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missmentelle · 5 years ago

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I keep hearing "if you're worried about being a bad person, you're not a bad person" and just wondering if that's true from a psychology perspective? The line of logic goes, a "real" toxic/abusive/narcissistic person wouldn't care that their actions hurt others, so if you're worrying about it, then you're definitely not one. Is that really the case though?

It’s... complicated. But no, not really.

So, for starters, there’s no such construct as a “bad person” in psychology. Or a “good person”, for that matter. “Bad” and “good” are value judgments, and psychology tries to avoid making value judgments; we simply aim to identify and describe certain patterns of symptoms of behaviour. The fact of the matter is that everyone does things that could be considered “bad” and “good”, and no one is perfect. We have all hurt other people in our lives, both intentionally and unintentionally. It’s also important to remember that morality is not black-and-white - many, many things fall into a moral grey zone, and different people will have wildly different perspectives on what is right and wrong, and who is a “good” person or a “bad” person. A doctor or psychologist cannot tell you if you are a good person or not. That is something that you ultimately have to decide for yourself, after carefully comparing your own actions to the values that you hold.

You are right that there are certain diagnoses that make a person much more likely to harm others in their lives without really examining their own actions too closely. People with narcissistic or anti-social personalities tend to center their own feelings, and disregard any hurt they cause others. Narcissistic people specifically think of themselves as being highly important, special, and deserving of recognition and success. They tend to enjoy being in a position of power over others, and they are comfortable manipulating and harming others for their own gain. People with anti-social tendencies and disorders, on the other hand, are easily bored and enjoy antagonizing others to get a reaction - any reaction. They are chronically irresponsible, deceitful, and uncaring, and they have no empathy for the people they hurt. If you find that you are chronically unable to feel any empathy for the people around you, or to regard their feelings in any way, that’s definitely a huge red flag that you’re probably harmful to the people around you - although of course, you won’t really care.

Unfortunately, though, caring if you hurt people is not a guarantee that you aren��t doing it. Life and mental health are just not that simple. Many people who behave in toxic or manipulative ways toward others are anguished about it, and constantly worry about it - yet they continue to do it anyway. I think most of us have been in the awkward position of having a friend who didn’t treat us very well, possibly due to serious mental health concerns (maybe too clingy, dropping in and out of our lives without warning, flaky, not interested in our problems, overly critical, etc) who also asked for constant reassurance that they weren’t a horrible person and that you didn’t hate them. My boyfriend has an ex with untreated borderline personality disorder; she constantly, constantly agonized over the possibility that she was a “toxic person”, while doing nothing to change the fact that she was actually being extremely toxic to the people in her life. She harassed my boyfriend for more than six months after they broke up, while still continuing to make public social media posts of herself crying and talking about how she never wants to be a bad person. Although it’s fictional, another good example of this phenomenon can be found in Bojack Horseman - the main character spends the entirety of the show grappling with what it means to be a good person, while also consistently hurting the people around him. It would be nice to believe that simply worrying about hurting others is a guarantee that we don’t do it, but it’s just not that easy.

Figuring out if you are being hurtful to the people you care about is a ongoing process that requires constant honesty with yourself, vigilance, and self-reflection. Being worried is not enough - you have to dig a lot deeper than that. For instance, you need to consider:

What does my relationship history look like? Everyone has relationships that end poorly or just don’t work out, for a wide variety of reasons. But it’s important to examine your relationships as a whole, to see if any troubling patterns emerge. When your relationships end, do you tend to just drift apart and lose contact, or do they tend to end with dramatic blow-ups? Do people tend to remain on okay terms with you after losing contact, or have you had a lot of people specifically block you and cut you out of their life? Again, everyone has had relationships go sour, but if there is a consistent pattern of people dramatically severing ties and relationships turning hostile and toxic, it’s typically a sign that there’s a problem in there that’s worth examining.

How do I react when I realize I’ve wronged someone? When you realize you have done someone wrong - either by your own realization, or by them telling you - how do you react? Do you accept responsibility and apologize, even if you think the incident was no big deal? Do you ignore the situation? Do you do something to try to make it up to them? Have you ever gotten angry or upset with someone for telling you that you hurt them? Again, fuck-ups and mistakes happen - we are human. It’s how you deal with those fuck-ups that matters.

How were the last few arguments I’ve been in resolved? Think back to the last few times you had a serious disagreement with someone. What happened? Were you able to resolve the issue in a way that worked for both of you? Did the argument escalate? Did one person steamroller over the other? Disagreements are inevitable, but the way that we handle even the most serious difference of opinion says a lot about who we are.

Am I generally reliable in relationships? Do you show up when you say you’re going to show up? Do you remember the things people tell you, or do you have to constantly be reminded about the basic details of other people’s lives? Do you send birthday greetings, answer texts most of the time, and make a point to be there for important events in others’ lives? Again, no one is perfect at this, but making an effort to be consistent about this stuff - and giving others a heads-up or apology when you are struggling to do it - is important.

Have I been insensitive with others? Are you sensitive to other people’s needs? Do you generally manage to use tact when discussing delicate topics with people? Do you remember to avoid certain topics with certain people, and avoid airing people’s personal information in front of others? Nobody has perfect manners, but it’s important to make an effort to consider the comfort and feelings of others.

How do I treat people that I dislike? How you treat the people you dislike - or don’t know - is almost as important as how you treat the people you do like. Do you ever behave vindictively toward people you don’t like? Do you gossip about them? Have you ever gone out of your way to make someone’s life harder in some way because you didn’t like them? It can seem satisfying or justified to get our revenge on someone who wronged us, but this can quickly reach a point where it’s unproductive and cruel.

Do I take no for an answer? Do friends and loved ones feel comfortable saying no to me? Do I tend to accept it when things don’t go my way, or do I tend to push and try to convince others to change their minds? Have I ever gone behind someone’s back after they’d already said no? It can be difficult to face rejection or an outcome that you don’t want, but being able to take it gracefully is important.

Obviously, this isn’t a comprehensive list of what it takes to be a “good person” to others, and you don’t have to hit every point on it all the time. We all have times where we are stressed and tired, or where we just drop the ball. Shit happens. But it’s important to keep examining ourselves in an honest way, and looking for places we can improve. Best of luck to you!Miss Mentelle

#AnsweredByMM #Anonymous

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a-cai-jpg · 5 years ago

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frailty, thy name is woman! (HAH)

So the other day, I was ambushed by a group of tiny puppies.

I was in the park, breathing some fresh air and sunshine for the first time in a long, long time. I sat on a grassy hill--notebook just recently closed and resting in my lap--staring blankly at the amphitheater beneath me and suddenly, I hear barking to my right and felt something nudge my thigh.

Not gonna lie, I almost screamed and whacked the puppy in the face.

They were three beagles(?), bounding around the hill because, according to their owners who respectfully stood 6 feet away from me, they hadn't left the house in a week.

(same.)

Anyways, before they came to say hi, I was listening to a sad, acoustic playlist and writing down notes about women.

(it's not weird if u don't make it weird)

That morning, I had woken up thinking about women's issues.

Sexism is not exactly the social issue I'm most preoccupied by. It's prominent in every aspect of life, but because I've been fortunate enough to be sheltered from most of it, the sexism I experience is very subtle and difficult to pinpoint. I grew up in a primarily female household with a lot of strong personalities, and only recently did I begin to take note of the almost indiscernible power dynamic between the men and the women.

So, most of my life, I've just been kind of cruising along, with this vaguely gender-less persona that only started to shift some time in university.

A friend once asked, "How do you know that you're a woman?"

I think this was during the same time I was taking a philosophy course about theories of sexual differences, and so all my thoughts were kind of meta and hypothetical. My initial thought was, uh what do you mean like of course I know I'm a woman that's what I've checked on all the forms. But then I thought about it and I was like. Bruh.

Bruh.

The reply I gave her, I feel like, was unsatisfactory and very personal. I didn't want to fall back onto gender norms, because that was so obviously a cop-out. Furthermore, I feel like I didn't experience a lot of the stereotypical "what it means to be a woman." AND, the definition of "adult human being" was too inadequate.

So, how do I know that I'm a woman?

At the time, I gave her a pretty sloppy answer about internalized misogyny, and I'm not going to pretend I have a better answer now, but I think I've broken it down to two main points.

Number one: I know I'm a woman because I'm constantly in competition with other women. I view women as my primary competitors. Very rarely do I see masculine-presenting individuals as competition, even though technically, all of us are competing for resources, prestige, or whatever it is we seek. Sure, you can play a probability game and say it's all statistics, but I think there's an aspect of misogyny as well.

Number two, I know I'm a woman because I feel anger and indignation on behalf of other women, internalizing it as a personal offense, even when I myself have not undergone the same struggle.

It's the same criteria I think of when I ask myself how I know I'm Asian American. But, in the racial aspect, there's a third criteria, which is the reflexive self. I feel that other people see me as Asian American, and therefore, I am Asian American. For some bizarre reason, I didn't experience the same reflexive self when I thought about my gender.

I think it was this lack of a reflexive self and vaguely gender-less upbringing that pushed me to declare, very loudly, in the middle of a science classroom in highschool that, "I am not a feminist."

(I could self-psychoanalyze and come up with a million reasons why my upbringing was gender-less. It could have to do with the fact that my primary caretakers were women, so there was no other for me to reference, and thereby, no juxtaposition between women and men. It could have to do with early, internalized misogyny that caused me to push away things that identified me specifically as a "girl." It could also be that I'm incredibly not self-aware.)

(I stand by the statement that contrast is necessary for identification, though.)

Anyways.

I remember when I said those words, my best friend looked at me with exasperation and a classmate looked at me with disgust. For good reason.

At the time, the word "feminist," to me, had a lot of negative connotations. I equated it with the "feminazi." I didn't buy into sexist ideals, but neither did I understand the angry, seemingly unnecessary reversal of gender roles that "feminazis" were proclaiming.

And my friend patiently explained to me that no, you don't have to be a feminazi to be a feminist.

But see, even that in itself is anti-feminist, isn't it?

We were, again, drawing lines for what it means to be an acceptable woman--an acceptable feminist--and what it means to be an unacceptable woman.

Why is there a negative connotation to the term "feminazi"? Why is there a negative connotation to the term "feminist"? Isn't the term "feminazi" in itself misogynistic?

I think it has to do with the fact that the general culture is uncomfortable with women stepping beyond what their gender roles have prescribed them. The culture has moved in a direction where it is acceptable and almost expected for women to be feminists, but being a "feminazi" is still frowned up.

This might seem very obvious to some, but I actually haven't thought about the term "feminazi" in a long while. So, to make sure I actually knew what a "feminazi" was, I pulled up the Wikipedia article. Here are a few words used to describe a feminazi:

a committed feminist or a strong-willed woman

radical feminists

see as many abortions as possible

militants

quest for power

belief that men aren't necessary

well-intentioned but misguided people who call themselves feminists

the term came to be widely used for feminism as a whole

marginalize any feminist as a hardline, uncompromising manhater

hate men

dogmatic, inflexible, and intolerant

an extremist, power-hungry minority

I've never met anyone who fits that description, though [Limbaugh] lavishes it on me among many others

bossy, hating men and femininity

hyper-vigilant to perceived sexism

vindictive

puritanical

The term was apparently, popularized by a dude named Rush Limbaugh, and I'll be damned if I let a man determine what kind of feminist I am.

Maybe I am biased because a militant women's group seeking to overpower the patriarchy sounds pretty lit and like good material for a new Netflix show, but like.

Tell me again why it's not okay to be a feminazi.

(my primary reactions to the list above are: "i wonder why," "sounds ok to me lol," and "who the fuck are you to say")

ANYWAYS.

"Feminazis," according to Mr. Limbaugh (who even is this guy) is an unacceptable way to be a feminist.

He is a man governing what it means to be a feminist (again, who the fuck are you), but let's be real, there are many women out there who draw similar lines, maybe for others, maybe for themselves. The popular "Am I not a good feminist if I __________" questions in themselves are anti-feminist. Once again, it is a show of how women are policing themselves and each other.

I'm not big on philosophy because I can't understand most of it, but Foucault made the assertion that policing and discipline in a modern society lies with the self, or an invisible, anonymous power embedded in society.

(Ok, I'm going to be honest, I didn't want to read through 30 pages of feminist theory and I barely understood the four pages that I did read, so if I'm wrong, don't hate me.)

In other words, men and women become the gender police for themselves. Even as women gain more rights and freedom, they continue to police themselves in a new way, like asking themselves what it means to be a good feminist.

(Bartky introduces the argument that there needs to be an upheaval of social norms to end the policing.)

(And okay, so, the more I read Bartky's Foucault, Femininity, and Patriarchal Power, the more excited I get, so I'm gOiNg To StOp mYsElf hERe.)

I ask myself this question often too.

Am I not a good feminist if I express vague disapproval at someone who switches boyfriends every other day?

Am I not a good feminist if I am grateful for men opening doors for me or offering to grab my suitcase for me on the plane? (I'm 5'2 okay, I have to stand on the seat sometimes, it's embarrassing.)

See, I appreciate chivalry and I don't think chivalry is dead because what does that even mean, but I also recognize that chivalry isn't the same thing as gender equality or liberation for women (or dare I say, liberation of gender?). But, gender equality doesn't mean that women and men do all of the same things and are assumed to be able to do all of the same things. Because we, as humans, have varying abilities, don't we?

The question of what the fuck is gender equality plagued me for an entire semester and bothers me even now but I just kind of stomp on it and make it go away. The easy answer to it, for me, is a fair division of labor agreed upon by both parties, ensuring there is no abuse of power within the relationship.

But that statement in itself is problematic because it introduces a possibility of stasis, of complacency that might revert to a new abuse of power.

(It's also not one that every feminist agrees on.)

But let's return to the question of what it means to be a woman.

I wrote that contrast is necessary for identification, but I fear the statement implies that women are defined in opposition to men, which is false. Like, non-men = women. And, since gender is a spectrum, that obviously is not true. But, since gender is a spectrum, is it necessary for us to identify ourselves?

At the end of my notes, I scribbled a series of questions.

Why does it matter to me what gender people are?

Why does it matter to me what gender I am?

Is there a correlation between sexuality and gender? Especially since we are all on a spectrum for both? Are we socialized to choose? Is this or is this not evolutionarily favorable?

(I see now that the flaw in me writing blog posts is that I can't actually have a conversation about this and that's frustrating.)

(Also, I recognize that I live in an immense amount of privilege to be asking these questions and not, I don't know, fearing for my life.)

I briefly entertained the idea that women are essentially the oppressed party in the larger narrative of gender. But there are two problems with this statement. One, women are definitely not the only oppressed party. Two, everyone ultimately suffers when there is an accepted narrative.

But, the undeniable fact is that there is a common reality that people who identify as women live. It has nothing to do with anatomy, organs, chromosomes, hormone levels, brain structure, or sexuality. It is an experience that is placed upon us by the patriarchal society, regardless of whether or not we recognize it, based on how we present ourselves.

This is how the reflexive self began to develop, in Calc B, freshman year of college.

I try to talk about gender as removed from sex as possible, because I get terribly confused when I talk about them in conjunction with each other, but also because I do think there is a difference between the feminine experience and the female experience. I just don’t really understand it.

I wrote in my notes somewhere: Gender is a spectrum. You are your own individual, gender be damned.

I don't proclaim myself an expert on this matter. These are words that chased their own tails in my mind as I tried to understand how to function in an infuriating society that constantly made me angry.

The other day, I saw a Facebook post from a stranger who was talking about how their boyfriend didn't believe women were being oppressed because even though women get paid less, men pay for dates. And this led me to think about the wage disparity and how people always tell me, well, no, it doesn't exist. It's the woman's fault for not asking for a higher wage.

And I’m just kind of like, ???

A student of mine came to me one morning, a little disappointed and a little annoyed, because he had been shut down by a fellow classmate when he made a comment about the wage gap not being an actual thing.

(the thing about talking to students is that it's a lot easier to forgive ignorance and to actually have a conversation without getting angry.)

He said that he wished the classmate, a girl, wouldn't just be all angry about it and call him dumb.

I didn't know how to respond to that then, aside from agreeing that it is necessary to have actual dialogue around important issues and asking a few questions so he could critically think about gender issues in the U.S.

But, I thought about it the morning before I got ambushed by the dogs, and I wish I asked him to think about why people get so angry talking about these matters.

I think the reason why it's so difficult to have these conversations is because--

God, imagine the privilege of not having to have these conversations and not feeling angry and humiliated because you are pulling out this vulnerable bit of you that's been attacked by Society and trying to make someone who is implicitly attacking you understand.

That's not a comfortable feeling, and adults can't even manage it so how is a teenager expected to?

The same feeling rises within myself when I talk about race and when I talk about gender. Some of it is internalized racism and misogyny, but a whole lot of it is not wanting to be vulnerable, and that in itself is a little fucked up (and maybe, misogynistic?).

See, when I feel very strongly about a matter, I expect strong, rigorous, academic debate. I want to break down the logic in every sentence and refute facts and opinions with Better Facts and Opinions, complete with citations, and I don’t want to fall back on anecdotes even though I end up resorting to it anyways.

(I am also the annoying person who would do the Hamilton thing and be like i have the honor to be your obedient servant, A DOT CAI.)

But, so often, we don't have the luxury to do that. And also, very often, we are utterly consumed by the larger narrative that facts end up not meaning very much to us.

We are all part of an accepted narrative, and that, along with the social norms that come with it, is the enemy.

Men are not the enemy in feminism, which is why men need to calm the fuck down and get behind the feminist movement. Men are also suffering from this accepted narrative and gender policing that lauds toxic masculinity.

I'm not saying there's a right way to be a feminist, but I strongly believe there's a wrong way to be a feminist. I think being a feminist means you support gender equality, regardless of what gender someone identifies as. I think being a feminist means you want everyone to embrace their true selves. I think being a feminist means you stand with every individual, and so I think being a feminist should be the default for a human being.

But if a person identifies as a feminist and draws rules and regulations for how to be one, then that is anti-feminist.

(Come at me, feminist philosophers, I'm very zen and I'm willing to listen to you tell me about how society needs to see an utter deconstruction of feminism and masculinity.)

Be you, my friend. Be you and let other people be themselves. It's not like they're hurting you by being trans or gay or bi.

Like jeez, why is that so hard.

(stop hating on Irene 'cause she's a feminist, she's fucking beautiful and i will fight you.)

I don't know, I love women. They are inspiring and beautiful, and the term "woman," as much as I've broken it down, actually matters because society has forced it to matter. And weirdly enough, as difficult as it is for me to truly identify with woman at times, I like being one and I'm proud to be a feminist.

But it's also a little scary to be a woman. There are the general things a woman has to worry about, like walking around at night or traveling alone or going to a bar alone or doing anything alone to be completely honest. But there are also the other concerns, like what does a family dynamic look like with my personality and my ideals? How do I navigate a patriarchal society in terms of work and relationships? Which values do I give up to make sure I can actually go somewhere? When do I tell a friend to shut the fuck up because he’s mansplaining? How do I respond to defensiveness without getting defensive myself? How do I ensure that my daughter lives in a safer, more equitable world? How do I ensure that my son doesn't turn out to be a misogynist? Like? Help?

(sos i drank too my caffeine and now my hands are shaking)

Feminist theory, crudely put, falls into two categories (fuck i’m literally dragging things out of my ass, i don’t actually know if this is true lol), with one firmly asserting that a feminist revolution is rejecting the societal definition of femininity and the other embracing femininity.

(idk if there are only two camps, but these two perspectives definitely exist in feminist theory ok)

I definitely fall in the latter, because I can’t wrap my head around the rejection of femininity. Like, is that not misogynistic? Camosy’s Behind the Abortion Wars uses a similar argument to proclaim abortion as inherently sexist. It strips females of what has traditionally given them power, rendering them...males. Or some version of a male.

(i’m sold on camosy’s argument. don’t misunderstand, i’m definitely pro-choice, but i have thoughts.)

See, all of this is very complicated. Sometimes I see quotes about feminist theory and it’s so intellectually exhilarating that I just have to file it away and think about it on a day where I’m wired on caffeine. But even on those days, I feel like my brain falls short on trying to understand this very meta gender theory thing.

So, obviously, I don’t hope to convince you to believe in my ideal, because I don’t know what I’m talking about. But, if you have read this far, I leave you with the same thing I said a number of paragraphs back.

BE YOU AND LET OTHER PEOPLE BE THEMSELVES.

Recognize when you are causing harm, explicitly or not.

Recognize when other people are causing harm, explicitly or not, and engage them in conversation.

(these are actually goals and guidelines for me because i have no backbone and generally just fume in silence.)

(between me brainstorming this and me actually writing this, a number of different things have come to my attention)

(one of them is the erasure of non-masculine stories in history) (and yes that's obvious, but i also watched a bunch of TedEd videos about women so it's just very salient in my mind right now)

(another is the nth room south korea scandal, and i don't even know where to begin with that)

(Disclaimer: I don’t actually know what I’m talking about but I welcome counterarguments. I also realize putting a disclaimer at the end is really dumb, but I don’t want to interrupt my non-existent narrative flow. I feel like my take on gender is too simple and not nuanced enough, but honestly, I just don’t really get gender at times? So I really shouldn’t be talking about gender theory. Yet. Here we are.)

I LOVE WOMEN.

So here is a song from a woman that I recently found and fell in love with:

陳粒 - 无所求必满载而归它让你受折磨觉得痛觉得渴 [life] makes you suffer, makes you hurt, makes you thirsty 觉得无路走无处躲 makes you feel like there's nowhere to go, nowhere tohide 无所求也求不得 even if you want nothing, you can't even have that 当我昏昏欲睡摇摇欲坠 but when i'm about to sleep, about to fall 却学会放下错与对是与非 i learned to put down right and wrong, yes and no 无所求必满载而归 if i want nothing, then i'll receive everything

(on a side note, i've done nothing but read a chinese, boys love light novel. i have read three chinese novels in my life, and all three were boys love. this doesn't seem right.)

(but also, my chinese literacy is basically at that of a fifth grader, if even, so i think it's fitting that i read some trash novels.)

(but this one talks about the psychology of sexuality and gender, and i'm all for genre novels spreading ideas about bEiNg YoUrSeLf.)

(GAH.)

#this is both senseless and aimless #but it's nice to just blergh sometimes #u feel?#skrrt skrrt

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onewhoturns · 6 years ago

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me being upset over misinterpretations and misquoting: a not-so-vague vaguepost cause I’m admittedly butthurt:

# over time this is somehow becoming *more* triggering to me? somehow? #and yet i still want to save this gifset #even though i've blacklisted two tags on it #*headdesk*

=/=

I quote “i blocked the ship name but i can still save this gifset without tagging it as ship”

So... no. That’s not a quote. And while I understand the misinterpretation, because there really isn’t a function for it, blacklisting and blocking aren’t the same to me. I blacklist homestuck for crying out loud. Not cause I hate everyone who posts about it, just cause I don’t get the jokes and found it popping up on my dash a lot.

Look, I used the term triggered because spending too much time in a tag filled with that character gave me actual flashbacks and shaking and crying thinking about an assault in my past, okay? I wasn’t jokingly saying it triggered me. I was saying why the fuck does my brain have to ruin a good villain and interesting plot line - and really important relationship - by making me think - for no good reason - of one of the most traumatic moments of my life.

Tags are not comments. I chose to tag, not to comment. It wasn’t a message to the op. It was a message to my own brain for being inconsistent and ruining things for me. I hate to be a person sounding like ‘I can’t be an anti, i have alt-shipping friends’ or whatever, but like... I mean. I really don’t care what people ship. I have at least three ships that have historically gotten a lot of hate, and I’m not here for being vindictive about what people like to like. I reblog ships that aren’t my ships all the time. I’m a pretty ship-and-let-ship person.

Tbh I blacklisted those tags not for any in-game content (gifs, game art, etc) but almost entirely because one person was posting what felt like multiple times a day stuff that I just didn’t want to look at, so I blacklisted it so I could check who posted and remove it from my dash without clicking through. I still click through to see stuff tagged that way relatively regularly, I just didn’t want to go around blocking people when I really don’t have a problem with them, cause they would still post stuff I liked, I just didn’t want to be accidentally inundated with quickly-unignorable triggering content. I like knowing what I’m going to look at and then deciding if I’m in a good enough headspace to see it.

Anyway... that’s just me rambling. Mostly cause I’m upset I can’t reblog gifs from this person anymore and they make awesome gifs. And I’m upset cause I feel like my words were twisted in a way I never intended them. And because I’m blocked I can’t even apologize. Also cause I feel weirdly like I was accused of using the term triggered inappropriately when I was being sincere =/ I dunno. I sent a four part apology explaining and I’m betting it didn’t go through cause they blocked me. Which, let’s be honest, is totally fair. Everyone should be able to block whoever they want and not get crap for it. I’m not looking to attack or anything. I’m just hurt. Just needed to vent a bit.

#personal #vague post #venting #seriously just ignore this i just needed to vent #-.-#trauma mention

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myfriendpokey · 7 years ago

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the netflix of history

hard to talk about kitsch exclusively in aesthetic or historical terms - it's more like the point where aesthetic becomes history, or history aesthetic. you know it when you see it, like pornography or the sublime. in fact it's weirdly similar to the modern sublime, the shock of the new, of something you wanted or briefly felt but hadn't realised until now was even possible - "i don't know what this is, but i love it." "i don't know what this is, but i hate it". the truly kitsch is not just the bland, expected, overused or overdetermined - it's more the boundary where all those qualities come into being, where without quite being able to put your finger on it what's good has changed into the horribly false. something you maybe recognise, respect, in principle approve of, is suddenly intolerable. you nitpick, waver, make excuses or hypotheses, and then finally get exasperated: it's just that something doesn't work, has nothing left in it as a style, has become unusable. which doesn't mean it can't be reconstituted for second-order uses, as thomas mann has the devil say in doctor faustus: "One could raise the game to a yet higher power by playing with forms from which, as one knows, life has vanished." this becomes a way to "acknowledge freedom": that these forms have no more historical or emotional resonance makes their deliberate re-usage sort of an individual, gratuitous act. and they're also a way to examine life in negative, life as being whatever kitsch is not - the very paltriness of these old forms makes it easier to see traces of an active mind which moves through and rearranges them. but even this relies on a certain inert passivity in the forms being rearranged. like enemies that have become distant enough from us in time that they can be remembered fondly, when what's truly awful is that something can "die" without actually going away, or without anyone seeming to notice.

there's no particular moral element to being "anti-kitsch", contra a lot of (themselves by now quite kitschy) arguments about the political benefits of breaking down recieved ideas, vigorous clear language etc. fascism is kitsch, but to be anti-kitsch is not necessarily to be anti-fascist. jenny turner gives the gruesome cautionary tale of "the institute of ideas", ex-trot radicals whose desire to epater lez bourgeoise eventually turned into goading, repetitive pamphlets about the desireability of oilspills and big business. you could also think about the likes of lyotard, hitchens, nick land etc- or johnny rotten... the moment of irritated dissatisfaction in encountering something perhaps a little too glib, too rote or unsuprising, occurs without respect for the context or scale of the offence. and in fact part of the value of iconoclasm is in this levelling quality, in being able to throw off the habitual guilty hedging of your own impressions. maybe this book, this album, this videogame, is a little corny or trite, but i guess it's basically harmless or "well constructed"... NOT!!!! death to all middle-of-the-road indie games about dead wives!!!! ha ha ha!!!! well, actually, i do agree with that part, and a big reason i cared about pop music at all as a teenager was the allowance it gave me to be fast and loose in my antipathies. the famous "value of art" is not just about what's beautiful or moving, it can also be in the reverse, the negative, the rush of finally putting a finger on just what it is that always bugged you about some element of culture as you finally encounter an alterity to it (which is partly why artistic canons are exciting as a set of arguments and next to useless as a set of inspirations). aversion can become a chance to have the courage of your own understanding, as they say, and connect private sensibility to the world at large. and i always enjoyed it, but also wonder what would have happened if these irritations had instead been channeled by, say, videogame youtube, or 4chan, or any of the public figures who rail against the yoke of bien-pensant liberal platitudes while continuing to support the, apparently less chafing, yoke of racial suprematism and US imperial policy. i think being anti-kitsch is the founding, sustaining effort of experimental art, but when the power of that effort is that this negativity has no necessarily determining form there's also no guarantee it won't morph into its ghastly opposite - anti-kitsch kitsch, of the kind purveyed by the late ayn rand who produced, as turner also writes, a strange but recognisable mirror image of high modernism itself.

but then what? you can't avoid kitsch, the awareness of it, you can't always be "understanding" of it, i feel it's a terrible mistake to just claim we can all just be more mature, less vindictive and perverse, more focused on the REAL problems of the world (lower your sights and raise your aim, as ABC once said) and less caught up on the negative. i don't think it goes away when you repress it, i think there'll always be a tipping point. true kitsch is what always just barely exceeds what you're willing to tolerate. one of the strands in percival everett's "erasure", memorably glossed by greil marcus, tracks the narrator's efforts to repress the nagging, peripheral awareness of a really bad book, an irritatingly worthy, false, self-satisfied piece of commercial hokum which is of course held in wide esteem, praised for its authenticity- until it's casually mentioned by a friend, and he can't help himself, it comes out, venomous, disproportionate rage, pure spite, and the friend not unreasonably is asking what the fuck is your problem? everett's hero is black, the book he's attacking is one that claims in whatever way to be representative of his life and experience - - and here's another reason the problem of kitsch is not so easily avoided, not so easily consigned to mere bad taste. kitsch might well exist in every culture, but in the manner of the old modernist sublime, the form it takes is absolutely distinctive to that culture, to the time, historical, material conditions in which it is produced. the manner of the really bad book is as mysteriously expressive of its period as that of the really good one. and so it appears less as an aesthetic failure, more a challenge from history itself, a challenge to deal with and reimagine that history's own conception of itself. the connection of experimental art with the contemporary is not that it's directly expressive of contemporary conditions but that it's directly engaged with contemporary kitsch. i don't know if you can sever this without also losing the contemporary itself in the process, which is maybe why certain mature works appear weirdly self-satisfied, adrift, as if having finally rid themselves of the nagging imperative to deal with some specific formal problem they're finally free to relax and become as boring as they wish.

the line quoted earlier from doctor faustus was directed, tauntingly, at the book's protagonist, who refuses to be fobbed off by playing with dead forms: what he's bargaining for is an entirely new one, an eerie, uncanny reemergence of new life within dead culture, a fresh beginning, purchased through sacrifice. and it's tempting to think of that in relation to the videogame industry with its mandatory newness purchased through burnout, an institutional eternity - "make it new", make it new, i know, but why bother when stockholders (or whatever handful of Chosen Auteurs are still kicking) will accrue all the reward? maybe it should be changed to "make it old". or maybe there are other ways to engage with kitsch than with horror, the perpetual flight backwards into the unknown, with property surveyors lurching along behind. to take the urge to "make it new" itself and treat it like gertrude stein did placidly interminable magazine prose, or robert walser did the sentimental novella, thomas bernhard did the blowhard rant, as mann himself did the bourgeois novel, like a habit to be chopped up and emptied out - a kind of reptile tank for nervous consciousness, to watch it as it scuttles between the camoflague of its era. and what better form to do so than videogames, where newness has always been the attempt to outrun judgement. we pull aside the plastic rock and glimpse it - the horrible distracted grimace of the past, busily churning out the future........

(image credits: Crescent Moon Girl, Bloody Roar - Gado, Lunar 2, Anton Ze Player’s Bubble Bobble: The Adventure)

#clement.......#videogames #criticism #kitsch

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thesinglesjukebox · 7 years ago

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TAYLOR SWIFT - LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO [4.39] Man, look what she made US do.

Elisabeth Sanders: Here is the thing about Taylor Swift: anybody that has truly loved (despite themselves) Taylor Swift has done so because of her sharp, frightening edges, because of the way in which she is the mean girl in the midst of a panic attack, because she's petty, because she's crazy, because she believes in things and at the same time when those things aren't as they seem wants to crush them in the palm of her hand. Any interpretation of Taylor Swift that doesn't incorporate this is simply bad research. In 2006: "Go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy--There's no time for tears / I'm just sitting here, planning my revenge." In 2010: "And my mother accused me of losing my mind /But I swore I was fine /You paint me a blue sky /And go back and turn it to rain /And I lived in your chess game /But you changed the rules every day /Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone, tonight /Well I stopped picking up and this song is to let you know why" In 2012: "Maybe we got lost in translation / maybe I asked for too much / or maybe this thing was a masterpiece / til you tore it all up." And finally, in 2014, a culmination of the songwriting combined with the publicity--well, just listen to "Blank Space." I can't quote the whole thing. At the time it was brilliant, a parody that dipped just enough into the real, a joke about both media extrapolation and actual content. But we're past the time for parody. It came, it was good, it went. The criticism still followed, for other reasons, for deeper reasons, for real reasons. Along with, I'm sure, superficial ones. But if "Blank Space" was Taylor Swift's petty Gone Girl fan fiction, "Look What You Made Me Do" is the unfortunate chapter in which we have to acknowledge that the fiction was never that self-aware, and that an excavation of complication, when confronted with complicated times, sometimes reveals not a complex sympathetic maybe-villain, but simply a person not equipped to be making mass art right now. Taylor's pettiness, her villainy, her strangeness, has always been her most interesting feature. Maybe, now, too many years into seeing but not seeing it, it's just--not that interesting anymore. She's not your friend, and she's not your enemy, she's just--well. As she says, "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me." I think that might be her final truth. [3]

Stephen Eisermann: I've never been a big Taylor Swift fan -- I like her music well enough, but there was always something about the details she painted and the cards she showed that it felt a bit... made-up. Still, I always had a weird feeling that Taylor and I had very similar personalities and personal life trajectories (bear with me) and this song reinforces that. When I was younger and "straight" (16-18), I was very quiet, nice to a fault, and introverted. Thanks to my name and skin color, a lot of (racist) older people always said it was hard to believe I was a Mexican teenager because I was so quiet, polite, well-spoken and bright. Much like Swizzle during the "Taylor Swift" and "Fearless" era, I was considered naive but genuine-hearted and people loved to love my niceness. However, I soon started coming to terms with my sexuality and started being a bit more open with myself and others about who I truly was, just like we saw glimpses of pure pop and more evocative lyrics in "Speak Now" and "Red." I still built stories and a narrative that painted me as more mystery than gay, just as Taylor toed the line between squeaky clean young adult and Lolita, but I was a bit more willing to explore. Soon after, the inevitable happened and I finally had my first NSFW encounter with a man, and was even MORE willing to be who I really was. I let my gay flag fly and if people asked, I wouldn't dance around the question, but own who I was. Taylor didn't hesitate one bit when she announced 1989 would be a pop album in its entirety, and I didn't so much was stutter when telling questioning friends my realization. Still, a part of me hid things from ass-backwards family members and people who I knew wouldn't "understand," just as Sweezy continued to play the victim card to hold on to some of the innocence that was slowly falling through her fingertips like sand on the last day of vacation. However, there is only so much sand one hand can hold and BAM -- my family became aware of my sexuality and Taylor was exposed. I was at a crossroads -- do I drop my family and throw out ALL the dirty chisme I had accumulated over the years at different holidays, effectively exposing the most bigoted family members, or do I keep my mouth shut and weather the hate, being all the stronger for it? I wanted so badly to be vindictive and evil, but I choose the high road for reasons I'm not really sure I can effectively communicate. Taylor, however, has opted for the darker route. "LWYMMD" lacks detail, yes, but it's intentional. I just... I just know it. She has secrets up her sleeves she will soon reveal -- nobody willingly takes the villainous role without ammo, and Taylor has been MANY things throughout her career, but unprepared is not one of them. This song is calculated, petty, unnecessary, and very much beneath her, but it allows me to live vicariously through her and I want her to drag her detractors just as I want to drag my family members through the mud they continue to think I belong in. And just as my bigoted family members will get theirs, so will Taylor's enemies, I'm sure. [10]

Will Rivitz: "I think I have a part to play in this drama, and I have chosen to be the villain. Every good story needs a bad guy, don't you think?" -Lorelei Granger, Frindle (Andrew Clements, 1996) [9]

David Moore: Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (Image Comics, 2015) Synopsis: Years ago, a young woman obsessed with music videos and mythic pop celebrity made a deal with the King Behind the Screen -- she gave up half of herself to gain the mystical power needed to eventually lead a coven of music obsessives. Now the deal's gone sour, and her darker, sacrificed self has switched places to destroy the coven with an ill-advised electroclash revival. [7]

Alfred Soto: Electronic swoops, piano on the bridge, lots of boom boom bap -- this single could be the new St. Vincent, or, to return to once upon a long time ago, to a track from Lorde's estimable Melodrama, a flop also largely co-written with Jack Antonoff. A skeptic of her first singles since 2009, I approached "Look..." with caution; on the evidence she's anticipated this caution. "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me," she sings while soap opera strings add the requisite melodrama, and for a moment I thought she sang "I don't trust my body." I've never cared about biographical parallels in any art, especially in popular art where the insistence feels like conscription; the blank space where she wants the audience to write his/her/whatever's name is a sop to us. Less persuasive is the talk-sung part informing her audience that the "old Taylor" is "dead," as if Fearless fans needed an 808 dug into their faces. It will sound terrific on the radio. I'll skip it when I buy the album. [5]

Crystal Leww: The emerging narrative of Jack Antonoff as the next king of pop production is perplexing because his resume is honestly pretty thin. It's unclear what Antonoff actually brings to the table other than an amplification factor; Antonoff's songs have only been as good as his collaborators. This works when artists are working with a strong vision they can execute against -- e.g., CRJ's "in love and feeling like a teen again" on "Sweetie," Lorde's earnest wide open heartbreak on Melodrama. It is damning if artists are falling into their worst habits. Taylor Swift is a very solid songwriter -- it's nearly impossible to have the kind of career she had in country music if you're not -- but it always falls back on specificity, the emotional connection that she can forge with her fans when she knows what she's trying to convey. "Look What You Made Me Do" fails because it's unclear what it's about -- is this song about haters? Kim and Kanye? Her exes? The media? -- and Antonoff using Right Said Fred makes it all seem very clunky. The song sounds like it could have really leaned into a psycho ex-girlfriend vibe, but it's not self-aware, not funny, not sure of itself. Ultimately, "Look What You Made Me Do" isn't awful, but it's not catchy, which is its worst sin of all. Taylor Swift's still a decent songwriter ("Better Man" was great; "I've been looking sad in all the nicest places" almost made up for that Zayn collab), but this isn't even yucky -- it's just kinda boring. [4]

Katherine St Asaph: The curse continues. Maybe it's that the past month I've been listening to very little but "Anatomy of a Plastic Girl" by The Opiates and "Justice" by Fotonovela and Sarah Blackwood, and here's the exact conceptual midpoint. I've heard comparisons to electroclash, NIN, mall emo, Lorde, but I hear more Jessie Malakouti or Britney on Original Doll: frantic tabloid petulance, slightly updated with a "Problem" anti-chorus, but otherwise things I like. Otherwise, Swift's style has not changed: self-referential ("actress" and "bad dreams" shuffle her images to make her the heel) and threaded with subliminals ("tilted stage" is literal, "kingdom keys" keeps up with the konsonance) Just as "Dear John" parodied its subject's lite-blooz guitar, "Look What You Made Me Do" parodies the austere tracks of 808s and Heartbreak on, like "Love Lockdown" in curdled Midwestern vowels: trading soporific for loaded. The song has inevitably become about everything but itself. Her milkshake duck brought all the boys to the yard, and they're like, this is garb, and I'm like, the Internet deplorables haven't adopted this in any better faith than they did Depeche Mode; any of pop's myriad songs about the tabloids would read as "political" if transplanted into 2017 (is Lindsay Lohan's "Rumours" about FAKE NEWS?), and Swift's suffocatingly prescriptive "Southern" "values" pre-Red were as politically suspect as this, and more insidious. The next salvo of attack: its rollout being unprecedentedly gimmicky and exploitative, never mind how aforementioned Depeche Mode did the same pre-order thing, or Britney Spears upholstered-carpetbombed "Pretty Girls" in everyone's Ubers, or Rihanna's Talk That Talk was launched with gamified "missions", or Srsly Legit Band Arcade Fire spent months on fake Stereogum posts and fake Ben and Jerry's. Doesn't help that when Taylor is bad, she's stunningly, loudly bad; the second verse, in its magnification of the cringiest parts of "Shake It Off" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," seems to last forever. (The phone call is fine, though; no one had a problem with "How Ya Doin'" or, like, "Telephone.") It's no good for catharsis, definitely not relatable, maybe on purpose: like being too sexy for your shirt, all you feel is cold. [6]

Katie Gill: On the one hand, Taylor using the language of abusers in the chorus of her song is clueless at best and worrisome at worst. On the other hand, blatantly riffing off of "I'm Too Sexy" is a surprisingly smart choice for a chorus and I'm shocked that I can't think of anyone who's tried it before with this level of success. But on the one hand, for a song about how she's getting smarter and harder, the lyrics don't reflect that, giving us some petty Regina George level nonsense instead of anything remotely resembling depth or nuance. But then again, that snake is pouring Taylor Swift some tea and all the Taylor Swifts are beating up the other Taylor Swifts in a battle royale hahaha this video is so amazingly dumb. I guess I'll split the difference and give it a [5]

Alex Clifton: I've always wanted give-no-fucks Taylor Swift, but I'm dying for context, as this album (and sing) will sink or swim based entirely on the narrative she creates. She's clearly setting herself on fire in order to rebrand herself, although I question her self-awareness. The music video indicates yes, with a brilliant 30-second scene featuring various Taylors mocking each other. Yet "Look What You Made Me Do" is also curiously passive, with a reactionary title and a bored chorus--more a sign of privilege and status. The ambiguity between honest, wronged victim and villainous persona here is intriguing, especially given Swift's penchant for earnestness; obviously she cannot be both, but the tension drives the song. The song itself is a mixed bag; Swift returns to the messy rapping last heard on "Shake It Off" with an equally cringey spoken-word interlude, but her voice is simutaneously delicate and confident as she comes out swinging. While I love seeing Blood!Swift writing a hitlist of enemies like an evil Santa Claus and the hint of confronting the less attractive/more honest parts of her role in the spotlight, only time will tell whether this is truly a playful new direction or more of the same old tune. (Also, what did we make her do? The answer is classic Swift, diabolically obvious: we made her write a song about it.) [7]

Jessica Doyle: A week on I still hear more self-loathing than anything else. Nothing the supposed New Taylor offers up comes off particularly convincingly; there's no glee in her reinvention. Compare the way she rushes through honey-I-rose-up-from-the-dead when she once sounded like she was thoroughly enjoying Boys only want love when it's torture. She doesn't sound smarter, or harder; look what you made me do, when she's spent the last eighteen months making a point of not doing anything. There's no air in here, no space beyond the multiple annotated versions and multiple thinkpieces declaring her a walking horsebitch of the Trumpocalypse. Just Taylor Swift practicing telling herself to shut up, Taylor Swift wondering about karma, Taylor Swift reading Buzzfeed and taking careful notes, Taylor Swift unable to make a point about anything at all except Taylor Swift. You don't realize, when you're in the thick of it, that self-loathing is just as relentlessly, narrowly egotistical as any other kind of self-obsession. It gets old, finally. It wears you out. It wears everybody out. Right? Yes? Can we all agree to be worn out now? Are we going to allow her to move on? She can't rise up from the dead if we don't let her die first. [3]

Cassy Gress: There was a time when I thought 1989 pajama-parties-and-kittens Taylor was the "real Taylor." I don't know if that really was. What I do know is that trying to figure out who the "real Taylor" is, and arguing on the internet about it, is fucking exhausting. So much of her musical output has been autobiographical, or meant to sound generically autobiographical to women listeners; so much of her reads as "pussycat with claws." Sometimes she emphasizes the pussycat side, soft and vulnerable; "Look What You Made Me Do" is the claws side. But Taylor, who we know has the ability to be nuanced and evocative, is here transmitting her intent (to destroy Kanye, or Katy, or Hiddleston, or her old selves, or just to be the cleverest sausage) like a hammer to the skull. This, like much else about her, is exhausting to watch/listen to. I would much rather close the blinds and put on my headphones and watch GBBO reruns in my jammies. [2]

Olivia Rafferty: Washing in with the arrival of her sixth album are a tidal wave of thinkpieces on Swift, all set within the context of her A-list feuds, miscalculations and politics, or lack thereof. We've all sifted through stories of fake boyfriends, cheap shots and oblivious colonialism, and I'm going to speak for all of us when I say we probably should just all take a goddamn break from the vortex. I'm placing LWYMMD in a vacuum for now. Reaching into the embarrassing depths of my personal history, I can draw up two different past-Olivias who would be a perfect fit for this song. I'm gifting the verse, pre-chorus and middle eight to my 10-year-old self, and the chorus to my 17-year-old self. Olivia at 10 would lap up the overly-dramatic opening lines, the "I. Don't. Likes" and their thick punctuation. It's served with the attitude that would have made you want to stick on a crop top and pick up one of your tiny handbags to fling about during an ill-prepared dance routine -- no, Mum, it's not finished yet! And the moment of absolute pre-teen glory is the cheerleader delivery of the spoken half-verse, "the world moves on another day another drama drama," I can literally see the Beanie Baby music video re-enactment. All of these melodic aspects are playful but lack the precision or maturity you'd expect Swift to deliver on this "good girl grown up" song. When the chorus hits you suddenly mature into that 17 year-old whose friends-but-not-really-friends played that Peaches song at someone's house party. You could probably embarassingly attempt a slut-drop to it in your bedroom, pretending you're a dominatrix who's just split some milk on the floor. But the overall impression is that if Swift is trying to be naughty, sexy or dangerous, she's missed the mark a little. Now at 25 I'm listening and thinking that the chorus still snaps, but if this track was an attempt at sexualising Taylor in a way that's not been done before, it's only made it clear that she's still got a lot of growing up to do. [6]

Joshua Copperman: From the first bar chimes sound effect, I was worried, and I suppose my feelings didn't improve by the time the "tilted stage" line happened. On "Out Of The Woods", Antonoff and Swift brought out the best in each other (Jack's big choruses, Taylor's specific references), but on "Look What You Made Me Do", they bring out the worst (Jack's obnoxiousness, Taylor's pettiness.) Antonoff can do flamboyant earnestness, especially when it blends with Lorde's self-awareness and quirkiness; he just can't do dark and edgy. Or even campy, apparently: the glorious video mostly takes care of that, giving the song an intensity and glamour that it doesn't have nor deserve on its own. Yet even the video often misses the humor inherent in moments like the terrible rap in the second verse, or the already-infamous lift from "I'm Too Sexy". The ultimate effect is like John Green praising a burn of himself without realizing why the burn was deserved in the first place. In this case, it's one Taylor saying to another Taylor "there she goes, playing the victim, again", even though the preceding song couldn't even play the victim or villain well enough. [4]

Mo Kim: There was a time in my life when I looked up to Taylor Swift. I was eighteen once, clearing my throat of all the doubts that haunted it, and the only way I had to express myself was through songs about slights that exploded like firecrackers. But a voice with that strength comes with responsibility. Sometimes you need to stop reveling in the volume of your own speech to see the platform of power you stand on; otherwise you might build a version of yourself on the rickety foundation of innocence only to find it crashing down. On "Look What You Made Me Do," she's still trying for the pottery shard hooks that once made her so important to petty queer kids like me. It works in bits and spurts: that second verse is a bucket of water and an emergency siren to the face, and the pre-chorus utilizes a sinister piano and eerie vocal production to great effect. Too bad, then, that the flimsy chorus and winky-face lyrics cave in on themselves more easily than almost anything she's written before (like a house of cards, some might say). That it so blatantly abjects responsibility onto her audience, however, is the biggest point against it: instead of personability, or at least the pretense of it, there's just layer after layer of metanarrative. Instead of a telling that acknowledges her history -- a complicated, troubling, rich one -- there's just Queen Bee Taylor, sneering over a landfill heap of old Taylors before she discards of all her past selves. I used to hold stadiums in my chest as I listened to the stories Swift spun; now I feel like the lights have finally crackled out, and here she is, dithering in the debris of her crumbling empire, and here we are, looking down. [5]

Josh Love: If Taylor wants to go in, that's her prerogative, but because this is a song that none of us plebes can actually relate to, it's only fair to judge it solely based on whether it goes hard, and I'm sorry to report that Taylor has no bars. "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and "Shake It Off" seemed like wild stabs at first too, but they possessed an inclusivity that's curdled into Yeezus-level petulance here. There's nothing here to suggest she's capable of making Reputation her Lemonade. At least the video gives me some hope that maybe she realizes she's a complete dork. [3]

Anthony Easton: This is the hardest for me to grade, because I still don't know if it is good, but it is constructed in such a way that people like me (critic, liberal elitist, homosexual) are pressed to have opinions. It steals with such quickness, and with such weirdness that the opinions give birth to other opinons, somewhere between a snake hall and the ouroboros she already quotes. It sounds like Lorde, it samples Peaches, it plays with electroclash, which was a genre that was already heavily recursive. It tries to be without feeling, but it feels all too deeply. That is enough to spend time with, that is enough to unpack. It sounds like Lorde because they are both working with Jack Antonoff. Who is cribbing from who here? Is Lorde playing like Swift, is Swift cribbing Lorde's lankness, are both pulling outside of their influence, by the commercial, mainstreamed weirdness of Antonoff? Swift was always pretty; her main skill was using guile to a stiletto edge. This edges on ugliness, but it is still "ugly." Women like Peaches or the cabaret singer Bridgett Everett know how to sing, have the ambition to sing well, but chose to reject good taste for social and political power. Taylor playing with being ugly, with being flat, with kind of half singing, with no longer being the cheerleader, is not a formal refusal of beauty as a political means but has the louche boredom of a hanger-on, with maybe a bit of anger at not being cool enough. It's a capital blankness that raids and doesn't contribute. Part of the ugliness of Peaches, part of the joy of electroclash, is not only how it absorbs the amoral around it--Grace Jones, The Normal, Joy Division, Klaus Nomi--but that the sex of it works so hard. The fucking is less pleasure than hard work--the grit of dirt and sweat and bodies. When Swift quotes Peaches, she is quoting the reduction of pop to a stripping down of bodies through a formal aesthetic choice. When she quotes noir, it is an attempt to self-consciously think of herself as a body who is capable of doing real damage. Swift flatters herself as someone whose suicide could be a nihilist aesthetic gesture. She flatters herself as a fatale. She's still the kid who does damage, and plays naif. You can't be pretty and ugly. You can't be a naif fatale. You can't pretend not to care about gossip and make your career about what people think of you. You can only be so much of a feminist and rest on your producers this much, and you cannot play at louche blankness if it is so obvious how much work you are doing. This might suggest that I hate the song, but I can't. Swift doing an "ugly" heel turn fills me with poptimist longing, and I want to hear more. [9]

Eleanor Graham: There is a bit in an old Never Mind The Buzzcocks where Simon Amstell says to Amy Winehouse, "We used to be close! On Popworld, we were close." And Amy Winehouse runs her hand down his face and says, half-pityingly and to thunderous laughter, "She's dead." I don't really know why I'm bringing this up except to illustrate that a woman killing off her former self, against Joan Didion's worldly advice, has a kind of power. The crudest hyperbole. Like Amy in Gone Girl. You don't like this thing about me? You wish I was different? Well, guess what -- I'M DEAD! This line, which Swift delivers with the manic kittenish venom of Reese Witherspoon's character in Big Little Lies, is the only redeeming feature of "Look What You Made Me Do." And yet -- even as someone who has openly thrown politics to the wind in the face of such forever songs as "Style", "State of Grace" and "All Too Well" -- this single is too hallucinatory to be a flat disappointment. Quite aside from the Right Said Fred debacle, the "aw" is reminiscent of Julia Michaels, the second verse of a lobotomised Miz-Biz era Hayley Williams, the production ideas of a mid-2000s CBBC show, and the whole thing of a middle-aged man in a wig playing Sky Ferreira in an SNL skit. Disorientating. Almost euphorically horrible. Say what you want about T Swift, but who else is serving this level of pop Kafkaism in 2017? [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Weirdly, everything works for me sorta kinda with the second verse. The percussion thuds in the distance just a little more effectively, and Taylor's whining drone of a rap screams up into that high-pitched melodrama, only to crash and burn into an anemic "Push It," as written by someone who forgot Lady Gaga once could fool us into thinking she was funny. Past that subsection and prior, however, the record truly never clicks. You get the sense that Swift, someone so eagerly to seize the moment, doesn't realize that the horror campiness plays her hand too hard. [2]

Edward Okulicz: Saved from being her worst ever single by an out-of-nowhere, brilliant, Lorde-esque pre-chorus (and the existence of both "Welcome to New York" and "Bad Blood"), this is pretty thin gruel for the first single off a first album in three years. Remember how dense her songwriting used to be? See how clumsy it is on this. Taylor Swift's devolution from essential pop star to somewhat annoying head of a cult of personality is complete. At least there'll be better to come on the album. I hope. [4]

Rachel Bowles: I am guessing (and hoping) that "Look What You Made Me Do" is Reputation's "Shake It Off," a comparatively mediocre introduction to what is ostensibly a good album with some timeless songs ("Style" in particular on 1989). Functionally the same, both songs have to reintroduce Taylor in a new iteration to a cultural narrative she cannot be excluded from, both heavy on self-awareness and light on her signature musical flair. Where "Shake It Off" felt anodyne and compressed, "LWYMMD" is beautifully stripped back, chopping between lowly sung and rhythmically spoken word over a synthesiser, strings or a beat -- verses, bridges and middle 8's passing, though ultimately building to nothing -- the chorus of "LWYMMD" being the swirling void at its centre, one that cannot hold, however fashionable it is to build then strip to anti-climax in EDM and pop. What did Taylor do? The absence of her critical action, the bloody, thirsted-for revenge, can only leave us unsatisfied, like watching a Jacobean tragedy on tilted stage without the final release of death for all. What's left is a painful, public death of media citations of Taylor, played over and over, joylessly. [5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: 1989 is Taylor Swift's worst album, but that shouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing. For an artist whose vocal melodies were able to effectively drive a song forward, it was a bit odd hearing her rely so heavily on a song's instrumentation to do all the heavy lifting. Additionally, the painterly lyrics that drew me to her work in the first place were mostly abandoned for ones more beige (simply compare the most memorable lyrics from 1989 and any other album and it becomes very obvious). It didn't work out for the most part, but I was fine with the mediocrity. And considering how stylistically diverse the album was, I very much saw it as a stepping stone for a future project. Which is why I'm completely unsurprised by the doubling down of "Look What You Made Me Do" -- it's a lead single that's heavily tied to her media perception, finds her abandoning any sense of subtlety, and utilizes amelodic singing to put greater emphasis on the instrumentation itself. It's conceptually brilliant for all these reasons, but it doesn't come together all too well. Namely, the lyrics are almost laughably bad and distract from how physical the song can be, and her calculated attempts at announcing her self-awareness have reached the point of utter parody. That the music video ends with Swift essentially explaining the (unfunny) joke only confirms this. [3]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Every new Taylor Swift single is Vizzini from "The Princess Bride," letting us know that she knows that we know that she knows that we know that she is Taylor Swift, and since she knows that we know (etc. etc. etc.), she can be confident drinking the goblet in front of her, since she knows that she switched around the goblets when we weren't looking, and she's laughing like she's clearly outsmarted us, but little does she know that we've been building up an immunity to her odorless white poison for years. [2]

William John: The hyper-specificity is gone. There are no references here to paper airplane necklaces or dead roses in December or in-jokes written on notes left on doors. In their place, platitudes abound, choruses are forgotten, "time" rhymes with "time", and "drama" with "karma". The latter is pursued with a maniacal intensity, the parody spelled out rather brilliantly in "Blank Space" quickly undoing itself. Rather obviously, "Look What You Made Me Do" does not exist in a vacuum, and the timing and nature of its release are what render it particularly dismaying. Its author, not playing to her previously demonstrated strengths, is seemingly at great pains to fuel fire to certain celebrity feuds, all the while insisting on her exclusion from them. It wouldn't matter so much were she to denounce some of her new fans with the same fervour, but for some reason this era she's opted out of interviews, perhaps at the time when some explanation driven by someone outside her inner circle is most needed. It's one way to forge a reputation, indeed. I do like the way she screams "bad DREAMS!" though. [3]

Leonel Manzanares: An auteur whose entire schtick is about framing herself as a victim, now emboldened by the current climate to address "the haters" using the language of abuse, embracing villainhood. No wonder she's considered the ambassador of Breitbart Pop. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: "Don't you understand? It's your fault that I had to go and become a mean girl!" Yeah, okay, whatever, Ms. White Privilege. [2]

Anjy Ou: For the woman who singularly embodies white female privilege, it's kind of embarrassing that she doesn't have the range. [2]

Will Adams: If you had asked me three months ago, "Hey, between 'Swish Swish' and whatever Taylor Swift ends up putting out this year, which is the more embarrassing diss track?", I wouldn't have thought I'd need to think about the answer this much. [2]

Anaïs Escobar Mathers: "Taylor, you're doing amazing, sweetie," said no one. [1]

Sonia Yang: With an artist as polarizing as Swift, it's easy to make the conversation a messy knot about the real life conflicts she's had, but I find it more interesting to tune that all out and focus on the simplicity of her work as a standalone. "Look What You Made Me Do" is Swift at her most coldly bitter yet, but betrays the resignation of long buried hurt. It's "Blank Space" but with none of the fantastical fun; it toes the line between wary irony and jadedly "becoming the mask." Most telling is the dull echo of the song title in place of a real hook, which is actually a favorite point of mine. Reality doesn't always go out with a bang; it's more likely for one to reach a gloomy conclusion than stumbling upon a glorious epiphany. Musically, I'd call this an awkward transition phase for Taylor -- it's not her worst song ever, but it's admittedly underwhelming compared to the heights we've seen from her. However, I've sat through questionable attempts at reinvention from my favorite artists before and I'm still optimistic about the potential for Swift's growth after this. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: There is nothing Taylor Swift does better than revenge, and this is not that. This is the first Swift single that exists only in conversation with Swift's media-created persona -- even "Blank Space" turned on internally resolved narrative beats and emotional moments -- but it offers little for those who hear pop through celebrity news updates, not speakers or headphones. Compare "Look What You Made Me Do" to "Mean," a pointed and hurt missive that scarified its targets with dangerous care; this new single, however, barely extends beyond the bounds of Swift's own skull. "I don't like your little games," levels Swift, her voice venom, "the role you made me play." The central character -- the only character -- in this narrative is Swift, and she enacts an immolation. Her nastiness is the etiolated savagery of Drake in his more recent and loutish incarnation: lonely and lordly, "just a sicko, a real sicko when you get to know me." "I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time" could be Jesse Lacey on Deja Entendu but sunk into the abyss of The Devil and God -- only it's delivered over ugly, the Knife-like electro clanging. The line that succeeds is classic Swift in its brittle theatrics: "Honey, I rose up from the dead; I do it all the time." The spoken-word bridge -- the song's most blatantly campy and deliciously gothic moment -- acts as a witchy incantation, walking most precariously the line between winking vamp and public tantrum. Swift has brought her monstrous birth to the world's light; contra the title, what it is we've made her do isn't even apparent yet. [8]

Lauren Gilbert: I was 18 when "Fearless" was released, and listened to it on repeat my first term of undergrad, feeling freedom and joy and hope. I listened to "We Are Never Getting Back Together" on repeat in an on-again-off-again relationship that should have ended years before it did. I listened to 1989 over and over again after recovering from a nervous breakdown and for the first time, really, truly focused on choosing a life of joy. I should be Here For This. I am not. Pop music thrives on specificity, and Taylor Swift in particular has made a career of writing about hyperspecific situations. This is... generic; it could be sung by Katy Perry, by a female Zayn, by Kim K herself. Taylor offers no hooks to her own life here, and perhaps that's not a flaw; female songwriters have the right to choose not to expose their own lives, and to write the same generic pop song nonsense that everyone else does. But as someone who bought into the whole TSwift authenticity brand -- even while I recognized it as a brand, even while I knew that she was a multimillionaire looking out for her own interests first and foremost, even as she was the definition of a Problematic Fav -- I can't really say I care that much about new Taylor. I could fault Taylor's politics and personality -- and I'm sure other blurbs will -- but the primary failing here isn't Taylor's non-music life. It's that there's no feeling here; it feels as cynical as the line "another day, another drama". Next. [4]

Andy Hutchins: "I'm Too Sexy" + "Mr. Me Too" - basically any of the elements that made "Mr. Me Too" compelling = "Ms. I'm Sexy, Too." [4]

Tara Hillegeist: Let's leave this double-edged sword hang here for a minute: Taylor Swift's personhood is irrelevant to the reality that she is a better creator than she ever gets credit for. Since her earliest days of the demo CDs she'd like to keep buried, Taylor Swift has never been less interesting or more terrible on the ears than when her songs are forcibly positioned as autobiography. For a decade she has cultivated an audience of lovers and haters alike that never felt her--or truly felt for her--because she never wanted them to know her, driven to own her brand even as she's deliberately averred to own up to what lies behind it. Witness the framing of an Etch-a-Sketch of a song like "Look What You Made Me Do": she releases a song about vengeful self-definition mere weeks after finally winning a years-long case against a man who sexually assaulted her and tried to sue her to silence over it on the sheer strength of her own self-representation, and the air charges itself with intimations that she instead meant it for Katy Perry, whose flash-in-the-pan "friendship" she publicly and memorably disowned in a bad song about bad blood an entire album ago, or perhaps Kim Kardashian-West, a woman whose "feud" with her arguably began with Taylor Swift's attempt to paint herself as the victim in an argument with Kim's husband but ended inarguably and decisively in Kim's favor. To claim someone would mangle her targets so ineptly even the conspiracy theorists have to resort to half-guesses and deliberate misquotes to draw out the barbs is a claim it's especially ridiculous to pin on a musician like Taylor Swift, a control freak who once built a labyrinth of personal references into an album full of songs about protagonists nothing like herself just to prove a point to anyone listening to them that closely about how sturdy the songs would be without knowing any of it. A public conversation that misses the point this drastically can only occur if there's a deliberately blank space where any sense of or interest in the person it's about could exist. There is a hole where this most powerfully self-determining popstar lives where a human life has never been glimpsed--because she cast that little girl and her frail voice aside years ago in search of something altogether more influential than such a weak vessel could ever hold. The girl who cajoled her family into spending enough Merrill-Lynch money to cover for her inability to sing until she had enough professional training to sing the songs she wanted to put to her name was never the girl who could truly be a flight risk with a fear of falling, was never the girl who never did anything better than revenge. But she wanted to be the girl who sang the words for that girl, who put her words in that girl's mouth, more than anything else in the world. She staked her name on nothing less than her ability to capitalize on the reputation she acquired. The Taylor Swift of Fearless and Speak Now was a Taylor Swift who believed she could be someone else in your mind, a songwriter dexterous enough to slip between gothic pop, americana-infused new wave, and pop-punk piss-offs without shaking that crisply machine-tooled Pennsylvania diction. A decade on, she's learned a lesson enough women before her already learned it's shocking she wasn't ready for it: when you're a girl and you make something about being a girl, everyone thinks you just had yourself in mind. The proof that she was more than that--more than the songs on the radio, you might say--was always there; it wasn't hidden, it wasn't obscured. But from Red onwards that Taylor began to die; a straighter Taylor Swift emerged in more ways than just her hair, all the kinks ironing themselves out in favor of her remodeling herself into a different sort of someone else's voice. Where once stood a Taylor Swift who sang for the sake of seeing her words sung by someone else's mouth back to her, there now stood a Taylor Swift who sang everyone else's words about her back to them. Tabloids cannot resurrect a life that a woman never lived, and no amount of retrospective sleight of hand about the girl she might have lied about being can hide the truth that neither can she. Conspiracy theories only flourish when people treat the mystery of human motives like a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be solved--ignoring that she already made it clear that was, still and always, the wrong answer to the questions she wouldn't let them ask. She wanted fame, she wanted a reputation; she wanted them on terms she defined; she never wanted anything else half as much as she wanted that. She has used every means available to her to earn them. Her awkward adolescence took a backseat to her life's dream of conquering America's radio. It's no shock, then, that all this gossip-mongering rings as hollow as a crown. The messy melodrama of Southern sympathy and thin-voiced warbles that defined the sweethearted ladygirls of generations before her and beside her and will define those that come after her, the sloppy humanities of Britney and Dolly and Tammy and Leann and Kesha Rose; these fumbling honesties, these vulnerabilities have never been tools in Taylor's narrative repertoire the way she uses the white girlhood she shares with them has been. She owned her protagonists' anxieties; but those songs have never defined her. This was always the moral to the story of Taylor Swift, to anyone--condemning or compassionate--who cared to really hear it: behind her careful compositions and obsessive pleas, Taylor Swift was never interested in making herself a real person at all. That would have cost her everything she ever wanted. And we, the Cicerone masses, ought very well to ask ourselves, before we let that double-edged sword finally fall: would it have been any more worth it, to anyone, if she had been? [2]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#Taylor Swift #Look What You Made Me Do #reputatio

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technicaldr · 7 years ago

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How Doctors Should Respond To Negative Online Reviews

Most businesses have mixed emotions about online consumer reviews, but the doctor community has opposed consumer reviews of their services to an unusual degree. Why? Some possible explanations:

Doctors are sensitive about their reputation. Small business owners (including doctors) have strong linkages between their personal identity and the business’ identity, but doctors often take negative patient reviews even more personally than most business owners. Sometimes, this reflects the doctor’s passion for delivering high-quality services, so doctors are frustrated if they don’t achieve that goal. Other times, doctors may feel like the patients weren’t grateful, especially when the doctor did the best he/she could in complex circumstances.

Patient reviews matter. Historically, patient opinions about the quality of their healthcare didn’t matter too much. Many doctors got patients through hospital/insurance affiliations and referrals from other doctors. Patient word-of-mouth also played a role, but doctors who failed to keep patients happy didn’t always suffer the professional consequences. Now, because patients can speak publicly about their experiences and influence other prospective patients, they have new-found leverage over doctors.

Patients can’t judge the quality of medical advice. Doctors often complain that patients lack the medical expertise to evaluate whether the doctor gave sound medical advice. While doctors are the “experts” in the doctor-patient relationship, this usually overstates matters by a lot. Patients are more sophisticated about medical services than ever before (due, in part, to their independent Internet research), and patients often can and do obtain second opinions from other doctors. Furthermore, as I’ll discuss in a moment, patient reviews often address matters unrelated to a doctor’s medical advice, and in those cases the patients' lack of medical expertise is irrelevant.

Confidentiality obligations restrict doctors’ ability to respond. Unlike many other small business owners, doctors owe their patients a duty of confidentiality. As a result, doctors feel like patients can criticize their medical advice but the doctor can’t respond adequately due to confidentiality obligations.

Preying on these fears, for years an outfit called Medical Justice helped doctors suppress reviews by their patients. Medical Justice provided form contracts that asked patients to sign away their right to review the doctor or transfer the copyright in any unwritten reviews to the doctor. Many doctors--I estimate about 1,200 at the peak--embraced Medical Justice’s attractively pitched “solution” to the purported problems associated with patient reviews.

Encourage, Don’t Discourage, Patient Reviews

Everyone--even Medical Justice--now realizes it was a huge mistake to discourage patient reviews. Doctors should want and encourage their patients to write reviews because:

Most online reviews by patients are positive. The vast majority of patients’ reviews of their doctors are positive. Doctors should get the public accolades for the excellent work they do.

Reviews provide doctors with useful feedback. In addition to (rare) concerns about medical advice, patients may encounter issues with parking, office managers, billing practices, operating hours or bedside manners. Indeed, most patient reviews address issues other than medical advice (see this press release). While none of these detract from the quality of a doctor's medical advice, these issues do matter to existing and prospective patients. Patient reviews provide doctors with honest and incredibly valuable feedback about what they are doing right with their practice, and what aspects they might want to revisit.

Individual reviews may not be credible, but the wisdom of the crowd is credible. Doctors are sometimes petrified that a single patient will post an unfair review online, and that review will permanently damage the doctor’s practice. Although this fear is easily overblown (prospective patients typically don’t make such an important decision based on a single review), it is quite easy to avoid this issue. As the First Amendment maxim goes, the solution to “bad” speech is more speech. Consistent with the “wisdom of the crowds,” any individual review isn’t necessarily credible, but the aggregate assessment of all patients becomes increasingly credible as the number of reviews grows. If a doctor's only online review is negative, that review gains power from its uniqueness. By expanding the number of online reviews, prospective patients get a more complete picture.

This reinforces why Medical Justice’s so-called solution was so counterproductive. Doctors need a large enough set of patient reviews to achieve the wisdom of the crowds, yet Medical Justice helped and encouraged doctors to suppress patient reviews--increasing the odds that doctors would have only one or two patient reviews online, giving those reviews heightened significance for prospective patients who were starved for that information. Doctors who followed Medical Justice's system are now scrambling to grow their review numbers; those who never tried to suppress patient reviews have a decided advantage over them.

It is unethical, and perhaps illegal, to restrict patient reviews. Medical Justice’s contracts have not been definitively tested in court yet, so we don’t know for sure if they’re legal or not. However, efforts to restrict patient reviews face some serious problems, such as:

In the late 1990s, software company Network Associates tried to impose a contractual clause restricting buyers from publishing reviews of the software. In 2003, a New York court enjoined Network Associates from continuing to use that clause.

The U.S. Department of Health & Human Service’s Office of Civil Rights required a doctor to stop using Medical Justice’s anti-review form.

In one case where a doctor threatened to enforce the Medical Justice form against a patient, the patient instead preemptively sued the doctor. The court’s initial opinion signaled serious skepticism about the legitimacy of the doctor’s conduct.

Even more importantly than the legal risks, asking patients to restrict their rights sends a terrible message to a doctor's patients. Basically, it tells patients that the doctor doesn’t trust them enough to tell the truth online. That distrust, at the beginning of an often long-term and vital relationship, permanently undermines the doctor-patient relationship. How can a doctor expect patients to talk honestly and openly about their personal medical conditions, if the doctor has told them from day 1 that he/she don’t trust them to be honest elsewhere?

Dealing with a Negative Review

If the number of patient reviews is large enough, any outlier negative review will be diluted by the others. Still, some things a doctor might do in response to a negative review:

Learn from the review. Negative reviews offer doctors valuable feedback (no matter how poorly expressed), including feedback that patients are too afraid to tell their doctors directly. Doctors should try to overcome their emotional reactions to a negative review and think objectively whether the patient might have a point--and if so, how the doctor will improve his/her services.

Respond privately. If a doctor runs into an incredibly unhappy patient, it is worth trying to reach out to the patient privately. (Not all patient reviews are attributed, so this isn’t always possible). Doctors should show sincerity, sympathy and contrition. When done properly, doctors frequently can turn their worst critic into their most loyal ally.

Respond publicly only if necessary. Repeatedly, I’ve seen a doctor’s happy patients rush to the defense of a doctor under attack and independently rebut a negative review. If a doctor's patients are satisfied, the doctor can trust them to correct misinformation.

Where a review criticizes a doctor's medical advice, the doctor can’t respond with specifics about the patient’s circumstances (unless the patient consents), but the doctor can describe his/her standard protocols under specified conditions.

If the negative feedback is accurate, the doctor might apologize in public and explain how he or she will going to avoid the problem in the future. Patients don’t expect doctors to be perfect, but they do expect doctors to learn from their mistakes. Owning up to a mistake helps prospective patients trust their doctors even more. Note that responding to the review at all could provide extra visibility to the review, so public silence might be a rational choice.

Complain to review websites about fake reviews. Review websites often won’t intervene when doctors claim that reviews defame them, and they are not legally obligated to do so (or legally liable for their failure to intervene) due to a statute Congress enacted in 1996 (47 USC 230). However, if a doctor has credible evidence that the review is fake, review websites may be interested. Review websites hate fake reviews as much as doctors do.

Lawsuits are almost never a good option. Suing patients is a categorically bad idea, even if they’ve lied. Inevitably the patient will respond with a malpractice claim or will bring a complaint against the doctor's license to practice; a lawsuit calls more attention to the patient’s assertions (the Streisand Effect); doctors suing patients often look like they have something to hide; and perhaps most importantly, the doctor isn't likely to win. Over the past decade, I’ve identifiedabout two dozen doctor vs. patient lawsuits over online reviews. Doctors rarely win in court, and even worse, some doctors ultimately must pay the attorneys’ fees of their patients as well as their own. That’s a really bad business outcome.

The legal analysis is more complicated if the doctor can prove that a competitor or vindictive party is posting fake reviews. Those lawsuits are more winnable than lawsuits against patients, but often the time and costs required to win simply aren’t worth it. If a doctor decides to go this route, the doctor should clarify with his/her attorney what the ideal outcome is, the odds of achieving that ideal outcome, and how much it will cost to try.

Technical Dr. Inc.'s insight:

Contact Details :

[email protected] or 877-910-0004 www.technicaldr.com

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troyeeaz148-blog · 7 years ago

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Receive The Competitive Edge With These Recommendations On Parenting

When I initially wed, I didn't recognize there was a 50 percent chance that my marriage would end in divorce. Throughout our marital relationship, we had a kid and once again, I didn't recognize that there was a one in 6 chance my divorce would end up being "high dispute," which my kid would be used by a mad and vindictive ex to avenge the failure of our marriage. Throughout the years because my divorce, the mom's behavior has just magnified. Eventually, I came to learn the meaning of terms such as Adult Alienation (PA), Adult Alienation Syndrome (PAS), and Hostile Aggressive Parenting (HAP), and experienced how quickly the family court system can be manipulated by false accusations. In 1985, Dr. Richard Garner, a forensic psychiatrist, presented the concept of PAS in a short article, "Recent Trends in Divorce and Custody Lawsuits," where he defined PAS as "a disorder that develops primarily in the context of child-custody disagreements. Its main manifestation is the child's campaign of denigration against a parent, a campaign that has no validation. It results from the mix of shows (brainwashing) by the other moms and dad and the kid's own contributions to the vilification of the targeted moms and dad." A number of years later on, Ira Daniel Turkat introduced "Divorce-Related Malicious Mother Syndrome." Habits connected with both syndromes are fairly similar, incorporating hostile aggressive parenting habits in an attempt to alienate the kid from the other parent. The latter focuses on the mom's habits whereas PAS can relate to both the mother and the daddy. Presently, PA or PAS are the common terms used to define the practice of trying to alienate a child or children from a parent, regardless of gender. The American Psychological Association's (APA) main statement on PAS notes "the absence of data to support so-called parental alienation syndrome and raises concern about the term's use." The APA specifies it has "no official position on the supposed syndrome." Supporters versus PAS think it is a type of psychological kid abuse, and the APA's refusal to deal with PAS leaves "targeted moms and dads" lacking required resources to combat the problem. At the very same time, there are those who mark down the validity of PAS and believe it is utilized as an excuse by abusive parents during custody challenges to describe "the bitterness of their child or children toward them." In certain cases, that might effectively be true. In his post, "New Meaning of Adult Alienation: Exactly what is the Distinction In between Adult Alienation (PA) and Adult Alienation Syndrome (PAS)?" Dr. Douglas Darnall focuses on the behavior and defines "adult alienation (PA), rather than PAS, as any constellation of behaviors, whether mindful or unconscious, that could evoke a disruption in the relationship in between a child and the other parent." Basically, PA is teaching the kid to dislike the other parent, causing estrangement from the moms and dad. By focusing on the behavior, Dr. Darnall presents a more pragmatic technique to acceptance of PA by lawyers, therapist and household courts. The techniques or tools that parents use to alienate a kid variety from basic badmouthing the other parent in front of the kid; encouraging others to do similarly, up until the child is bombarded with unfavorable remarks on a daily basis; to reporting allegations of abuse or disregard to child protective services or household court. This habits is understood as Hostile Aggressive Parenting. One tactic that author John T. Steinbeck explains in Brainwashing Children is that some "hostile parents who remarry will have the child or children call the stepfather, 'daddy,' as a method used to devalue the biological parent." Adult Alienation Syndrome is a condition. Hostile Aggressive Parenting is the habits. Hostile aggressive parents are unable to proceed. They are stuck in the past and concentrated on avenging the failure of their marital relationship and the control they had during the marriage. They manipulate the household court and child protective services in an effort to continue control over their ex-spouse. They accept no responsibility for their actions, blame everybody, and position themselves above the child's own interest. Therapist turned family law lawyer Bill Eddy keeps in mind in his short article "Character Disorders and False Allegations in Family Court" that there is a "frequency of character conditions in high conflict divorce and custody cases in which incorrect accusations are used." The most widespread of these is Borderline Personality Disorder, followed by Conceited Character, and Anti-Social Personality Condition. This represents the lack of compassion towards the child's psychological state, and the capability to manipulate family court and child protective services so easily. Moms and dads with anti-social personality conditions will play the "victim." They are experts at controling and lying since they really think their lies to validate what they are doing. Not all children can be taught to dislike. Some have an extremely strong bond with the parent. Steinbeck also keeps in mind that in particular cases the "pushing away parent feels that the other parent has a strong, extremely practical relationship with the child or children and is crazily worried that this favorable relationship will in some way affect their relationship with the child." A child old adequate to decide with whom she or he wants to cope with may result in a turnaround of financial obligations, as the non-custodial parent is obligated to pay kid support and offer medical coverage for the kid. HAP may just be financially encouraged. Regardless of the intentions, attempting to push away a Parenting child from a parent using hostile aggressive parenting or adult alienation techniques is mental kid abuse. It is a lot easier to push away a child when the child is separated from the parent. False accusations to family court of abuse or disregard will significantly limit the relationship between the moms and dad and child and the limited time spent will be under supervision. The Requirement Divorce Decree has actually currently reduced the non-custodial parent to a visitor in the kid or children's lives by a visitation schedule of the first, third, and 5th weekends of the month. Now the parent is restricted to a "monitored" visitation schedule of 3 or four hours each month. Monitored visitation programs are simply as quickly controlled as family court, e.g., moms and dads merely have to employ at the last minute to look for rescheduling. Household court will constantly side with the allegations and the court moves really slowly. Depending upon the ability of an attorney, this duration of separation could last for months. This offers the "targeting moms and dad" additional time to teach the kid to hate the "targeted moms and dad," in addition to draining pipes the "targeted parent's" funds. An attorney once told me that "the only location people lie more than in household court is at a bar." Family court is pestered by incorrect accusations just because they are such an efficient tool to quickly sever the parent-child relationship. Family court does not prosecute versus false claims, which is why false allegations have multiplied. Allegations do not have to be particular. Some attorneys encourage clients to keep the allegations unclear so as not to opportunity including investigative companies such as child protective services, as their reports bring so much weight with the court. An allegation to household court may be as vague as "The father is a danger to the child." This suffices for the family court to purchase visitations kept or supervised, but not particular enough to include child protective services. Family court is a guilt-by-accusation system. When implicated, it is the responsibility of the accused to prove the claims false. The implicated parent will probably be court-ordered to monitored visitations with the child or kids, along with complete a mental examination and consult with mediators and parent organizers, all at personal expense. She or he also may pay for a forensic examination, likewise referred to as a Social Research study Assessment, to show the claims false. The accused parent will invest thousands, or maybe tens of thousands, of dollars proving the accusations incorrect - and in the end, find him/herself economically drained pipes and emotionally tired. An accused parent may lose a relationship with the child or children simply due to the fact that they lacked money to continue to combat. Regrettably, this also leads to a child losing a loving parent. David Levy, cofounder of the Children's Rights Counsel and author of The very best Moms and dad is Both Moms and dads, stated: "President Obama yaps about absentee dads who have to take obligation. (However) he might not recognize that there are countless moms and dads who want to be included (in their children's lives)." Battling for the "child's right to both moms and dads" is a pricey fight - both economically and emotionally. Lots of parents just lose due to the fact that they lacked loan. The option is to specify "in the finest interest of the kid" as "the kid's right to both moms and dads," and after that protect that right. Stop neglecting incorrect accusations. Not surprisingly, accusations need to be examined; nevertheless, if proven false, the moms and dad who made the false claims should be prosecuted. Order that moms and dad to finish a mental examination. Action in to safeguard the child when you hear your buddy or relative making unfavorable remarks about the kid's parent or other hostile aggressive parenting behavior. Let the kid understand that both moms and dads love him/her. Encourage those hostile parents to look for therapy to find closure and stop using the child to "get back at." One thing is specific: when a moms and dad is attempting to separate a kid from a moms and dad simply to avenge an unsuccessful marriage, the child suffers emotional pain. Due to the fact that this discomfort was induced purposely, it is psychological kid abuse. If you participate or enable hostile aggressive parenting habits in an attempt to alienate a kid from a moms and dad, you are an accomplice to mental child abuse. Stand and protect the child's right to both moms and dads.

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TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX

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TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX

TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX Download

TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX

Since there was so much interest in our past articles about Roblox we decided to stick to it. While writing and publishing these articles we noticed that our site is being visited by more younger audience. We at GameBag really enjoy this fact since we always thrive to expand our groups of viewers and followers.

The last article we published was about an MMORPG Hexaria that is still in development. This time, however, we are reviewing an Third Person Shooter. It’s quite a jump from an RPG game, we know, but as we’ve already said, our audience is large. Therefore we need to cover different types of things.

We will be talking about HEX, we’ll give you our honest opinion about it, as well as some facts that you should know. HEX Online is Roblox’s Premier Arena Shooter, an online FPS is you will. We won’t lie, it has a pretty addictive and dynamic gameplay. The best thing about it is that it’s pretty easy to learn.

The worst thing is that it is kind of pay-to-win oriented. This won’t be a problem if you’re playing for fun, and don’t have intention on reaching the leaderboards.

In hopes we sparked your interest for this game mode we are heading straight to the real deal. Enough chitchat let’s review the game!

HEX Online – Roblox First Person Shooter Arena – General Review and Opinions

As we’ve already said HEX is pretty easy to learn, but it is in fact quite hard to master. The fast paced gameplay has proved to be quite fun, even if it can get a bit confusing to newcomers. It’s pretty addictive as well though, so parents hide your credit cards!

HEX has a really good sound design, and really good coding as far as we understand. It is polished to the max, and there are very few bugs that we encountered. In addition to it’s simplicity in terms of learning, HEX also provides you with a fast progression.

You will get XP pretty quickly if you dedicate some of your time to this game. However there is a catch to this. HEX is kind of pay-to-win… This means that you will not be able to top the leaderboards without a few Robux spent on this or that. Luckily we have a free Robux generator, that you can use to gain Robux without spending money.

Be sure to check it out if you don’t feel like giving away hundreds of dollars.

Since the game is simple to learn and is hard to master you might find yourself annoyed by other players. Since the ‘pros’ in the game will constantly pull off cheap moves and annoy the hell out of you. This of course is justified since they too want to reach the top. But for us others that play for fun, it might seem unnecessary.

The other thing we found a bit annoying in the game is the bland gun design. Yes you do have different guns but it all comes down to the same thing. We understand the limitations of the Roblox engine, but take a look at Hexaria’s variety of weapons. Why couldn’t the developers implement something similar?

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Our Experience With HEX Online So Far – Impressions and Thoughts

Hex itself is pretty impressive, we had loads of fun playing it and testing it our for you guys. It’s very well coded and obviously lots of time, money and effort went into making it. The controls of the game are pretty basics, it’s the usual shoot-and-run game style. You walk around shooting people, pretty simple. The game’s sound design, although great, you won’t be paying too much attention to it probably.

The game is pretty generous with XP and leveling, it’s pretty fast and frequent. However, something the game is not generous about is the credit earning. This seems to be a problem with most Roblox game modes, the credits earning is legitimately too slow. This isn’t a problem with just our patience since this was discussed among other players as well. Even if you top the game, and play as best as you can, earn the MVP status, you still get barely 100 credits. If you don’t top the game and play averagely, you will get from 30-60 credits. This can prove to be quite annoying as anything worthy of buying is 2000-4000 credits!

The Robux shop can help you out with earning credits of course. The least you can get is 1,300 credits for 200 Robux. The ‘Best Deal’ is 32,000 credits for 5000 Robux. Luckily you have our Robux generator and it won’t cost you anything but a little time.

The guns are armor aren’t really that special either. Although the armor can look pretty awesome, the guns just don’t cut it for us. They are kind of ‘meh’ really, nothing special. Guns pretty much share the same stats and use different skins for them. This is probably to balance things out, but the developers could’ve really put a little more effort here.

Summary and Final Verdict – Is HEX Worth Playing?

We definitely recommend HEX, no way around it. Although it might not be for everyone, you should at least try it and see if it’s to your liking. The few game modes will keep the game interesting for quite some time.

But the best advice we have to give you is: ‘Keep your cool!’. Trust us the last thing you wanna do is get stressed and raged out about this game. It’s just simple fun and you should treat it like it is. You got killed by another player? Who cares, you’ll respawn in a matter of seconds.

The moment you start taking this game too seriously is the moment you will start to hate it. And we don’t want that to happen while playing games.

If you stumble upon a time of the day on the server when there are many people using cheap tricks, quit. Make a pause, come back later and we assure you the game will seem much better that way.

Or you can just spend thousand of Robux and dominate ten year olds in this FPS, the choice is yours!

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TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX

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TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX

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How can I tell what information an app will access or share? It’s not always easy to know what data a specific app will access, TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX hack or how it will be used. Before you download an app, consider what you know about who created it and what it does. The app stores may include information about the company that developed the app, if the developer provides it. If the developer doesn’t provide contact information – like a website or an email address – the app may be less than trustworthy.

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TPS Roblox Game Mode Reviews – HEX

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