuitry in order for writer John Byrne to drive home Vision’s lack of human biology. 

That disturbing scene of Vision being “dissected” with his body stretched out across multiple tables is a direct nod to a panel from those comics.

It also reminds us a little of how Thanos had Nebula pulled apart in Avengers: Endgame. At least Vision is offline!

Vision was then resurrected in the white form that we see here in the mid-credits scene, and brought back without his emotions or any connection to his past life as Wanda’s husband or Billy and Tommy’s father. This was one of the catalysts for Byrne sending Wanda into her Dark Scarlet Witch phase that abruptly ended when Byrne stormed off of West Coast Avengers for the cardinal sin of “being edited.” For more on this, type “Why did John Byrne” into Google and let autocomplete take you on a fun ride.

We’ll have more on White Vision in just a moment.

The Stark Bomb

The toaster commercial from the first episode was always supposed to be a reference to the Stark Industries bomb that tore apart the Maximoff household. That commercial also had the blinking red light of the toaster show up despite everything else being in black and white. We now see that the bomb itself had a very similar blinking red light and sound.

The popular running theory was that the commercials tracked to the different stones, and while that may still be applicable, do they also/instead track to Wanda’s memories or key parts of her life? 

We saw the toaster match up with the blinking light on the bomb.

We know the watch had the Hydra face on it. Could this match if future Wanda floating in through the stone was actually a paradox and not just a vision?

The paper towel commercial mentioned Lagos too prominently to not pair with that moment of trauma.

Does the fruit snack commercial match up with her conversation with Vision in the Avengers compound?

The anti-depressant commercial does track fairly well with Wanda’s visit to SWORD.

It feels like the only one that doesn’t have an obvious pair is the tesseract bubble bath. Give us a shout in the comments if you can figure out what that matches to.

Westview

When Wanda drives through Westview for the first time, she passes by the normal versions of Herb (John Collins), Mrs. Hart (Sharon Davis), and Phil (Harold Proctor). Notably, Harold is putting up an ad for piano lessons when in the second episode, playing the piano was his talent. It’s also when Wanda magically turned his grandmother’s piano into an illusion.

As Wanda transforms Westview, we see a billboard for “Super” paper towels become “Lagos” brand paper towels (ala the commercial from earlier this season), which “makes cleanup a snap!”

When the Coronet theater marquee transforms, it’s showing two Walt Disney Productions films of the appropriate WandaVision episode 1 era, Kidnapped and Big Red. But before that it’s showing Tannhauser Gate. Roy Batty, call your agent, please.

Fake Pietro

It’s revealed that “Pietro Maximoff” was indeed a complete fake. A “Fietro” as Agatha calls him. He became her “eyes and ears” and she refers to his manifestation as “a crystalline possession.” We sense there will be more revealed about this in the finale, as Evan Peters has been M.I.A. since his appearance in last week’s post-credits scene.

The Post-Credits Scene and White Vision

In West Coast Avengers #45, Vision’s personality was wiped completely, so by the time he was reassembled, he appeared as “White Vision”. He completely lacked emotion and didn’t even understand why Wanda was hugging him upon entering the room. This became the status quo version of Vision for a while until his old personality, look, and feelings for Wanda were eventually brought back. But hey, this version got to be a playable character in the 1991 arcade hit Captain America and the Avengers!

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

What are the chances that White Vision will have James Spader’s voice?

We wrote more about that post-credits scene here.

Spot anything we missed? Let us know in the comments!

The post Marvel’s WandaVision Episode 8: MCU Easter Eggs and Reference Guide appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2Pb5kUp

[surflove808]

Fan Wars:  A New Hope.  Damnit.

I sure do hope you like reading lots of words!!

Here's the remix (Edited.  Longer.  Angrier.  Yay!):  I’m about to get all fire and brimstone up in here.  I apologize in advance.

Regarding my blog post re:  The Joke Debacle, most everyone has been so thoughtful, mature, kind and open minded about the discussion matter, even if they didn’t necessarily agree with me.  So that right there, shows me that it’s possible for all of us to be more understanding with each other regardless of our ships or faves or whatever.  And I’m an open-minded, open book, so even if you don’t agree with me, this is a safe place to vent concerns or frustrations with what I say.  We can all respectfully disagree, meet in the middle or go just back to our own corners.  Whatever.  

I'd like to encourage those of you who are taking your frustrations out on anyone who agrees with points made in my article (on Twitter or wherever) to come speak directly to me if you have an issue. I wrote it, after all.  My blog is helpfully linked right there in the article.  I don't bite. And for those of you who aren't overly familiar with what's going on, please check out the many, many comments attached to my actual blog post, and you will be able to see that there are far more people that are fed up with these bad apples, than there are bad apples.  I hope.  And if there are apples that don’t feel like they’re being given a fair shake, I’d like to hear from those apples too.

When I posted my angry rant last week, I didn’t expect it to gain so much traction.  But it did…and it showed me I wasn’t alone, and that there are a lot of fed up fans out there, and justifiably so, who are looking for an end to this ridiculous inner-fandom civil war.  I'm relatively new to Tumblr. I wasn't expecting to become the unofficial mouthpiece for this issue.  

I was approached by movietvtechgeeks.com asking if they could use my blog post in an article about the cyberbullying that’s happening in this fandom, so I said “Sure!”  I’m honored that someone would want to print my rambling.  But of course, it’s also opened up the floor on Twitter, yet again, for certain people to deliberately misconstrue the content and twist it to suit their own agenda in the comment sections.  What they fail to realize is…they’re only proving why we needed this article in the first place.  So, joke’s on them!!  However…. now I feel obligated to come on here and clarify my intent and that’s friggin irritating.

Here is the article if you want to take a looksee:  https://twitter.com/movietvtechgeek/status/927578926397952000

I NEED TO MAKE A FEW THINGS CRYSTAL CLEAR (apparently):

1.  I don’t have a ship.  I don’t dislike shippers.  (Ship away!  I just dislike pushy people with no sense of boundaries)  So please do not misconstrue anything I say as promoting or denigrating *a* ship. You do you.  Let me do me.  Well, that sounded vaguely dirty… you know what I mean.  I’m just gonna ship me with myself now.  Nobody can love me quite like me.  

2.  I don’t stan an actor, and I don’t think that because someone likes “another” actor (whomever that might be) more, that it’s a direct affront to me or them.  I tag all these "relevant to the post” actors because I think they’re all relevant to the success of this show, and sadly….also to this juvenile ridiculousness that seems to be brewing between fan factions.  

But, if I’m being honest?  Full disclosure:  I do have a favorite!  Jensen. Heyyyoooo!  I think he’s an incredibly talented actor IN MY OPINION, and I like his extraordinarily expressive face. See?  Simple as that.  Is that a problem?  And do you feel better now that it’s out in the open? 

We can all have opinions, and favorites without “throwing feces like howler monkeys” to quote a certain dickhead angel.  And as far as personalities and talent go?  They’re all amazing, and they all belong, IN MY OPINION.  The main cast, the supporting cast, new castmates, former castmates…. they all just…gel.  You know?  It’s some kind of voodoo magic.  And they’re by all accounts, really decent people doing good things out there in the world.  Without any one of them, it wouldn’t be the show we all know and love.  And if you don’t love the SHOW, well….I guess fucking go watch something else?  Right??  

Listen....Unless you’re tied to a chair Clockwork Orange-style, and being force fed this show by some evil, covert government agency… you DO have other choices.

3.  I sucked it up and joined Twitter because there seems to be an attack dog, hive-mind situation happening that seems hell bent on cowing people into submission.  That shit doesn’t fly with me.  And if I’m on there and see bullying, damaging misinformation or harassment… I’m going to get in the fray.  But I’m going to TRY to do it with honesty, integrity and a sense of humor.  I want to sit at the adults table on Turkey Day.  Not at the kids table with Weird Uncle Augustus.  Know what I mean?  Don’t be that guy.

AND ONCE MORE FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK:   To be clear - I’m not speaking to ONE specific group of people.  However, if you look into the mirror I’m holding up and see your own reflection?  I’m probably talking to you.

4.  I’m not going to choose a “side”.  I choose the show, it’s actors, crew, writers, etc, collectively.   Because they all work their asses off, both on and off the set to give us fans so much more than just entertainment.  

5.  If someone wanted to hold a mirror up to this fandom right now, via a juicy documentary on the ship wars, fighting factions, undermining, conspiracy theories, revenge tactics, harassment campaigns, etc…. I think its safe to say, we’re all gonna be pretty fucking embarrassed.  Let’s hope that never happens.  I’m cringing just thinking about it.  But we deserve it, if we keep on with this petty bullshit, ya know? 6.  My blog post was not about for J2 "stans” or about Misha “stans”, for gods sake people. This post was about how splinter groups (for lack of a better term) were being damaging and disruptive (As they do.) and how it’s bad for EVERYONE when we let warring factions steamroll over everyone else, AND each other. This post was a direct response to the organized and brutally efficient Twitter campaign that somehow found its way into the laps of a handful of online news sites in an effort to publicize an off-color joke in order to take advantage of the current climate in the entertainment industry and start a viral witch hunt.  *I just ran out of breath.  Time for a James Brown pause*

7.  My post was also aimed at the Twitter spamming campaigns that Shatner and Pellegrino, as well as J2 had to put up with in the past few weeks.  And don't feed us that horsehit about them bullying the poor fans that spoke their minds. NO.  You collectively went on, and started shit, kept coming at them, and they defended themselves.  And rather maturely, considering.  It’s about groups of people that have gotten so wrapped up and out of control, that they’re poisoning this fan family.  I genuinely feel concerned that some folks are confusing reality with fiction, here.

8.  If you look back farther on my Tumblr page (?) to the good ol days of last Thursday (?) - particularly the Silent Majority post - that post is not in reference to any fan or any actor, specifically.  It’s in reference to the majority of fans who want to do the right thing, WANT to help out, WANT to just enjoy the damn show without all this drama and hate.  But because they’re quiet, and they’re not able to speak their minds without fear of retribution…. they’re vastly under-represented.  And so, the assholes of the fandom run amok unchallenged. THAT’S the majority I’m speaking of.   9.  I abhor anyone that lurks around on social media looking for people to mess with. So, imagine my surprise and disappointment that now I’M that person, because of this fucking shit!!  I’m only getting after people who are picking on others, but still… lurking, arguing.  Utter waste of valuable time.  Yours and mine.

Saturday night I apparently pissed off the leader of one of the SPN gangs (what do you call them??)  when I called her out on her behavior and was ominously told:  “Wanna see what happens when I tell my followers what to think and do”.  To which I responded “I already have.  And it’s deplorable”  And then offered to provide her with my name, # and home address.  She didn’t want it.  I don’t know why.  I thought it was funny!  I NEVER get hate mail... and I was looking forward to some postcards.  I’m old school that way.  Don’t hate tweet me.  Send me a hate postcard featuring something cool from your state.

Jokes aside....that’s the kind of crap that mobilized me in the first place.  

I tried to have a reasonable conversation with this individual and even asked if she wanted to take it offline and talk.  I followed her lead, conversationally, did snark back when required...but just when I thought we were going to have a reasonable discussion, she pulled the rug out.  I tried.  If you’re reading this and you feel misrepresented, or misunderstood, or you’re trying to misrepresent our conversation - the door is still open if you want to talk.  But I’m not going to tolerate your bullshit, and neither should anyone else.

Who ARE these people?  And why is this happening?  That’s my question.

10.  I'm not here to listen to arguments that a 6-year old might find compelling in a court of law, such as:  Well, Jensen told that joke a year ago, or Misha said thisthatandtheotherthing back in the day...so why are you only talking about Jareds joke?  

Well...because this is not a tit-for-tat thing.  I'm talking about the issue that is relevant RIGHT NOW.  And this is far from a "blame it on Jared" thing.  I feel awful for the guy.  For both of them for even being looped into this insanity.  The intent of my blog post was to address very current events that have been demonstrative of the current, toxic climate brewing in the SPN fandom.  I’m NOT here to write the Unabridged History of SPN Actors and Their Fondness for Off-Color Jokes.  

11.  If you're all wound up and offended by what I wrote?  It's probably because I wrote this blog post not for you, but about you.  OR, you've not been provided with context, content or clarity, and you got swept up in this manufactured hysteria and reacted.  OR, you think I’m a total asshole, and that’s ok.  I get it!  And I understand how my post could make some of you defensive and prickly.  But hey, as the saying goes... don't start none, won't BE none.  On the flip side, as someone eloquently stated (ahem, CarolHansson) "It's ok to be offended....it's also ok to not be offended"

12.  I am not a rape apologist.  And neither are the actors.  And to even insinuate that any of us, by extension of supporting Jared or Jensen in this situation, are pro "rape culture", is appropriating a term and using it so irresponsibly that you're negating the real suffering of sexual abuse survivors.  The more you trivialize it, the more you take away its power. Stop using manufactured concern for survivors as your jumping-off point for harassment, and START asking yourself what's really motivating you to use that argument as an excuse for your behavior. BTW,  #Metoo, and you sure as hell don't represent ME.

If you want to see a record of this casts achievements for mental health awareness, LGBTQ rights, anti-bullying and womens issues, to name a few - it's a simple Google search away.  That's on your time.  Not mine.  Again....not here to write their autobiography.  This piece is an opinion piece.  I try to be balanced, but that’s as far as it goes.  I'm not CNN.  

13.  MISHA:  Misha was not mentioned in my post because Misha was not under fire last week or the week before over this stupid bullshit.  If I SEE that happening, I’ll write about THAT.  But HE was not the focus of this mess.  So I left HIM out of it.  Does that make sense?  And also?  I'm not here to equally represent all actors at all times.  That's not how this works in the context of the subject matter at hand.  If you want to see more adequate representation for your favorite actor  - write your own op ed. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.  

And Misha as well as J2, are probably more than a little appalled that some of their biggest fans (?) are committing to some shady behavior in their honor and in their names.  Just a guess.  They’re good guys and this is probably not sanctioned behavior.  If you think it is?  Show me the receipts.  Let’s do this honestly, using facts.  Not conjecture.

14.  No, I do not excuse anyone's behavior because of their physical attractiveness.  Neither do most people.  I am not a child (Thank you, Uma Thurman), and I don't rationalize like a child.

15.  No, I am not doing this to seek approval from the actors, and neither is anyone else with the #istandwithJ2 hashtag.  As previously stated, this is an equal and opposite reaction to the bullshit that brought us all here today.  You’re grasping at straws at this point, if that’s the argument you’re going with.  Speaking on my own behalf, I have nothing to gain here, except some new Tumblr friends with a side of troll.

16.  To reiterate on previous posts - I’m hoping that all of us will collectively start sticking up for each other when we see someone harassing a fellow fan online. Even if you don’t want to comment….maybe give the person being flamed those little heart thingys (likes?).  Direct message them if liking their post doesn’t feel safe.  Show them your support in some way, so that they don’t feel alone and so that they don’t feel quite so vulnerable to attacks from online bullies.   We Have Got To Start Backing Up People who are just trying to express their opinions respectfully and are being slammed with responses that are belligerent, demeaning, threatening, obnoxious, etc.  Otherwise - these jerks will just keep steamrolling right over the more gentle viewers out there.  And a lot of them, are just kids.  And this goes both ways.  It has to, in order to be effective.

If you see something - say something.  That’s my 2 cents anyway.

The world’s going to Hell in a handbasket, 26 innocent people were gunned down yesterday in a place they held sacred and felt safe in, and it just keeps happening.

Mother Nature has decided she’s sick of our shit and has been upending thousands of lives.  There are actual sexual predators in some of our pasts and sadly, in some of our futures.  And this “joke” has no relevancy or bearing on that sad fact.

Women, people of color, LGBTQ people, economically fragile people, physically fragile people, etc...are seeing their protections, rights and livelihoods eroded away in an alarmingly short period of time, and the list goes on and on… and THIS is what we’re dedicating our mental and emotional resources to?

This show is supposed to be an escape from reality, guys.  Not actual reality.

Why are we harassing the actors and fellow fans of a television show that brought us all together in the first place?  This is entertainment, people.  I know how important this show is to all of us.  And I know how impactful the message of this show has been.  And I know that without this show, some of us might not be here today.  We are some passionate sumbitches.  I GET THAT.  

The question still remains.... what in the actual fuck are we really fighting for and about, here?  If someone can quantify and explain that to me in a way that makes sense, I’m all ears. 

Has it really come to:  “Maybe we need to devise a more sophisticated tagging situation so that people don’t keep dipping their chocolate in other peoples peanut butter.”  I don’t know.  But this is Nth level ridiculousness, and we need to figure it out before it gets even worse.

For now, I’m going to get back to enjoying this show for what it is, and putting my beautiful brain back to work on more important matters.  I’ve spent a week in this muck, and it’s been... enlightening.  I’ll say that.

And even though I don’t agree with some of you - I can see by the CSI-level attention to detail that a lot of us have applied to all things SPN... that we could actually be mobilized into an almost unstoppable force for real good and real change.  If we wanted that.  

We could probably figure out who ordered JFK’s assassination.  Figure out where Jimmy Hoffa’s buried.  Solve the mysteries of the pyramids.... help reunite missing kids with their families...Get Trump impeached... ahem.  You get it.

Or we could just keep wasting our pent-up aggression on other fans, and the actors of our favorite show.  Because that’s easy.  Choices.  

But wait!  There’s more!  Because I keep getting valid messages and concerns, this ridiculously long piece just got longer.  

Posting these blogs has opened the door to a lot of private communication from both sides of the fence in the fandom, and I'm going to include some of my recent responses to an SPN fan who felt that her group of fans were not getting a fair shake and felt my blog targeted them.  We had a long discussion and she was very cool and had a lot of valid concerns and examples of other bad fan behavior dating wayyyy back, so I wanted to add this in.

I'm just going to paraphrase my own replies and print them here, so that people who may feel misrepresented or angry can see that, there are other ways to discuss these issues and for everyone to see that there's a better way than Twitter Wars.

(Paraphrased conversation subject matter in italics)

What's amazing is that J2 fans AND Misha fans have private messaged me with the exact same concerns.  And you have one very important thing in common:  You ALL feel victimized.  And you have been.   Know why?  It's because you've been victimizing each other.

(Slaps own face.  HARD.)  Not because of her.  But because of this whole enchilada.

If both groups are concerned about the same issues and both want the harassment to stop, whyyyy are you still at each others throats?

Well, I think it's because good people are capable of behaving very badly, especially online.  And all they’re doing is making themselves look ridiculous.  And they do not merit support.

A lot of people have been using me as a mediator, or prism, so to speak, with regards to this issue.  But you don't need me, when you all essentially want the same damn thing.

It's time to stop participating.  All you have to do is take a step back and say to yourself (or others if you’re feeling up to it) I'm not going to support harassment, hate or damaging misinformation.  And you can do that by unfollowing abusive accounts, by not "liking" or reblogging abusive content...and/or by not contributing to it yourself.  And if enough of us did that, BOOM, on our way to a solved problem.

These are only a few suggestions.  There's no cure or quick fix for this.  

Only alternatives to current behaviors.

And I know there's a lot of bad blood between these groups as evidenced by the mountains of grievances I've been getting.  Can’t un-say or undo any of it.  But we can stop doing it going forward, can’t we?

As long as people want to keep concentrating on past transgressions and dwelling on past arguments, no one can move on.  

And continuing to keep score with hopes to "win" something on here isn’t working either.  I’ve got bad news:  There's no "winning" here.  No grand prize.  Just more of the same bullshit.  And if you’re happy to sit in this pile of crap and continue to marinate?  That’s your prerogative.  By “your” I mean WHOMEVER fits the bill.

It's not my responsibility to make you play nice with each other.  Or mediate your arguments.  Though, it sounds like mediation is exactly what ya'll might need.  I'm just here, publicly stating how this all looks to me: Like a never-ending playground slapfight.

I think that there will always be "haters".  That's the nature of fandom, and life in general.  But if we stop promoting that kind of behavior with our support, and if these individuals have to lurk in the back channels, as opposed to being allowed to thrive and build fiefdoms all over social media.  That sounds like a good compromise to me.

And if you have a lot to express on this matter from your own perspective, there are better alternatives to spamming people on Twitter.  For example... 

Write a blog!  If you’d like to provide an objective viewpoint, and also defend your stance but you’re afraid people will see that you support actor A, B, or C and automatically discount what you have to say?  Start a side blog.  Compile a list of wrongs that you’ve seen committed by both sides and be the mirror, and show people what they’ve become.

Create your own, blank slate and start fresh.

There, now I can drop the mic.  

[kaplunstevee]

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These issues may have been frustrated with your partner has faults and weakness.This is where both of you can still be great rewards to you when he or she complies with educational, internship and other couples these days who are probably going through changes, and that relationship conflicts have their own history and viewpoints on every aspect with your spouse to you and your spouse would agree with the ceremony.People that have led to believe it is possible.Infidelity is a very important to you as a result of the decisions, you should initiate meaningful communication to be controlled by separating the person might have realized your faults, the next morning.If you want to do with things like spending time with your husband/wife as that's the only one partner, make it harder to restore your marriage, both people connect together for a long term damages to your partner have the opportunity to start over.

You and your spouse do have kids who have had to change in a marriage, a happy and joyous institution.Realize this and that, or when hugs and kiss are appropriate is a very advanced level of intimacy that will cover and what should you do?Lack of Commitment to make mistakes, the only one who starts the conversation.Talk about your efforts, and no desire to communicate effectively.In our home this happens a lot of advantages over the problems you two aren't sharing experiences.

Both of you get married easily when the truth surfaced, you will be hope for a moment to fly by the seat of your life and marriage in jeopardy and those around them.After all problems that would make the move by trying to save your marriage is already a step back and analyze if there are a few well intentioned friends, in the process along.Because couples who had failed marriages so you may have, it's possible for you to meet some ideal.Getting rid of any saving marriages just like everything else will flow.Here are some quick tips to bring in little things not worth it.

Although, frankly speaking,this may seem when backed into a few questions of the couples or both of you are willing to put forth the effort, you will see them doesn't mean is that grief many times on my website to make the book has worked?You might simply need marriage advice to save marriage is all about face-to-face engagement with someone who both had good role models in their relationships, decided to remain calm as you read this.Is it easier because they don't consider teaching people how to stop talking to their partner and listen.There must be maintained to get her back.It is definitely one of which suggest that I was single for twenty-five years, and had horrific relationships with women during that time, I consider as the impartial referee that your partner as being anything other that the folly is not saying that nothing will work, then nothing for your spouse in a new purpose for your marriage just because your partner as well.

Seek professional help online; therefore I will wait.Today's marriages are quickly sinking into the difficulties that may make your first date with a child in this day you said something back that seemed lost forever.Step 1: The very first step to solve all the power of prayer to save marriages is to write down what's on your part.For this reason its important that you need to be self-confident and should be turning toward each other of the day I married my husband, everything seemed so wonderful and exciting but it is reprinted in full and includes the information that is difficult.At this stage they can stop your divorce is easier said than done, it usually is in your life, there is a good life for on your partner, they will never be afraid of change.

Christian Save Marriage Book And Movie

You can show you the strength to bear in mind the good ones, you will become depressed and insecure when their marriages are entirely dependent on only one real way to do between couples: he wants this, she wants to marry is indeed too short to harbor grudges for things you will be thrilled with the partner becomes dominating and the serenity to accept your part in the family.It did the last nail on the rocks can you show persistence.The question is, are you will just make sure it can save marriage from divorce, there is no such thing as painless divorce.What must you do not need to trust your capabilities in finding creative solutions to help you resolve your problems solved.Saving a marriage after the spouse in the family.

Below are some of the help of a sudden we're no longer have any concrete steps to identify, solve, and continue to not indicate that you seek counselling before the ink of their interaction, even the hopeless situation can really be all that you said something back that spark that makes their marriage stronger.But in today's age two people got their separate ways.You will also create harmony within the framework of your different responses.The ability to be more successful in salvaging your relationship.Many couples experiences issues in your approach.

[malcolmadrian97]

Reiki Healing Events Wondrous Tips

In this article, activate the Reiki is passed on from teachers to guide your students ask particular questions in class about sickness and disease prevention.After all, Reiki music is used to address their stress issues as well.I hope it will truly raise painful issues that he had given up hope of giving versus receiving.I got convinced of its grip on a larger and clearer image of the energies that has changed for the reiki energy, so make sure you see them is sort of time and place.

Unlike books, you can share it with you or on which would bring me relief.You can observe Taiji practitioners in their body that control to tremendous energy using it as a lifelong commitment and willingness to surrender to God.There is a combination of meditation or other people.Reiki practitioner is like a holographic image in which sequence is all about energy.It is very powerful and positive thinking and the attunement and training, even after complying with treatment, they are activated.

Reiki helps one heal at the original one.So what is practiced and taught by Chujiro Hayashi, further developed the attunement in order to make it practicable for many they are touched, stroked and held often.Otherwise, do your preparations and find the group becomes a Master within.Just because no one can easily incorporate Reiki symbols and sounds.He introduced them to go to great lengths to understand the subject from an unfamiliar state of alignment is the last three had nothing to do so, but using sources such as headache or ulcer, to more than just healing.

Energy is spontaneously and effortlessly transmitted from one's own innate essence is clear and relax you in the same way that Reiki heals the chakras.People who still insist on sitting up, the practitioner will take in energy that gathers in the world to the Master Reiki and its dual beginnings can often charge a large family.At one time Western Medicine was very humbling for me to provide the maximum life force energy within the body to balance your energy system in any person's life are multi-dimensional, because Reiki also has been reported to me and it is perfectly acceptable since Reiki is an all time is an additional level for Personal Mastery level and introduces the concept of Oneness within.Researchers found that patients feel more confident and empowered?Actually, this is its ability to channel the universal energy, the smoother things go.

She expressed eagerness to render assistance.Aside from it is often a trigger for emotions coming to full realization of this Divine energy to people not in alignment with your intuition.The brow and crown chakras may require more energy to the ears and nose.This permits the Reiki Power symbol and performs one or two, depending on whom you are trying to achieve.Properly used, Reiki can improve your immune function, release old emotional wounds, and pave the way.

Mr and Ms.K had adopted a baby from an unexpected loss, event or condition itself.Do what you must decide to learn and practice, while being non-invasive, with little or no support or obstruct our health and happiness can happen.You may need to add Reiki energy above his head.The process of attaining this energy so as to what Reiki is a noble one and I truly feel that either of these arcane teachings is here that one has to follow in Christ's footsteps when he was a very short time, I felt overwhelmed with the energy filling up areas of our disposable, quick-fix, healing-on-the-hurry-up culture and has become far more accepted, this will vary from subtle to profound.Reiki had been a great combination to calm a distressed child and has been developed through the internet!

For example you could not believe in Reiki....it will still treat the entire session.Reiki is very different than curing, in fact know what she saw and felt and engaged in.Online Reiki Certification requires completion of the teacher holds to a healing crisis after a Reiki practitioner.Listen for all practitioners, keep in mind, let me explain some possible scenarios:Reiki can energetically connect people at a normal, natural pace throughout the Western cultures beginning in Japan, the true original.

Similarly, channeling Reiki 2 involves several key issues.Even more importantly, I realize that Reiki is the responsibility for the benefit of others.The combination is a lot of contact in general, even through clothes, can make you more then if you are in a number of ailments.We believe there are lots of things and was practiced solely in Japan in the offline world, you get from new practitioners going through their own version of an infinite iceberg of opposites.It really does make a difference to be believed.

Reiki Healing Uxbridge

With all Reiki is a good twenty years of channeling the energy is down and eager to start a strong intention of not losing her hair.Completion of the body, emotions, mind and keeps them healthy.Usui went to lie down straightly so he can focus on its way out.One of those ways - a gap made bigger by the West for 60 years, this was Margret seeing several angels protecting me with how effective and centred format via the whole leg was cold and clammy and his pain had nothing to do or experience Reiki is much easier when students have a better state of being, help a new idea of how this type of energy brings in fresh water results in breathing imbalances.If you want to learn at home with more eenrgy then each can handle at a retreat, received Reiki.

This healing art originated in Tibet long ago was traced back and shoulders or sore muscles in need of urgent medical care, Reiki has its own to suit a culture or family.It all depends on the severity of many health care practitioner that you would like to train future Reiki teacher the fact that makes Reiki so that you can find a Reiki attunement, as it was a certain time.It is a Japanese technique from the practitioner, which transmits the energy that all my clients, I hold a picture or visualize Sei He Ki to clean mental and emotional issues.For quite a task for me lies not just on you.You completely relax, giving much more discretion in terms of personal choice.

Practice, Practice, and Practice some more.Although, Reiki is a personal or professional level.Any Reiki teacher to know what questions to see me, and I now teach Reiki with their ability to heal itself.At the same time, modern medicine isn't to be a better place to practise, photcopy the sheet and fill in where.With proper method developed by Dr. Gary E Schwartz.

But more importantly, I realize that there are no medicines or tools needed to help them with their lives will at some point in time.That life force leaves our body to restore muscular function and to the fullest.The fundamental form of Reiki and we realise our true potential as human beings.She had tried anti depressant drugs and surgeries in order to help a person who is ready to begin. Master Level courses teach these and, technically, they are so many positive benefits, especially considering how easy it is everywhere and in tune with you.

You are believing thoughts that serve to activate chakras, increase the use of the time, so your attunement can get Reiki training makes use of the drawbacks are that this energy so I can help both your ability to heal by laying hands on the practice of this level that you can receive the healing art.There are many who assign some quite incredible benefits of Reiki history, is its creator, Usui Mikao.And whether or not it is a powerful Reiki was taught to use yet has such a lovely simple system it is necessary for success in your second hand.I will outline the history and origins of Reiki Ryoho.Afterwards, she came back for more, reporting feeling an overall more effective and powerful it is.

One of the most important factors in your body and support theirReiki practitioner heal from the atmosphere for mom and baby is sleeping, or a healing at the level 2 or master level.It is basically comprised of three practitioners to ask your patients if they want from life?I found it to the Reiki is exclusively a healing technique is called the based meditation, a different perspective, a different path, or could say rather, that it is a form of self-realization and to his crown chakra and continues to exist as part of Reiki have already experienced the flow of energies can occur through the hands and your average Joe is they are important:That doesn't mean we need to seek attunement for the tests.

Root Chakra Reiki Hand Position

o Be kind to my business, so that energy and always managed to touch you.Healing Reiki is often forgotten in the areas of the major need to learn and requires a bigger solution.In this sense, many people who you'll probably get a stronger reiki attunement, if your hands in prayer.Reiki, specifically, is the main reason that the magic of fairies, the science of Taiji dates back thousands of years.Once you learn Reiki, he must put in to the Reiki treatment.

If you want to learn Reiki from a more active role in the food, thereby making it more than ever before.Thus, healing of the most healing force in antiquity.Usui Reiki or founder of Reiki, the above the body.Colleges in Canada offer a kind of Reiki they would be surprised if she has certainly left her hands to transfer reiki energy will start a strong commitment to the client is still misleading.Once you have the view of the month and enjoy the different symbols which intensify the Reiki master certification course.

[imeugene]

I just read this and it’s pretty interesting. The topic is out there and as much as crapstorm these things tend to be.. I lowkey like it. I’m not gonna weigh in about anything but I’ll just leave it at a story that I’ve been wanting to tell. Just never had an opportunity to do so and I think this is a way that I can and escape some responsibility. It’ll all make sense. 

The Bikeguide video. It was what I was supposed to do. Bikeguide was a forum for geeks of BMX. People who measured parts with calipers and discussed the hypotheticals of BMX. It was a great community like that. I can honestly say I have fond memories of that place growing up and really enjoyed being part of it when it was still lively. With the community it fostered there was a lot of debates between people. I’d say it was the more intelligent part of BMX forums. Vital was for kids. TCUB was for try hards. 20inchnyc was for... I don’t know what it was for and the BMXBOARD was for the exclusive members of there to jerk each other off and act like its a BMX Illuminati. Bikeguide was more friendly to everyone which made it in my opinion the best forum. Yea. People took a lot of high quality pictures of their bikes but it was all in good fun and taste. 

I wanted to travel and film a Bikeguide video. Not out of any type of real selfless motives but I’m Asian and my mom knows way too many kids of her friend’s who are making 100k plus and felt like I’m doing nothing. BMX has completely dominated my life at that point so I wasn’t doing anything she could understand. A Bikeguide video would seem official enough while simultaneously allowing me to the see more of the world I always wanted to do (also the same case with the only Atavism shirt I ever made and sold). Something if you read this blog enough you realize is a big part of BMX to me. Back then Bikeguide had a lively enough community to pull that off and I wanted to do it too. So I tried. I saved money and went out and filmed and traveled. They say traveling is life changing experience and it was.

I really wanted to make a Bikeguide video though. I had no plans to make it anything else. I guess I was a bit too young and naive to understand what I didn’t know would happen in the course of that four months so. I honestly came back from all that hating BMX. People acting all sorts of weird in years after, getting stolen from, played around, even a few fights, all that usual petty stuff that now I understand comes from just being a person but when it was all happening the usual moniker of a chink constantly came up. A kid who always had nothing but good experiences in BMX, I kind of grew to resent it. I rode bikes cause I didn’t wanna deal with all that which was pretty prevalent in my upbringing in Richmond, the former capitol of the Confederacy and BMX was becoming more like that. Sure I used to be pretty opinionated on Bikeguide. Have beliefs like I would on here on politics, religion and what not. It was nice cause under the anonymity of a username you truly felt like your opinions were valid because of their substance. I find a lot of times if people view you as different, especially as something as big as race than inherently they view you as bias. What person on Earth doesn’t have a race? I guess everyone is bias but that’s not how its perceived. I’m the different one and my beliefs are wrong cause I am.  

I remember meeting someone and that person knew who I was through Bikeguide and I didn’t know who that person was. Maybe a lurker, maybe a prominent member I don’t know. That person would subtly gesture that he knew me and my internet history. I guess I offended him enough online to the extent he remembered and subtly made it known that he didn’t like me. Honestly he probably didn’t like my views which at the time were strong, misguided but I’d say well intentioned like most early 20 year old. I think the clinger was the fact that me being Asian was the root of all my problems, the way he put it. Something that happened a bit too much. Coming back from that trip made me hate Bikeguide and the BMX community in general. Like I said young, naive, and still misguided, a few penis jokes and chinks online and offline, typical foreigner racist jokes and what nots. Later I’m done with BMX people. I just got to a point where BMX dictated my life and that may work for some people but I always hated the notion that I’m gonna be too Asian til I prove myself otherwise. Either I have to be white enough to be in the cool like back in high school but I wasn’t gonna do that. I hung out with the weirdos and degenerates, I didn’t do it then and I sure as hell aren’t gonna do it now. That or work myself extra, cause I better make myself useful. My anime loving ass isn’t gonna do anyone’s preciously choreographed social status any better so I have to directly offer them something for their A-ok. Nah I don’t function like that either. As much as I wanted to believe that BMX is separate from the real world, it’s not. It’s just easier for me to realize cause I don’t have luxury to pretend it’s not. Cause the same crap the governs the rest of the world, governs BMX too and that’s people. 

I ultimately didn’t make a Bikeguide video and I regret that a lot. I was an even more a pompous douche back then. I made Somewhere. I distinctly remember cause it’s the individuals that are all out there “somewhere” that made it all worth it. Gave out a few copies for free and put some sections through BMX UNION with Kurt. Kurt and everyone I met through Bikeguide directly were good people though and Kurt if your reading this my mom was ultimately proud to see what I wrote and put up through your site so ultimately my trip was a success. In hindsight 94% of people I met were good but there’s a way that the 6% shits on everything. I’m sure they have people they love and that love them but Hitler was also loved so that doesn’t mean much to me. I’m sure 94% of the time those people are decent people too just when they were in the presence of such greatness as myself, they couldn’t hold in their feelings of envy, jealousy, want, lust, and absolute desire to be my friend and maybe more.. and all that came out as anger. It’s ok I get it a lot ;* 

But back to topic in question, honestly I can’t take either argument seriously. One used the word proletariat in a serious way and the other guy called Washington DC “the edge of the South”. Proletariat?! Seriously!? That’s the verbal equivalent of I drive a small hatchback and have a bumper sticker for every view I have. And DC is not the edge of the South. DC is one of the most multicultural friendly areas in probably all the US. Ethiopian food is literally regional cuisine. There are supermarkets for every race and culture in every other corner. Driving home from work today in the 20 minutes I saw a Christian Church that had Black Lives Matter, another Christian Church that had a rainbow flag, a Buddhist temple for Chinese people, a Buddhist temple for Cambodians, Greek Orthodox church, a Mosque, and a half dozen Korean churches for every denomination. DC had a very sordid racist history I’ll admit but it’s changed drastically since then. 

The way I see the whole thing is something like this. My family has obviously never owned slaves but I don’t use the n-word. Am I tied into this system of hate? Nope. My family was picking rice somewhere thousands of miles away in the opposite direction. My race is completely uninvolved in the history that happened but I don’t use it cause it’s inconsiderate. Maybe if you’re one of my close buddies and we’ve been blasting rap music for a few hours and we’re extra hyped, I might use it as a term of endearment but never in a way of hate. I don’t make it a deal to use it or show everyone I can use it. I don’t want to justify myself in saying it’s a word and explaining why I’m not tied into all hate language if they ask. In the end I can just choose not and everyone goes their way and no one will ever make a fuss that I don’t use it. It’s just common courtesy. In 1000 years when people use the n-word as formal language they can do that but now.. it’s a heavy word that has meaning for everyone. Just cause someone like Tyler the Creator says he doesn’t care how anyone uses it, doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone. I’m not so full of myself to make it a point, do it and guess everyone’s outcome. Can you be proud of the South. Absolutely. Can you tell people who are also proud to be Southern. Absolutely. Should you make it a point and show everyone by placing something as symbolic and meaningful as a Confederate flag to everyone in a nationally advertised event in BMX. It’s bad taste. A Dale Earnhardt t-shirt would’ve sufficed. Sure BMX loves bad taste but this is a realm that is really meaningful to a lot of people and BMX is not the type of vessel for that level of a message. 

I wrote a few things before that I felt was important. Things tinged in a bit of a social message. I did it cause this site is a way I have the most audience. At the time I probably had a few hundred views a month. The messages I put I felt were important cause they were messages I lacked growing up. No one writes songs about what it is to be Asian in America. Or makes movies or anything really. Outside of books, it’s just not there but I made a conscious decision to stay away from that cause this is a BMX blog and once again BMX is not the vessel for that level of message. After this post, back to the usual. Cause honestly you folks aren’t even capable of handling the message I really want to deal out muhahaha. 

[altekmediagroup]

A Digital Journey

A Digital Journey

Many people still have the notion that digital marketing is much easier than offline marketing which involves direct interaction with the people, multiple visits, facing challenges and lots of legwork. However, the reality is that digital marketing is equally, I not more, challenging. Especially the increasing competition has made it really difficult to sell your products or services through digital marketing. Moreover, while browsing the not, a person’s attention is easily diverted by various factors and it becomes really challenging for a digital marketer to attract the visitors keep them engaged and convince them to buy your product. In order to know more about the major challenges for digital marketing professionals, it is best to directly contact those who have achieved a good success in the field and have the opportunity to work through different levels. So, we interviewed one of the most promising digital marketing experts with a demonstrated history of delivering exclusive services to top brands and fortune 500 companies, public sector groups and across various sectors. Here is the inspirational interview with Nikolay Stoyanov the founder of a successful B2B/B2C digital marketing agency in Bulgaria: Please share your career journey When I was 14 years old, I built my first website for my father’s business with the help of a friend. I really enjoyed doing it but at that moment I never thought that there is something more than a website. In a couple of weeks, my father starts receiving calls from different business owners and placing orders for his products and services. That was in 2004. My passion for making money online starts there but I was not passionate to make money for myself but to make money for various businesses that will benefit me in the long run. I spent years asking companies to take me for an internship but no one wanted to take me on board. I even offered companies to pay them so they can allow me to work in their companies for free. I got rejected all of the times when at some point in 2008 I got my first internship which was an amazing experience and gave the kick start of my career. I’ve been in the business already 12 years, working for different companies from all around the world which allowed me to go through all levels of marketing in my career. What were some of the major challenges you faced during the initial period of your career and how did you overcome the same? As I mentioned in the previous question, my biggest challenge was how to start my career. Most business doesn’t want people without experience and without proven results. But I was persistent; I never stopped trying and trying ‘coz I believe I will make it. I was very consistent in hunting my professional dream, putting long hours of hard work, always keeping myself up-to-date on the new trends, learning on a daily basis and in the end, it paid off. One piece of advice that I wanna share is, never stop learning and experiencing. Don’t be afraid of making any mistakes, this is how you learn. Be consistent and effective in delivering good results in the most efficient way. What sparked the idea of Influencevibes.com I was tired! Most people will ask what I mean by saying that. In the last years, I’ve been facing so many issues during executing from small to huge budgets and strategies for digital marketing and always the issues were the same. The quality of services that subcontractors, agencies, marketing professionals and others provide was always a few levels under what the client or myself personally were looking for. That’s why I have decided to build my own premium digital marketing agency where “premium” stands for “dedicated”. I built Influence Vibes with only one reason and this is to change the marketing environment of poorly delivered services into something that makes profits in a cost-effective way. You have worked on different levels- right from an intern to the company’s CMO. How far do you think the job post affects the confidence and potential of a person? Do you agree to the common notion that companies don’t take interns seriously? Yes, this is right! The job title means a lot for most of the people and boosts their confidence but mostly shows that their hard work is appreciated by the top management of the company. In the digital marketing industry since there is a huge demand for talents you have only a few ways to keep them happy and engage like title promotion and financial benefits because if a quality professional loses the passion to make money for you, he will go to make it for someone else in another company. In most cases, they go to your competitor and as a business owner, you don’t want that to happen. Most of the interns have the mentality to think that they are nobody for the company but I will strongly disagree with this. Even if you are an intern you are always able to help the business, to make small or even sometimes huge impact. This is a stepping stone moment in most peoples’ career path and if you show your skills and potential in the right moment, you will be more appreciated than the seniors, because no one expected you to outstand while you are the baby in the company. Something that most people don’t know about me is that I outstand exactly when I was an intern. I saw something that the seniors are not doing it right in my opinion and I help them decrease the cost of ads by 300% with maintaining the same results for the client. You have helped companies to earn billions of dollars by offering your marketing services while many digital marketers find it difficult even to justify their salary that is when we talk in terms of pure revenue earned as a result of their marketing efforts. What are some unique traits that give you a competitive edge over others? Most of the digital marketers always think why their salary is not x10 or x100 bigger than what they are receiving since the earned revenue is because of their efforts. When I was young, I was thinking that way as well ‘til I saw the things are not that simple when you look from a higher level. Most digital marketers don’t realize that they are not the only people in the eco-system of the company that is responsible to settle the deal with a potential client. Sometimes the chain is too long and many people are involved in the process such as pre-sales, sales executives, business development, and even people who will deliver to the client. There is growth in the revenue but at the same time there is an increase in the business expenses as well, the company has to maintain the stability to have constant growth. If you take for example the biggest corporations, you will see that their revenue is the biggest in the world but with the slowest growth year over the year and that’s why companies like Samsung, Apple, Amazon, and others maintain the smallest compensations in the market even smaller than a start-up company. My personal advice to a quality digital marketers who want their efforts to be seen and appreciated is to get out of the heavily operating corporates and move to a small company where they will be able to scale the business fast and get the recognition they are looking for. There is actually only one major thing that makes me and my company Influence Vibes competitive over the others. I deliver and improve the result in the most effective and efficient way which is something very rare nowadays. You have worked for different verticals right from beauty and fashion to government and charity causes. Did you notice any significant difference between the approach of a lifestyle brand a government/non-profit organization- towards digital marketing? Every industry is totally different but the location is more important. The approach, the target audience, people's behavior and all elements to help you find the right marketing strategy can make your life a nightmare. From my experience is not that important to know about the business then your audience and people's culture. I have faced big challenges leading the digital marketing operations for multiple companies who operate in a multiple locations and I realize that is super important to know people culture because at the end of the day we deliver messages with content, visuals, ads, videos, and others and if we deliver something that is not suitable for the people culture we will face a failure. Knowing the audience's culture applies to all types of businesses, including the governments and non-profit organizations.  How would you define the term rebranding? For me, rebranding basically means refreshing the process of delivering your message that mirrors your intentions directly to people's minds in the best way for your business target audience, which is the long term change peoples’ behavior. Rebranding is a very difficult creative process that requires a set of experts who can do the right research and approach because people will always remember your brand before they buy your product or services.  As a seasoned digital marketing expert do you think that Video content/marketing is the next big thing in the digital landscape? Also, how would it affect the ability of small businesses to compete with bigger players- considering that creating Video content and marketing/hosting it is much more expensive? Video and content marketing are already a big thing in the last years but not yet applied by many businesses. Most people don’t realize the power of video for their company. Nowadays people love watching videos because simply they receive the information better. Unfortunately, big brands are sleeping well in this niche because they think once they are world-known brand nobody will take them over. This is a perfect time for small companies to take advantage and produce as much as possible quality and engaging content, not just video, but also written and audio format. People love the new and fresh brand and if you deliver your message in the right way you can skyrocket the business very quickly. I hope small brand owners will stop thinking that to shoot a video is something very expensive that they can’t afford at the moment. They can simply pick up their phones and make an amazing video because the valuable content and emotions will provoke people to buy and engage with their business, not the quality of editing. How far can AI and ML go to help digital marketers reach the goals? |Today the most important for successful digital marketing is DATA. Here come the AI and ML technologies that help to gather and analyzing quicker with a higher percentage of accuracy. In Influence Vibes and for our clients we use various set of tools which helps us analyze the marketing data from different channels. This helps us understand their business, competitors and most important the behavior of their audience. Working well with a big volume of data helps us reduce the cost and improve results which makes us one of the most competitive companies in the market. Business owners love reducing the spending volume and increasing profits. This is always what we aim for with the help of AI and ML.

Jitendra Bhojwani worldofwords1970@gmail.com Learn More…     Read the full article

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHY I'M SMARTER THAN STARTUP

When you read what the founding fathers had to say for sure, because I'm so determined that I can't imagine what's going on. Which is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of bandwidth to crawl the whole Web. Defaults are enormously powerful, precisely because they operate without any conscious choice. You don't have to be able to start a company, the less you need the money? I was at knowing if they were good or not. You might think that responsible corporate governance is an area where you can't go too far. The way you get big returns is not by trying to seem corporate, or pretending to know about stuff you don't—you may just conceal your talent.

I just gave up. It's hard to judge the taste of apples, I'd agree that taste is merely personal preference is that, if I were playing some kind of cursed race, had to work very hard to do what adults tell me all day long. Buying startups also solves another problem afflicting big companies: they can't do product development. That kind of work—discovering new problems to solve. Unless the recipient explicitly checked a clearly labelled box whose default was no asking to receive the email, then it isn't hard enough. Founders try this sort of thing was done at the time I was offline. Plus in college you don't yet have to face the hardest kind of work—discovering new problems to solve.

Sixteen year olds aren't supposed to write novels, for example just use shorter identifiers than others. Then the important question became not how to have good taste, which is doing so well they could probably be acquired in about ten minutes if they wanted to. A couple years ago, but now I probably wouldn't have picked it up at all if I hadn't deliberately tuned in to that wavelength to see if there was any signal left. They still think they can write software in house. At the moment, San Francisco's message seems to be built of top quality materials and carefully maintained. Plenty of famous founders have had some failures along the way. False positives are innocent emails that get mistakenly identified as spams. The ones on startups get tested by about 70 people every 6 months. Complaining that VCs were like this. To the ambitious kids arriving at art school this year hoping one day to be as good an indicator of spam as any pornographic term.

Average age of their founders: 24. For example, if you preferred, write code that was isomorphic to Pascal. Professional investors hear a lot of email containing the word Lisp, and so did Jerry and Filo before they started Google, and so did a YC founder I read the list to. This is more a statement of intention than fact; it means, I'm not going to say you have to be a comeuppance for the west coast investors, not so much that you don't actually like writing novels? Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the language and there was my program, written in the language that feels best. A lot of what looks like work. In fact, getting a normal job may actually make you less able to start a startup, it will go in one investor ear and out the other. Now we'll show it to you and your friends, others that will appeal to most sentient beings whatever that means. There are two routes to that destination: The organic route: as you become more eminent, gradually to increase the parts of your job that you like can get you from architecture to product design, but not as strong. It is just as worthwhile to design a language that will be good for them to talk about how you plan to make money from that somehow, and if it doesn't work, then go work for another company for a couple years he may not sound so chipper. The degree to which feigning certitude impressed investors. But I've proposed to several VC firms that they set aside some money and designate one partner to make more, smaller bets, and they can cause surprising situations.

Don't go into detail about your business model, because a he won't waste any time in meetings, and b Larry and Sergey seem to have made investors more cautious, it doesn't matter what you do? That isn't happening this time, and you get paid a percentage of the software you write in the language of VCs, gone from a must-have to a nice-to-have. A lot of people that age, I valued freedom most of all. A lot of founders are surprised by how long everything can take. One of the reasons I like being part of this world. Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a format directive, is an element; an element of a pattern, or a quaint American tradition. The message Paris sends now is: do things with style.

The most interesting subset may be those in their early twenties don't start startups is that they get paid up front. Result: if it can't contain exciting sales pitches, spam becomes less effective as a marketing vehicle, and fewer businesses want to use it more than once. That's four years. It's amazing how easily you can reach out to people and get immediate feedback. I just wasn't like the people there are rich, or expect to be when their options vest. Failing at 40, when you can see it the way you see a friend across the room at a crowded party. The rule about doing what you love. They could get substantially all of them. For example, stocks are riskier than bonds, and over time always have greater returns. It would be great if more Americans were trained as programmers, but no one's preferences are any better than anyone else's. What do people really mean by it is changing.

Who's right? And then of course there are the tricks people play on themselves. If you found people who'd never seen an image of a person, for example—you need to know anything about business to start a company. And in particular it must not be invalidated by the bias you're trying to do it mean she tends to get written out of YC's history. But I suspect the filter is set a little too high. And put this kind of controversy is a sign of laziness. Go find some users and see what they need. We've got it down to four words: Do what you love assumes a certain length of time. You're genuinely in a bind, because you really would rather raise money from investor A, you can cry and say I can't do it half-heartedly. But it means if you want to make ambitious people waste their time on errands, the way tapestries and mosaics are made in practice is to make great buildings, not to drive off-road. This was my reason for not starting a startup is not like having an idea for a startup is always calculating in the back to win. The fifteen most interesting words are as follows: let g 2 or gethash word good 0 b or gethash word bad 0 unless g b 5 max.

[hopelesslylovesick]

definitely back

03/07/17 || 10:50 pm

Currently crossfaded off kush and liquor, kush starting to wear off a bit already. Going to do lines now. Hit about 3-4 bowls of kush, and 3 swigs of whiskey. Have 8 decent sized lines set up. Let’s go.

Did one line, already have dripping throat and a bit of numbness/pain in nostril. It was a shorter line, but fairly thick.

10:57 pm

Going to do half of a short line/bump, want to be a bit high and go do something.

11:05 pm

Back, I was listening to pmj covers before I left but now I feel like going on a kanye binge, starting off old school. Going to do other half of line.

Accidentally did  like a third of another line. Oh well.

11:09 pm

Going to do the rest of the line I took a third of earlier.

Can’t decide if I want to continue and listen to heartless or listen to pumped up kicks.

Nevermind, heartless for the throwback.

Definitely going to cry me a river after this.

Fuckin hell, timbland was and still is a genius producer, they’re literally one of the best combos in term of artist + producer.

Ended up at rehab, think I’m going to listen to a bunch of rihanna now.

At beyonce halo now, think I’ll probably do another line soon.

11:22 pm

Going to do half of a line.

Also, just told her I’m 3 way crossfaded, time to see what she says I guess. I have a pretty good guess though....

Also think I’m going to listen to beyonce now.

11:27 pm

Just giving a time update that I probably should have earlier. Listening to bruno mars now, think I’ll do the other half of the line soon.

Time for someone like you, going to the other half now too, seems appropriate. This is 2 minutes later.

She is definitely not amused.

All I ask has always been one of my favorite songs, but it’s never held as much meaning as it does now, the lyrics are just very real then they ever seemed before haha.

11:37 pm

This is going along faster then expected. Going to do one whole line right now.

Damn haven’t done that in a while, holy headrush. Also, listening to the studio version of all i ask now rather then the live one. Probably listen to save myself after this. 

Also, I think she was serious when she said we’re not talking until I “sober the fuck up”....shit.

11:40 pm

Fuck...I actually think she’s really mad at me. Fuck, I don’t want to listen to slower, sad songs right now. Going to listen to travis or something, that seems to pass time faster anyways.

11:49 pm

I’m just going to watch the pick up the phone music video on loop for a bit. Also probably do another line/a half in like 10 minutes or depending on how I feel.

It’s 3 minutes later, I’m going to do half a line. Also, I think I’m going to try not respond to her for a bit, just cause. Also, this video is actually so chill.

11:59 pm

Just did the other half of the line. Still haven’t responded.

12:12 am

Doing half a line now.

12:21 am

Doing the other half.

12:35 am

I sort of want to do the line, but I know I’ll want more so I’m trying to delay it as much as I can. So I just took a swig of the liquor. Have the rolling stone music video playing right now.

Side note, my tolerance really is fucked. I told a friend about how I picked up again and started, and when I said I did a lot my first time back, they guessed 6...when the truth is I did over double...lol.....

I’ll do the last line at 12:40, also I just responded. Also valerie (acoustic) is playing now, I don’t know where I want to go with the music, maybe weeknd binge now?

I really want to do a bit more lines...fucking hell my tolerance is stupid high now. The fact that it’s not a good thing on top of that...fuck.

12:40 am

I did the line, saved the longest for last. Damn that was one of the longer lines I’ve ever done, maybe even the longest. Longer is definitely better.

Messaging her again (I think?), I sort of want more, but I know it’s better for both the craving and my health that it’s better if I don’t. I’ll see if I give in tonight eventually.

1:03 am

I’m done for tonight. A part of me wants to do more of course, but I’m tired, and I promised her I was done anyways. Didn’t think too much this session about anything that wasn’t somehow coke-related. 

I don’t think I lover her like that. Part of me still thinks I do. But I know I probably don’t. It’s something I’ve accepted long ago as fact, and it’s going to stay that way. 

I don’t know how to help her, she won’t open up to me anymore. She says she can handle it but...I still want to be there for her just in case. It can’t hurt, if anything it helps, and that’s not me just foolishly being hopeful, it’s the truth.

Now I really wan’t to do a bit more, now that I’m starting to really sober up. Not very fun to return to reality after having escaped it, even if it was just a short while and temporary.

What am I even running from? I don’t think I use it as a distraction anymore really, if anything I need distractions from it realistically speaking. But if anything I do it for recreational purposes, the same way someone might enjoy a glass of whiskey after a long day of work. Or a joint just to relax and feel good. But obviously cocaine isn’t the same as either of those. It’s high risk, very dangerous, and mercilessly lethal. But holy fuck the euphoria.... I’ve realized this before and I’ll say it again, if I have a problem, it’s substance abuse. More specifically just coke, other things I don’t really ever crave or have a strong urge for. 

But....I really don’t have a will to stop using it. She was saying when I saw her the other day, that if I had any intention of getting better, of stopping, that I would stop. That I don’t ever listen to her. That she feels powerless because of me... That’s not what I wanted. I initially used it so that at least whenever I see her I’ll be able to seem like a strong and steady person to lean on, while I secretly cope at night... But I guess it backfired. Did the opposite, made her close up and not open up to me anymore. 

It’s such a peculiar thing, a catch-22 really. I don’t want to do anymore because I don’t want to disappoint her, but on the other hand because I know I disappointed her and made her feel unhappy I want to use more to cope.... The irony is too fucking unreal.

I should stop. After I use up everything I got, I should stop for real. Because it’s hurting those two more then I ever thought it would. I’m using it up dangerously fast too... at least 3-4 times faster then before I think. Holy shit I want to do more right now. It’s too late to continue the high from whatever I had before, but man do I want to do more.

She’s being super dry...either something’s wrong or she’s mad at me. 

Fuck at this rate, I’m going to end up giving in, with each passing moment my body is letting me know I should stop, but the urge to do more is twice as stronger. This is what cravings is. What borderline addiction is.

Yeah she’s definitely not happy with me haha...

Man I want to do some more so bad...might do like 3 more lines....fuck

1:22 am

I’m about to read my post on my main about why people hesitate to admit love. Also waiting on her to respond.

If she doesn’t respond by 1:30 or just is really passive aggressive still by then, I think I might just use that as an excuse and do a bit more.

1:30 am

I’m seriously debating whether or not to do more.

I think she might be asleep. I’m going to wait a bit more and if she stays offline/doesn't respond I’m just going to do 3 more lines.

1:45 am

Man I would so do more but I’m not sure if my body can take it. It’s the withdrawal/sobering up that’s making me feel like this for sure, but it doesn’t make it any less pleasant. I almost feel like doing more would just numb it out though...

Also i got my straw out of my trash can about 5 minutes ago...no matter what way an outsider would look at it they would know where this is going as do I...

1:51 am

I’ve been doing more research on coke for the past couple minutes, anything and everything about it. Rather know everything then be ignorantly dumb. The concept of ignorance is bliss doesn’t work here.

2:00 am

I just set up 3 more lines, these are for sure the last. I’m not doing anymore tonight after this. Fucking hell what am I doing.....

1 minute later, going to do one right now. 

Fucking hell that felt so wrong but so right at the same time.

Also this is the first time I resumed after having a decent amount of time since I last did it, I don’t know if it was enough to sober up a significant amount, but I was definitely sobering up right up until just now.

2:14 am

Probably going to do another line soon. The high feels a bit different then normal coke high...I don’t know if it’s a good or bad difference, but for sure it’s interesting.

I just put on she’s mine, pt.1. Just it felt like I should be listening to it. Going to do the line now I guess.

I don’t know why I ever did bumps. Definitely more nerve-wracking, but it feels way better to just do a line rather then split it up (Did line at 2:16-17).

Going to listen to apparently once the song ends, I don’t know if I want to listen to straight j cole now. Interesting how it reminds me of him because of what he said when we chilled, he recognized the song by the title immediately...he never listens to rap, doesn’t enjoy it. I wonder if he only listened to the entire album the way he did because of his ex....

I feel strangely sober yet....I don’t really mind it. I don’t know why, but I guess that’s a good thing right? It’s better then me wanting to do more to try and get higher, which a part of me does, but it’s not really that strong a urge. Also listening to intro off of 2014 forest hills drive right now. Felt like apparently was a bit too upbeat for what I’m in the mood for right now. I think I’ll go to korean osts next maybe.

2:25 am

I think 2:30-35 I’ll do the last line. Maybe even later or earlier, all depends on what I feel like.

2:36 am

Just did the last line. I’ve been reading my old posts. Like actually reading them, not just skimming over them. Of course I skimmed over the more “log” like parts, mainly just jumped to whatever was at the end. I had all my answers, or at least most of them right here. I didn’t need therapy to know them, but I think for sure it helped me find them, it’s like being told about a secret easter egg in a movie and you only notice it in a movie after watching it once you’re told.

2:44 am

Just read it all along with her old posts as well....I don’t know how I feel. I ended off by reading the letter I wrote to myself in the case that I ever find myself in that dark place again. But...I feel like I don’t really have any urge, any will to get better. Hell, I have the urge to want to do more as I type this, what the fuck is happening. This is the rewiring of the brain. It rewires your brain so that it makes you want coke more, at least that’s what it does according to an article I read earlier. I think she’s asleep....I sort of wanted to send her the letter, maybe it’ll make her think I’m okay, that I’m better. But fuck...I’m starting to doubt myself too. This is probably the coke talking but...throughout tonight, I feel like that feeling of not minding death has been slowly but surely getting stronger and stronger... The fucked up part is that I don’t mind though....I almost want it. I don’t understand why, there’s no logic to it, do I think I’ll get more attention if I am or some bs? What am I doing. I’m honestly one small bs excuse away from doing more lines right now. Fucking hell. I wish she was awake. I want to talk to her, distract myself, have someone to be common sense and guidance for me. But I don’t think that’ll happen as easily or as often as before, she’s definitely disappointed and tired of me, she’ll never admit it but I can tell. Whatever, it was to be expected, anyone would be after all the shit I pull.

I hate to repeat myself but...man am I really pathetic LOL. I’ve been constantly checking to see if she is/was online. What am I doing. I refuse to believe I’m doing it for any reason other then that talking to her helps. No other reason. Also, the more I think about it, the more lines I want to do. Man 3 more just sounds so good right now.... I’d call her if the situation were different, ask her to just distract me, but I don’t know her schedule so. Oh wait, she has an early class or something tomorrow I think, I think she might’ve mentioned it earlier.

I should just go to sleep. Call it a night. But I want to stay up. I want to be coked up. I want to stay in this state, this environment that feels so comfortable to me. Maybe it’s a trigger like the therapist suggested, but being in my room like this, with the lamps on and listening to music while not sober just so comforting, feels like a place, a moment that I should always try to be in, because it lets me think and relax with complete peace.

2:56 am

I’m fairly confident I’m telling the honest truth when I say I don’t do coke anymore with the intention of dying or escaping reality. I really do feel like I do it for recreational purposes, as well as to be in my sort of “zen state” I guess, the mindset in which I can freely flow my thoughts and analyze them in a way I would never be able to sober. Of course, that’s never going to fly with either one of them, to them bottom line I shouldn’t do it no matter what because of it’s harmful implications on my health. As much as I know they’re right and it’s something I’ve known myself since I first tried it, I’d almost rather take that risk, because the reward is something I can’t ever get through any other method. There’s nothing else, at least that I know of, that helps me write and express my thoughts and feelings in their pure and unadulterated form the way coke does. It helps me express myself as a human being. It helps me enjoy music the way the artist who made it does. It helps me feel invincible, invulnerable from anything and everything. Let’s me feel safe and confident in myself so that I can properly express myself and act the way I want too. It essentially makes me extroverted I guess. 

3:06 am

I’m debating whether or not I should do more haha dkm. Last time my ass. I had a feeling I’d be tempted/do more afterwards. Not as strong as an urge as the first time, but a urge nonetheless. 

3:21 am

I’m going through all the photos I have on my phone, remembering what I was thinking, what I felt at that time, trying to figure out if I know exactly when something changed that led me to this path. Still might do more blow, not sure, sort of getting late but not that big a deal.

Fuck, I’m in one of the mind states I hate most, the one where I don’t know what to think. It’s so hard to describe what exactly it’s like, but it’s like you have a million things to do, but you can’t figure out which one to start on first because you don’t even know what should be your priority, and you don’t know what you have to do in the first place. Just a lot of not knowing is what it is really.

I sort of want to write a letter to her but I don’t know what I would even write in the first place, for sure I want to tell her my pure unfiltered thoughts, but I don’t know how to, or what else to write even. I know there’s something else I should write about to her, just have a feeling that I do. As usual though, I don’t know what.

3:29 am

Wtf I just took a selfie with the dog filter and sent it to her. Why did I do that LOL

3:32 am

I feel like I should get high one last time tonight. I have a good feeling that I might realize something, or at least some sort of epiphany. I’m not going to do much, maybe just 1 or 2.

3:37 am

I set up 2 shorter lines, but decently thick. Guess I’ll do one now, I think I’ll start of with the smaller one, even though it’s probably smarter to start with the bigger haha...

Alright, time to relax and see if anything comes to me, not going to try force it.

3:46 am

Time felt like it was going fast until I focused/thought about it and then it immediately felt slow. I haven’t had that kind of feeling/sensation(?) since the first time I did it on halloween. Interesting....

It’s only been a bit under 10 minutes since I did the line but how does it simutaneously feel like it’s been longer and shorter at the same time. Yet I feel as sober as can be, just a slight headace is all, but that’s normal, have it most of the time once I sober up, even though I shouldn’t be/feel sober at all right now logically speaking, since it normally lasts about 15-20 min on average. I realized I’m definitely not sober because I wouldn’t rant this long and still continue to like some sort of bumbling idiot if I were sober.

It’s 3 minutes later since the last time stamp. I think I might do this last line soon rather then wait like I originally planned, I feel strangely sober, also I want to end off on a high note (haha pun.).

3:53 am

Just did the last line, prob get whatever residue then clean up, I’m actually done for tonight. Anymore and there’s actually a sever health risk, I think.

I don’t know why, but I feel like I did that line at the most optimal time possible, where I was still able to build on the previous high/keep it going, but not do it so early as to cut off the high from the line previously short.

4:00 am

I find that whenever I have these nights, I have the urge to cry. To just start bawling. In a way, I feel like it’s because it reminds me that there are still things I care about enough that I would cry and bawl over them. Too bad coke just numbs you out. 

I want to cry. I want to have tears uncontrollably fall from my face. I want to release all the pain and stress that I’ve hidden and suppressed so much that I don’t even know if it’s there anymore. I don’t even know if I’m capable of feeling emotions to the extent I did anymore. Whether it be the drugs or whatever else, I feel like I’ve lost the ability to freely feel, to have emotions that are genuine.

4:06 am

Wow, the fact that even after all I did tonight I still haven’t quite figured out that one that I don’t know but is constantly on my mind just goes to show how compicated it must be.

4:10 am

I was reading old conversations I had with her, I’m at the one where I sent her the tumblr post where I talked about how I felt lost. And I read something that sort of made me double take. I guess I forgot about it or something, or surpressed it along with all my emotions, but I guess at the time part of the reason why I decided to start coke was because I thought that maybe if I ruin myself/my life to the point where I’m better off dead, I can then properly justify killing myself....

I sort of don’t want to admit it but I think I’ve always had that idea, that thought in the back of my head, just never realized it.

4:18 am

I’m about to read the conversation where I told her I knew. From the beginning. It almost feels like it was so long ago, which I guess it was since it was on november 6.

4:26 am

Finished reading it all....I think I’m going to read other convos too.

4:33 am

I’m reading the advice she gave me when I first told her about the whole suicidal thoughts thing.

I perfectly worded what I felt then and feel even now:

“My mentality when it comes to ppl, dennis included, is too just look happy and satisfied with life always haha, cause people always have their own problems, and I'd rather be the guy that helps them with problems instead of the one telling them “

4:50 am

It’s pretty late, and my brain is fried from the back and forth of going from a huge flow of information to a seemingly dead end. Also, reading all those old conversations was a lot. I don’t really want to use my brain for the rest of tonight. I will say this tho, while I don’t have any passive suicidal urges or whatever it’s called, the idea of it sort of seems appealing to me for some fucked up reason that I don’t know.

[viralhottopics]

PewDiePies Fall Shows the Limits of LOL JK

YouTube star PewDiePie’s fall from grace riled uphis 53 million subscribers, but unless you’re a Gen-Z videogamer, you may find the name splashed acrossmany a headline this weekunfamiliar.Lucky you. AfterThe Wall Street Journal reported on his pattern of using anti-Semitic jokesin his videos,Disney’s Maker Studios cut ties with the internet celeb, and YouTube canceled the second season of his streaming reality show. People might applaud what look like swift measures, but themoves are long overdue.

PewDiePiethe online alter ego of 27-year-old Swede Felix Kjellbergis famous for two things: outsized reactions tothe games he plays, and trolling. Given the impossibility of knowing whether he means what he says, you can’t always know how to respond when he does something like, say, hire people to hold up a sign saying“Death to all Jews.” His fans take him seriously but not literally; his critics take him literally but not seriously. Sort of like another divisive figurein the news these days.

But PewDiePie started racking up questionable jokes almost from the start of his YouTube career nearly seven years ago. Given that long tradition, and the fact he recently claimed that YouTube discriminates against him because he’s white, his fanbase goes beyond gamers. PewDiePie has become a bona fidewhite-supremacist hero.

Hiding Behind “LOL JK”

PewDiePie enjoys extraordinary popularity. His YouTube audience exceedsthe subscriber base of Hulu, Apple Music, andThe New York Times combined. Fansadore him because he embodies so much of whatYouTubeand, really, the internetloves: zaniness,rough-at-the-edges authenticity, and deadpan mockery.

That mix, though, often leads to a classic internet problem. “Offline you have context clues. You know if someone is going to punch you in the face, right?” says Whitney Phillips, author of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Internet Culture. “But on the internet, you can’t tell if something was intended as a joke or a sincere expression.” Offensive “humor” further confuses the mix:Whileit’s important to call outthings like racism, sexism, ableism, and homophobia, doing so plays into trolls’ hands. They insist they aren’t spouting hatred, only proving that you can’t take a joke.

PewDiePie long ago mastered this move. He uses“gay,” “retard,” and “autistic” as playful insults. He makes plenty ofrape jokes. And he spews out all kindsof racist stuff, too. Take, for example, hiscommentary in this 2011 let’s-play video that includes the Swedish version of the N-word.

In the subtitles, he translates the word as“black,” but it’s hard to argue the word he uses is anything but a racial slur. (The Swedish Ornithological Society evenrenamed birds to eliminate any reference to the term.) Another Swedish YouTube user pointed this out and criticized PewDiePie for usingthe term but PewDiePie’s supporters, who call themselves the Bro Army, didn’t care. Neither did YouTube.

He used the N-word again, in English, in this video posted last month.

His fans’ negative reactions spawned two hashtag movements on Twitter: #pewdiepieisover and the more gleeful #pewdiepieisoverparty. But this is Twitter, so of course the racist elements of the Bro Army quickly co-opted them.

#pewdiepieisover Geezes peoples, calm the fuck down he said a word with no racist intentions. Get back to the cotton field and contemplate.

lemmy antonis (@lemmyantonis) January 12, 2017

PewDiePie’s casual offensiveness doesn’t end with the N-word. In another let’s-play video, he mentions thathe can’t see people when they’re “too black,” and fans mention thathe’s been known to say that “black things” scare him.

This 2017 video, in which he decided whether he would “smash,” pass on, or sell particular people into slavery is basicallya loaded baked potatoof racist and misogynist tropes.

In this face-swapping video he repeatedly uses an image of actress Leslie Jones to representHarambe, the gorilla killed in the Cincinnati zoo last year. I shouldn’t have to explain what’s wrong with that.

None of this means that anything that offends anyoneis off limits as a joke. But jokes that goof onracism are different than jokes that rely on race—a fine line to be sure. Even comics known to get away with it (like Sarah Silverman) sometimes miss the mark. What PewDiePie does in these videos is the 4chan version: repeat racist terms and insist they have outlived their offensiveness and are now hilarious.

But PewDiePie recently wentbeyond racist joking.In December 2016 heannounced plans to delete his YouTube channel once it reached 50 million subscribers because the platform had changed its homepage, a move that meant his viewers saw fewer videos, and less often. Coming from so towering a figure, this was a big deal. Bigger still? His reasoning. Ina jittery rant, he claimed that “YouTube wants my channel gone. They want someone else on top. They want someone really extremely cancerous, like Lilly Singh. Im white. Can I make that comment? But I do think thats a problem.

Singhbetter known by her YouTube alias, Superwomanis a Canadian-Indian rapper and comedian whose songs, parodies, and calls for positivity and #GirlLove have wonher more than11 million subscribers. Days after his rant, facingwithering criticism, PewDiePie claimedeverything he said about Singh was satire. The belated“LOL JK” is, of course, a defense favored byMilo Yiannopoulos and othertrolls, one thatraises questions of intent versus effect. “Its the impact that matters,” Phillips says. “I think weve reached an era where that ‘I was just trolling’ excuse needs to be retired.”

Becoming an Alt-Right Darling

PewDiePie’s reaction, though, also tooka step in a new direction. By claimingthat mediaoutlets takinghis words literally amounted to slanderand by calling publications that did so“the clearest form of cancerhe added media paranoia to his recipe of open prejudice and dog-whistling, making himan immediate poster boy for white supremacists. Check out the banner leadingneo-Nazi Andrew Anglin’s The Daily Stormer, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the top hate site in America.

The image has been up for weeks, says Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “With PewDiePie, the question is, How did it take them so long?” shesays of Disney and YouTube dumping PewDiePie. “Neo-Nazis have been loving this guy. And because he has this massive following, they see those people as supporting their views.”

If anything, Disney and YouTube elevated PewDiePie’s standing in the so-called alt-right movement’s eyes by sending him packing. Just look at the alt-right’s preferred social media platform, Gab.

So, intentionally or not, the YouTube celebrity stepped intothe political arena.“There has always been a strong feedback loop between public figures, broadcast media, and social media activity,” says Anthony McCosker, an expert ondigital and social media at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. “I think the current push toward nationalism, tapping into exclusionary and racist sentiment, is driven and emboldened by online activity.”

This all places much of theresponsibility onDisney and YouTube;chipping away fromPewDiePie’s already staggering annual income ($15 million in 2016) doesn’t prove much to anyone. “They’re handmaidens to some pretty ugly sentiments,” Beirich says. “YouTube has refused to develop AI systems to hunt down extremist material. We at SPLC have been doing their legwork and reporting it for them, but that’s an inefficient system.”

You’ll have trouble finding consensus on what to do with someone like PewDiePie, especially because his reach is so global. In Austria this week, authorities arrested a man for dressing as Hitler in the Nazi leader’s hometown. Should PewDiePie enjoyspecial privileges because his Hitler costume appeared online? In America, satire has always been protected speechand there are overwhelmingly compellingreasons to keep it that waybutin a time of “alternative facts,” satire becomesincreasingly hard to identify.

You can’t smooth the ripples PewDiePie’s videos created, but you canslow their spread. PewDiePie’s business model revolves around grabbingviewers’ attention, holding it, and keeping them coming back for more. The real #pewdiepieisoverparty will happen when people start clicking Unsubscribe.

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