#if we only limit publishing to people who can market themselves and their product on social media our books are going to be v. narrow

[imagineagreatadventure]

i keep thinking about how ridiculous it is for publishing companies to demand authors create a social media presence before they're even able to get published. just from a marketing standpoint even it doesn't make sense -- that's literally the publishing company's job to do that. to create the demand

i understand pushing it once the process of publishing is happening, there are book tours, interview, blah blah blah but the act of getting a book to sell shouldn't be the author's job. the author's job is to write a good book.

[roblogging]

Let me scream this, fanfic is the only form of literature that is divorced from capitalism

oh how i wish this were true 😖 i literally JUST wrote about the politicisation and capitalisation of fanfiction for an essay comp with my uni (i won :3) and UGH.

theoretically? yes! and being separate from capitalism is so important,,, not just for fanfiction but for literature as a whole? to be separate from this idea of profit, of your voice and ideas being profitable and marketable, of having to fit into a predetermined box for your voice and experience and words to be heard? capitalism ruins literature. it ruins freedom of voice when we see the demographic of those getting published (and like,,, that historically) but also it limits creativity and ideas when your focus is now on what's marketable and what's trending, and we go through waves of the same tropes/story being told over and over and over again until the next big trend hits. capitalism prohibits creativity. and theoretically,,, fanfiction is devoid from that, right? because we aren't profiting from it, we aren't buying it, and theoretically everyone's voice holds the same power and we aren't restrained by what's marketable and who's louder.

BUT realistically:

i mean obviously the first point - people selling binds. instantly bringing capitalism into fandom. fanfiction becomes capitalised on a monetary level.

but money isn't everything here i think! i think we have ideals in fanfiction/fandom that aren't necessarily about profit, but still uphold capitalist values.

especially over on tiktok, we see the same ideals through followers, likes, 'influencers'. we see it when cosplayers call themselves actors and want to use fanfilms for portfolios, we see it when fanfilms ask for money *before* content, which goes against the whole "fandom content is shared with you, not made for you" ideal, we see it when people start gatekeeping their ideas rather than sharing like we used to, etc etc - ideals of capitalism infiltrating. we start developing this hierachy of those at the "top" with more influence and more power and whose ideas we follow more, and those at the "bottom" start becoming more like consumers than enjoyers. fanfiction - and in turn, fandom as a whole - becomes a market. (and we see the same concept with hits and kudos on fanfics and how this determines what ones people think are worth reading)

we see it when people start criticising fics - again, not monetary but rather the same ideals - and determining which voices and which experiences can be heard, whilst the others are pushed aside. "no you can't write about this because i think it should be done this way and xyz and therefore your voice is irrelevant and we're going to cancel your fic online". people start determining whose voice can be heard and what the "right way" to do something is, the exact way they do in tradlit which is obviously dependent on capitalism now (which is a big part of why there's been a rise in selfpub recently)

we see it in the puritanical view people take towards fandom and characters - in the way certain ideals are restricted as being "too immoral" to write about and we end up, again, cancelling people (see here: period typical misogyny = the author being misogynistic and thus getting cancelled??) - we start, again, determining right and wrong ways of doing things and turn this sharing of ideas for fun from a hobby based mindset to more of a "i am a consumer and i am unhappy with the product i have received" type of mindset, which then leads to people making their ideas and works more "marketable" to the "consumer", and suddenly these capitalist values have changed the very way we produce content. are we doing X this way because we want to, or because people will get mad at us if we do Y?

we see SO many capitalist ideals in fandom that even if binds weren't being sold and fanfilms weren't taking extortionate amounts of money,,,, i still wouldn't say fanfiction is divorced from capitalism. i'd say we definitely have signs of the hierarchy, the restriction, the consumer x producer dynamic, and i'd argue that likes/followers/"the next big fic" etc etc are all signs of how fanfiction is infact not divorced from capitalism.

BUT!! my final point is that:

as a concept, absolutely it is! and in most instances, yes. fanfiction is divorced from capitalism - fanDOM is where it gets a bit trickier. but i think the big transition from more anonymous and communal ideas of fanfiction to a more interactive social media based one (esp platforms with high traction like tiktok) has meant that a lot of capitalist values (which are prevalent on SM in general) start infiltrating fandom so naturally because it's what we're used to! we're so used to the traction and the power and the hierarchy and the cancelling etc etc that we don't even notice it really. but fanfiction starts becoming more mainstream, people want traction, they evaluate the "market" and determine the best way to go about "selling" their fic, jump on the more "profitable" trends, etc etc etc. capitalism. hinderance of individual exploration and expression to appease the masses.

so theoretically and ideally? yes, fanfiction is divorced from capitalism. but realistically and in practice? no, because fanDOM isn't, and it affects fanFICTION

[nezumiva]

I assume this will somewhat be addressed in the podcast for Watanagashi, but I've been reading it with a friend(reread in my case), and the first 2 chapters have just been... really bad and pervy? I love the rest of this series, but god this has been a lot, and I know this is not the end of it. How do you deal with it, and address it to new readers?

Yeah...

It is a bit of an ever-present dilemma in Higurashi, unfortunately (and while it improves over time in When They Cry as a whole, it's unfortunately a bit of an issue in a lot of Ryukishi's work). I do think the chapters in and of themselves are very good, to be clear, but those types of jokes do tend to drag it down massively whenever they (however briefly) rear their ugly head. As it pertains to generally recommending the work, I'll get to that in a moment, but first and foremost I think it's just good to know the limits of your friends, if that's the sort of reading situation you're in. For me, and the people I know - we all definitely hate the unnecessary sexual humor, but we all also grew up on a lot of anime and manga, back in the late 90's and early 2000's, which had far less restraint about these things than it should have. Obviously it wasn't good, but while we dislike it, we tend to roll our eyes and muscle past if at all possible. Thankfully, in Higurashi's case, while it is often extremely obnoxious, it is easily ignored in the context of the story at large. That's us, though, and everybody's comfort level for ignoring that sort of thing is different. When it comes to general recommendations, there's just no escaping the huge asterisks you're going to have to attach to the work at large. Like many things I love with less than stellar aspects (problematic stereotypes in One Piece, similarly gross humor in Danganronpa, etc.) there's not often a way to soften the blow of these things for people who wouldn't have been able to power through regardless, and that's completely understandable. (And even if it's less problematic, obviously, Higurashi still has a lot of elements that are difficult to casually stomach regardless, so it does sort of inherently narrow the pool of people you can get into it, lol.) This doesn't really make up for it, obviously, but this is almost doubtlessly a product of the game's release timeline and where it was released, as well. This was a self-published game in the very, very early aughts being marketed to primarily otaku at Comiket. Galge was still very prominent, and while it has thankfully managed to grow beyond the need of being strictly pornographic (and thank god Higurashi never went that far), the kind of sketchy, ecchi variety of shit did unfortunately sell and draw more eyes to a game back then. Given how small 07th Expansion was (they only sold 2 copies of Onikakushi at the time, I believe), I wouldn't doubt they felt the need to shove things like this in to push units. (In a sense, I do think some of the tropes are there to be intentionally subverted. While most people know Higurashi has horror now, they didn't then, so in some respects Ryukishi was ripping the rug out from under people who just thought they were here for a dating sim, but attributing that to every instance of weird shit in Higurashi would obviously be oversimplifying the issue.) TL;DR: Higurashi is definitely a product of its time in many respects, and while I think it is a fantastic story that surpasses its occasional failings with gross sexual humor, that is an unfortunate mark of the time and circles it was made in. It may have been a play to help it sell, or to throw off galge genre readers, or both, but either way it still kinda sucks a lot. That is always unavoidably going to be a huge asterisk when recommending it to anyone in the current day.

[art-of-manliness]

Craft vs. Content: Resisting Mediocrity in a Dual-Existence Age

The writer Kyle Chayka recently had a piece in The Guardian called “The Tyranny of the Algorithm: Why Every Coffee Shop Looks the Same.” The article is, as the title suggests, about the way online algorithms have homogenized culture.  One part of the piece that particularly stood out is an exchange Chayka had with Trevor Walsh, who does marketing for a chain of coffee shops: ‘There’s this constant urgency to be producing content. We are constantly feeling like we have to be in people’s phones, be in people’s desktops,’ Walsh said. They had to fill the algorithmic feed. Simply existing as a coffee shop isn’t enough; the business has to cultivate a parallel existence on the internet, which is a separate skill set entirely. ‘It almost feels like, you must have a social media acumen, you must be savvy in this area that is adjacent to your business, but not directly embedded in your business, in order to be successful and visible,’ Walsh continued. Entrepreneurs and creatives of all types find themselves in a peculiar dilemma in the modern age.  Authors, for example, lament the fact that publishers will often only offer book deals to writers who already have established “platforms” (read: followers on FB, IG, Twitter, TikTok, etc.). But to grow their platforms, writers have to constantly be creating content for social media . . . making it difficult to find the time to work on their book. Some already-popular authors try to circumvent this catch-22 by hiring a social media manager, or a whole team of them. But that still requires these writers to spend less time and energy being creative and more time and energy being supervisors. And new and would-be authors can’t justify hiring a hype girl to promote their persona online.  Businesses and creators have, of course, always had to pay some attention to pleasing the public and advertising their wares. But there have been times when artists only had to please the whims of a single patron, and the marketing aspect of a modern creator’s job is, for several reasons, qualitatively different now and has arguably never consumed so much of their bandwidth.  The modern writer, artist, or entrepreneur is not only tasked with promoting the final product of their efforts, but sharing inside looks of their art in progress, and even offering tips on how the average viewer at home can improve their own craft.  A chef in 1985 might promote his restaurant by creating a direct mail advertisement — a one-and-done decision. Today, his marketing goes on daily, as he continuously shares videos, pictures, and ideas with the public. Making these posts to social media not only serves as an interruption to his work, but, because of the neurochemical spell inevitably cast by social posting, his focus will be further fragmented as he regularly checks back to see how his posts performed. Modern marketing becomes a feedback loop of concentration-dividing, deep-work-disrupting, creativity-killing distraction.  Our hypothetical chef not only has to promote his food, but has to promote himself, as a personality. While the personalities of artists, authors, and entrepreneurs have always been something in which the public has taken an interest, formerly, it was just a hinted-at backdrop, and the painting, book, or invention largely spoke for itself. Now, creators must share not only their creations, but snapshots of their private lives as well. This selects for, and limits, who will find success in the modern landscape. There is only one set of people who are willing to do the thing, and to talk publicly about doing the thing. As the overlap area on the Venn diagram of these factors is likely much bigger for extroverts than introverts, it’s the former who are much more likely to come to the public’s attention.  The catch-22 facing modern creators — the feeling that you can’t make it unless you promote your work online, but you can’t do good work if your bandwidth is always being siphoned off by the act of promotion — has serious implications for both individual… http://dlvr.it/T1tJ2P

[cindylouwho-2]

RECENT NEWS, RESOURCES AND STUDIES, early February 2023 (Part 2)

As promised, here is the second half of my early February news and resources update. This part includes general ecommerce news, social media, analytics and content marketing pieces, with a few other bits thrown in. 

You can find Part 1 here, including tops news stories, Etsy and general SEO news (mostly Google). 

Don’t forget to follow or connect with me on LinkedIn, where I will be posting more frequent news updates and articles, as Twitter is likely to become harder to use in the future.

SOCIAL MEDIA - All Aspects, By Site

General Before going further with your social media work, make sure you have figured out who your target audience is. Knowing who they are makes it easier to reach the right people. 

Making your social media accessible is a lot easier with this handy website Accessible Social, that explains all the best practices. For example, all hashtags should have caps at the beginning of subsequent words so that screen readers can pronounce them correctly. 

Mastodon is still growing, thanks to the exodus from Twitter, but the nature of the site means it is reaching some limits. “There are a lot of people who really don’t realize what they’re getting themselves into,” says Corey Silverstein, an attorney who specializes in internet law. “If you’re running these [instances], you have to run it like you’re the owner of Twitter. What people don’t understand is how complicated it is to run a platform like this and how expensive it is.”

Yet another “when to post” article (this one from Hubspot) but it also covers how often to post, which is a twist we don’t see all the time. Covers Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest. 

And because the sizes seem to change all the time, here is a list of the ideal image sizes for many social media sites, including Instagram and Pinterest.

Facebook (includes relevant general news from Meta) If you use Creator Studio, note that the main functions are moving over to Meta’s Business Suite, and Creator Studio will be closed permanently. Meta blames some of its layoffs in November on the lack of shopping growth.

Meta may have to make its data collection for personalized ads “opt-in” only, after they were fined €390m in Ireland. 

Instagram Turns out that not everyone wants to shop on Instagram after all; the “Shop” tab is being removed from the main page. Shopping will still be available, but will not be as obvious.

LinkedIn LinkedIn now allows users to select an SEO title and description for each article, including past ones.

TikTok TikTok is under fire for tracking journalists who publish stories on the social media company.  The company’s investigation, which was conducted by an outside law firm, revealed that the two journalists who had their data accessed by ByteDance’s Internal Audit team worked for BuzzFeed and The Financial Times. Forbes, however, says that three of its journalists were tracked: Emily Baker-White, Katharine Schwab, and Richard Nieva, all of whom worked for BuzzFeed until earlier this summer. The Financial Times says its reporter, Cristina Criddle, was tracked.”

TikTok staff have also been boosting their own videos as well as those of their family and friends. “

Yes, there is such a thing as TikTok SEO. And if you don’t like that article, here’s one that specifically focuses on the algorithm. 

YouTube When optimizing content on YouTube, you should be aiming for both Google and YouTube searches. The article includes several (free and paid) tools that give answers specific to YouTube.

ECOMMERCE NEWS, IDEAS, TRENDS (minus social media)

Amazon Amazon sellers now have access to great new analytics on how your buyers find you, and what people are searching for. 

Amazon’s weak 4th quarter mirrored that of Apple and Google. 

Amazon has agreed to settlements in EU anti-trust investigations. “The US ecommerce group has committed to increasing the visibility of rival products by giving them equal treatment on Amazon’s “buy box,” which generates the majority of purchases on the site. It will also create an alternative featured offer for those buyers where speed of delivery is less important.”

Did Amazon really bury Cheyenne, Wyoming post offices with too many packages the first weekend of 2023? They say no, but USPS had to shut 3 post offices due to the high volumes. 

Amazon’s new pilot program allows American customers to return their Amazon purchases at Staples locations.

BigCommerce BigCommerce site owners can now run ads with Microsoft without leaving BigCommerce.

eBay eBay is raising final value fees in many but not all categories as of February 15th. The biggest increases add another .35% to the existing fee, e.g, if the FVF is currently 12%, it will rise to 12.35%. 

eBay may be planning on using cell phones in account and bank verification in the future. Some sellers claim they were told they would need a cell phone by February, and an eBay employee confirmed phones that can receive text would be needed in some instances. It appears that only newer sellers need to worry about this. 

eBay is erroneously removing collectible stamp listings as it tries to enforce the rules on selling forever stamps.

eBay is updating item specifics requirements for numerous categories as of February 23, 2023; check out the list to make sure you are up to date. 

Shopify Shopify will be increasing all plan prices as of April 23. The yearly options have more than doubled. 

Walmart Walmart opened a new site to sell to small businesses. “The site focuses on products that would appeal to small business owners, like office supplies and furniture, snacks, food and beverages, restroom supplies, electronics and facility needs. Walmart says items are organized “in a way that makes sense to organizations.”

All Other Website Builders GoDaddy has introduced “managed” WooCommerce stores, which make it easier for Wordpress users to have an ecommerce site. The options apparently include integrations for marketplaces such as Google, Amazon and Etsy.

Payment Processing PayPal had a data breach back in December; around 35,000 affected members have been notified. 

Stripe will now be one of Amazon’s biggest payment processors in Canada, the US, and Europe, with Stripe now using more of Amazon Web Services in its business. 

Is the bloom already off the “buy now, pay later” rose? The major companies may have overextended themselves, and lawmakers and regulators are turning attention to the practice. 

Shipping Pitney Bowes released a combo printer/scale/rate checker for ecommerce businesses in the US. It currently costs $269 but will eventually go up to $369.

FedEx will no longer offer US SameDay City service after March 31. “Same day delivery will still be available through FedEx SameDay US and FedEx SameDay Freight.”

(CONTENT) MARKETING (includes blogging, emails, and strategies) 

This article claims most people use dark mode for emails, so you need to optimize for it. Not so sure about "most"- I use dark mode most places, but none of my email providers offer dark mode for the individual emails, just the home page. Still, useful info! 

You still have time to plan some content marketing for February; here are a few suggestions. Don’t forget some women do celebrate Galentines (February 13) instead of Valentines. 

And March marketing ideas include “National Old Stuff Day” on March 2, which seems perfect for vintage sellers. 

It may be time to make some changes to your email list practices. One suggestion is to send fewer emails [I already do that]. 

Mailchimp has been hacked twice in the past 6 months, and one of the victims this time around was WooCommerce. That means the data of WooCommerce users may have been retrieved, not just the info about WooCommerce itself. During the previous breach in August, Mailchimp said it enacted “an additional set of enhanced security measures,” but declined to tell TechCrunch what those measures entailed. With a near-identical repeat of its past breach, it’s not clear if Mailchimp properly implemented those enhanced measures, or if those measures failed.”

ONLINE ADVERTISING (NOT SOCIAL MEDIA OR ECOMMERCE SITES)

Google is being sued by the US federal and some state governments in an antitrust case regarding its advertising advantages. “The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products. It’s part of a new, if slow and halting, push by the US to rein in big tech companies that have enjoyed largely unbridled growth in the past decade and a half.” Google makes 80% of its revenue from online ads. 

If you are thinking of running ads on Google but haven’t started yet, this article will help you set them up. 

Google Ads are now allowing negative keywords at the account level. 

Search Engine Land did an excellent review of 2022 in online advertising. 

Decisions such as the Meta fine in Ireland (mentioned above) are one of the reasons that online advertising is undergoing a sea change. “If the current targeting methods become obsolete, advertisers must find other ways to drive profitable sales. One option is building first-party databases to create audiences without necessarily tracking those users all over the internet.”

Analysts predict that Google and Facebook will earn less than half of all online advertising budgets in the US this year, after almost a decade of dominance. Amazon is currently in third place and rising, while TikTok is gaining on Microsoft for fourth place. Google’s ad revenue was actually down in the fourth quarter compared to 2021. 

STATS, DATA, TRACKING 

Google will be closing Google Optimize at the end of September, shuffling at least some of its testing capabilities to Google Analytics 4. 

Haven’t set up GA4 yet? Google will start doing it for you in March. 

GA4 now has new dimensions and metrics specific to ecommerce users. 

Some people are having issues with GA4 tracking custom UTM parameters; here’s some background and tips to get things working again.

BUSINESS & CONSUMER TRENDS, STATS & REPORTS; SOCIOLOGY & PSYCHOLOGY, CUSTOMER SERVICE 

The 2022 holiday season saw spending rise, but most of it seemed to be due to inflation, as volume actually dropped over Cyber Week and Christmas. Inflation also cut into business profits.

IMAGES, VIDEO, GRAPHIC DESIGN, & FREE ONLINE TOOLS

Shutterstock has used member’s art to train its AI, but didn’t bother to tell users that. 

Looking for a new font? Check out these 20 free ones that came out in 2022.

Is your writing overly wordy and complicated? Try the Hemingway App as an editor. 

While we are discussing tools, I am posting this page again, as there are some new additions to Tiny Wow.

MISCELLANEOUS (including humour) 

Do you use a formula to set your product prices? If you use “cost-plus pricing”, be aware of its limitations. 

Web accessibility is about more than seeing and hearing. Cognitive differences and neurological differences can also limit some people’s use of your website.

[potteresque-ire]

This post is Part 5 of the five-part meta series on the Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) Incident, based on what has transpired up to 2021/08/22.

1) The 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) & the Yasukuni Shrine 2) Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations; “Every Chinese should visit the Yasukuni Shrine” 3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One 4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A 5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

As a highlight to the mob nature leading to Zhang’s downfall, please consider the timeline immediately before and after Zhang’s losing his endorsements on August 13th (or, why August 13th really mattered):

August 12th, evening: Zhang’s 2019 attendance of a wedding at the Nogi Shrine (乃木神社) went on Weibo hot search, and into public awareness. The Nogi Shrine (乃木神社) is of far less fame than the Yasukuni Shrine, but was named after a Japanese general of the Imperialist Japanese Army who was also the governor-general of then colonial Taiwan.

August 13th, ~ 2 am: netizens uncovered photos of Zhang’s 2018 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which were spread onto Weibo and made the hot search.

August 13th, 1:39 pm: Zhang posted his first letter of apology that began with: “Today, I’m ashamed of my once ignorant self, and furthermore, wants to apologise deeply for my past inappropriate behaviour.” (今天我為曾經無知的自己而羞愧，更要對之前不當行為深刻地道歉。)

August 13th, 2 pm: Nabuo Kishi, Japan’s current Minister of Defence, and a right-wing member of the House of Representative, Yasutoshi Nishimura, made an un-announced visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. The date was 2 days earlier than the 76th anniversary of Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech (August 15th), as customary for Japanese officials to avoid visiting the shrine on significant anniversary dates of the war.

August 13th, 4:39 pm: People’s Daily (人民日報) published an online critique of Zhang’s apology. “… As a public figure, to be so lacking in historical knowledge, so unfeeling towards the suffering of the nation, it’s too inappropriate. On matters of righteousness of the nation, testing is not permissible, challenges are definitely not permissible. If knowingly committed, one would pay a heavy price.”  (。。。身為公眾人物，對歷史常識如此匱乏，對民族苦難渾然不覺，太不應該。事關民族大義，不容任何試探，更不容有任何挑戰。若明知故犯，就得付出沈重代價。)

August 13th, 5:05 pm: CCTV News (央視新聞) posted the video of Nabuo Kishi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

August 13th, 5:33: Zhang was dropped from his first endorsement. He would be dropped by all 27 of them within the next 5 hours.

August 13th, 5:35 pm: Zhang responded to People’s Daily’s critique piece, stating he shall repent and learn his lesson, and that as a Chinese, he loves his country and the CCP.

August 13th, ~6 pm: S. Korean news reported that the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs had summoned the Japanese ambassador in Korea to protest the visit of the Japanese Defence Minister to the Yasukuni Shrine.

August 13th, 6:26 pm: CCTV News (央視新聞) critiqued Zhang’s apology. “Whether to take photos in front of the Yasukuni Shrine, or to attend a wedding at the Nogi Shrine, Zhang Zhehan touched the wounds of history, hurt the feelings of the nation. It cannot be blamed on “once ignorance.” Just now, a Japanese Minister went to the Yasukuni Shrine for “demon worshipping” (Pie note: demon, from guizi 鬼子), China firmly opposes to this wrongdoing of Japanese high officials…” (無論在靖國神社前合影，還是到乃木神社參加婚禮，張哲瀚都觸碰了歷史傷痕，傷害了民族感情，不能簡單歸咎為「曾經無知」。就在剛剛，有日本大臣到靖國神社「拜鬼」，中方堅決反對日本政要這種錯誤做法。。。)

August 13th, 9 pm: China’s Ministry of National Defence answered press questions regarding the Yasukuni Shrine visit by Nabuo Kishi and Yasutoshi Nishimura.

Not only did Zhang’s incident happened in August, 2021, it happened on pretty much the worst day for him in August, 2021; the latest of his incident interleaved the unfolding news of the Japanese high officials’ visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

What I’d like to call attention to, however, is this: Zhang’s endorsements didn’t begin dropping until *after* People’s Daily criticism.

If the companies had been genuinely offended by Zhang’s action, why was the wait necessary? If their Chinese feelings were genuinely hurt, why hadn’t they moved earlier, in the morning of August 13th, when Zhang’s visit went on hot search? Were these companies also ignorant about history, the significance of the the Yasukuni Shrine? The Chinese government has far more important things to worry about than an idol, but what about these companies that had paid good money for their spokesperson? That watch the public opinion, the market carefully?

Even if they didn’t care about the war themselves, why hadn’t they dropped Zhang based on the expected public opinion? What does that say about what these market experts believed, or knew about the public opinion? What does that say about their assessment of whether their potential customers would, as their actual selves, stop spending money on their products because of Zhang’s Yasukuni Shrine visit?

Were the act of dropping Zhang, then, more an act of performative patriotism than anything else? Once the first company started, the rest raced to follow for fear of being the slowest one, viewed as the least patriotic one. Hence, the 5-hour storm of endorsements abandoning Zhang. This herd ... mob behaviour, in which actions were either not taken or all taken at the same time, was also observed in the timing of different online platforms removing Zhang’s works, and fandom content with his name.

A “bingo card” for netizens to cross out Zhang’s endorsements as the sequential drops happened. Similar cards for Kris Wu had circulated in July. 

Were WoH and Zhang’s other group projects removed because Zhang was unpatriotic, or was it because the online platforms (and the tech giants behind them) were trying to protect themselves? Youku explained WoH’s first-time removal as a technical glitch but then, as reports of other platforms removing Zhang’s content poured in, the series was removed again.  

How much is real when it comes to the thunderous online declarations of love and betrayal against China? 

Related to this: turtles may remember the Xinjiang cotton incident in March, 2021, how Chinese netizens harassed anyone who used, endorsed Nike. One may assume, with that outcry, that rage, that anyone with a reputation to keep, with ties to the Chinese state, in particular, have severed their ties with the brand.

As it turns out, the teams of the Chinese Super (Football) League, for example, have kept their Nike kits. The Chinese Football Association (CFA), which, despite being officially non-governmental and nonprofit, is managed by the State General Administration of Sports (國家體育總局), issued a statement on March 27th on Weibo that only criticised Nike’s “wrong actions in choosing its cotton source” (對耐克公司在棉花原料選擇上的錯誤行徑表達了譴責), and reserved “its right to further deal with  contract with Nike” (保留進一步處理同耐克合同的權力). It never cut off the contract with Nike: a 10-year sponsorship,  signed in 2018, which amounts to 3 million RMB (463,000 USD) in funds from Nike for each football club every year. The CFA statement was later removed from Weibo. Photos of the football players have simply had the Nike Swoosh covered up, or photoshopped away. 

Photos from the Shanghai Shenhua football club, with and without the swoosh (Source).

Life is practical in China … and darkly humorous, at times. As a Mao-founded regime should be, perhaps.

I got Asks wondering then: will our non-Zhang-related favourite stars and CPs, dramas and fandoms get affected by the incident?

At the moment, my guess leans towards a no. My basis is this: in the critique piece against Zhang, published on 2021/08/16, by 中纪委 Central Commission for Discipline Inspection—the CCDI, by the way, is the highest anti-corruption, rules and regulations body in China—I believe the reason Zhang was disciplined was clearly stated:

對於所有「拜鬼」行為，中國都堅決反對。但如果我們國內的公眾人物去靖國神社都不被譴責和追究，我們又怎麼挺直腰桿要求外國人不去呢？

“Regarding all “demon worship” behaviour, China holds firm oppositions. But if our own public figures going to the Yasukuni Shrine get no reprimands, no investigations of responsibility, how can we straighten our backs and demand foreigners to not go?”

This has led me to think the state has no ulterior motives in targeting Zhang: Zhang’s “sin” was limited to his visiting the Yasukuni Shrine as a well-known, public figure, and/but that was enough. And the punishment had to be given in a heavy-handed, high profile manner, given the “news “of Zhang’s visit broke out on August 13, 2021. The following observation may be my being over-sensitive, but in the timeline above, Zhang was reprimanded, and his first round of the punishment in full swing (dropping of endorsements), before the China’s Ministry of National Defence talked to the press, which happened later than it had to be (compare the timing with S. Korea’s). Short of removing Zhang’s hot searches—which netizens would’ve noticed—this ordering of events was necessary; otherwise, the Chinese government issuing a formal complaint against Japan for their Minister of Defence’s visit to the shrine would’ve co-existed on the hot search with the report of China’s own celebrity visiting the same place. I therefore believe the state’s reaction had nothing to do with how Zhang achieved his fame, the past and present projects he was involved in, the CPs he was coupled with. Other state agencies and media would likely be careful about not attaching these topics to Zhang’s case as well, so not to distract from the central message of the government that … the Japanese are very bad people in the summer of 2021.

(Whether they’ll attach them to the Clear and Bright campaign is another matter.) 

Another Ask ~ Will Zhang be able to make a comeback? In five years? Ten?

Looking that far ahead is difficult, but one thing has to happen for Zhang to return—the Japanese have to stop being very bad people according to the Chinese government, which isn’t likely to happen soon. The Japanese government has shown few signs that they shall soon revise their attitudes towards their World War II history  (Yasutoshi Nishimura, who went to the Shrine with Japan’s Minister of Defence on August 13th, is associated with a historical revisionist group), while China’s escalating military aggression in the Indo-Pacific region will be seen as a growing threat to Japan, likely push the country towards the right. 

And 5, 10 years later, Zhang will be 35, 40 years old. Even if he’ll be able to work in the industry again, it’ll be difficult for him to achieve the fame he has before. Also, just because the government no longer bans him doesn’t mean production companies will be willing to hire him; he’ll be considered high risk—policies of China are volatile, after all, and the decision to un-ban can be easily reversed.

(I’m so sorry, Anon, I wish I have a better answer for you.)

And... here’s a thought I’ll finally end this meta series with. I don’t see Zhang as the only loser in this incident. I don’t really see any winners in this incident at all. An industry is dangerous for its every worker if its narrative, its list of guilty is penned by cyber mobs and in the name of patriotism; if the accused cannot speak for themselves, aren’t allowed to grow; if its rules of appropriate conduct are every-changing (The Reporter in 2017 = OK; Zhang in 2018 = Not OK); if its workers are penalised not by their own deeds but their associations (the rest of the cast and production team of WoH and other Zhang-associated projects).

The think tank for the National Ratio and Television Authority (國家廣播電視總局; NRTA, ie, the Chinese visual media censorship board), in their criticism piece about Zhang, hinted at even rougher waters ahead, in light of Zhang’s (and Kris Wu’s) transgressions:

明星頻頻「犯事」，說到底還是行業內對明星藝德約束不夠嚴格。據瞭解，電影行業正在籌備全國電影界道德委員會，將對電影從業人員道德規範提出更高要求，並提出，要將明星藝德納入法治化的軌道中來，給明星藝德約束加一道法規之鎖，明確明星的責任和義務，將明星的個人行為與職業利益掛鈎。 “The ultimate cause of stars “getting into trouble” frequently is that the industry has not tied a sufficiently severe bind on the stars’ artistic virtue (Pie note: roughly, = professional ethics). Based on reports, the film industry is preparing a National Film Industry Morality Committee that shall raise the moral requirements for film industry workers. The industry has also suggested that the stars’ artistic virtue shall eventually be governed by laws, to add a lock of legality to the bind of artistic virtues for the stars, to make clear the stars’ responsibilities and obligations, to couple a star’s personal behaviour with their professional (monetary) gains.”

My interpretation of this: should the suggestions become reality, it shall be written in future film contracts that a star who commits an act that the state considers immoral will have to pay the investors the production cost of their projects, and possibly, the projected profit. 

To put some dollar signs to this interpretation: a high-profile star may work on one or more projects with a price tag in the order of 100 million RMB (~15 million USD); box office, merchandise sells, and long term profits expected from online streaming can raise that number by several fold. This is a sum that even the most affluent stars will have a difficult time affording—and that’s before considering the endorsements, for which current contracts already require the stars to pay the damages.

The key word here is that the offending act only has to be considered immoral, not criminal. Immoral acts range from not liking the CCP enough—an easy-to-understand offence—to deviation from the society’s 公序良俗 (“public order and fine customs”), which includes just about anything that disagrees with the state-defined mainstream values.

Stars are stars because they invite the imaginations of their audience, because they break boundaries: from the seemingly insurmountable humdrum of daily life, to something that can be much, much more.

Stars should, of course, be law-abiding; they should be patriotic. But a star who’s mainstream in every way? Are they still a star, something we regular people wonder about, dream upon?

Bind and lock, the NRTA think tank referred to these suggestions. It reminders me of a quote by the famous Chinese director, Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛), who, in 2014, complained to BBC—perhaps in a slip of tongue—that Chinese directors could be like “dancing with fetters” (戴著腳鐐去跳舞) when working with the country’s censorship system.

Yeah. It’s kinda like that.

===

The Zhang Zhehan Incident Meta Series:

PART 1  PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 <- YOU ARE HERE

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Patent troll's IP more powerful than Apple's

I was 12 years into my Locus Magazine column when I published the piece I'm most proud of, "IP," from September 2020. It came after an epiphany, one that has profoundly shaped the way I talk and think about the issues I campaign on.

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That revelation was about the meaning of the term "IP," which had been the center of this tedious linguistic cold war for decades. People who advocate for free and open technology and culture hate the term "IP" because of its ideological loading and imprecision.

Ideology first: Before "IP" came into wide parlance - when lobbyists for multinational corporations convinced the UN to turn their World Intellectual Property Organization into a specialized agency, we used other terms like "author's monopolies" and "regulatory monopolies."

"Monopoly" is a pejorative. "Property" is sacred to our society. When a corporation seeks help defending its monopoly, it is a grubby corrupter. When it asks for help defending its property, it is enlisting the public to defend the state religion.

Free culture people know allowing "monopolies" to become "property" means losing the battle before it is even joined, but it is frankly unavoidable. How do you rephrase "IP lawyer" without conceding the property point? "Trademark-copyright-patent-and-related-rights lawyer?"

Thus the other half of the objection to "IP": its imprecision. Copyright is not anything like patent. Patent is not anything like trademark. Trade secrets are an entirely different thing again. Don't let's get started on sui generis and neighboring rights.

And this is where my revelation came: as it is used in business circles, "IP" has a specific, precise meaning. "IP" means, "Any law, policy or regulation that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics and customers."

Copyright, patent and trademark all have limitations and exceptions designed to prevent this kind of control, but if you arrange them in overlapping layers around a product, each one covers the exceptions in the others.

Creators don't like having their copyrights called "author's monopolies." Monopolists get to set prices. All the copyright in the world doesn't let an author charge publishers more for their work. The creators have a point.

But when author's monopolies are acquired by corporate monopolists, something magical and terrible happens.

Remember: market-power monopolies are still (theoretically) illegal and when companies do things to maintain or expand their monopolies, they risk legal jeopardy.

But: The corporate monopolist who uses IP to expand their monopoly has no such risk. Monopolistic conduct in defense of IP enjoys wide antitrust forbearance. What's the point of issuing patents or allowing corporations to buy copyrights if you don't let them enforce them?

The IP/market-power monopoly represents a futuristic corporate alloy, a new metal never seen, impervious to democratic control.

Software is "IP" and so any device with software in it is like beskar, a rare metal that can be turned into the ultimate corporate armor.

No company exemplifies this better than Apple, a company that used limitations on IP to secure its market power, then annihilated those limits so that no one could take away its market power.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay

In the early 2000s, Apple was in trouble. The convicted monopolist Microsoft ruled the business world, and if you were the sole Mac user in your office, you were screwed.

When a Windows user sent you a Word file, you could (usually) open it in the Mac version of Word, but then if you saved that file again, it often became forever cursed, unopenable by any version of Microsoft Office ever created or ever to be created.

This became a huge liability. Designers started keeping a Windows box next to their dual processor Power Macs, just to open Office docs. Or worse (for Apple), they switched to a PC and bought Windows versions of Adobe and Quark Xpress.

Steve Jobs didn't solve this problem by begging Bill Gates to task more engineers to Office for Mac. Instead, Jobs got Apple techs to reverse-engineer all of the MS Office file formats and release a rival office suite, Iwork, which could read and write MS Office files.

That was an Apple power move, one that turned MS's walled garden into an all-you-can-eat buffet of potential new Mac users. Apple rolled out the Switch ads, whose message was, "Every MS Office file used to be a reason *not* to use a Mac. Now it's a reason to switch *to* a Mac."

More-or-less simultaneously, though, Apple was inventing the hybrid market/IP monopoly tool that would make it the most valuable company in the world, in its design for the Ipod and the accompanying Itunes store.

It had a relatively new legal instrument to use for this purpose: 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act; specifically, Section 1201 of the DMCA, the "anti-circumvention" clause, which bans breaking DRM.

Under DMCA 1201, if a product has a copyrighted work (like an operating system) and it has an "access control" (like a password or a bootloader key), then bypassing the access control is against the law, even if no copyright infringement takes place.

That last part - "even if no copyright infringement takes place" - is the crux of DMCA 1201. The law was intended to support the practices of games console makers and DVD player manufacturers, who wanted to stop competitors from making otherwise legal devices.

With DVD players, that was about "region coding," the part of the DVD file format that specified which countries a DVD could be played back in. If you bought a DVD in London, you couldn't play it in Sydney or New York.

Now, it's not a copyright violation to buy a DVD and play it wherever you happen to be. As a matter of fact, buying a DVD and playing it is the *opposite* of a copyright infringement.

But it *was* a serious challenge to the entertainment cartel's business-model, which involved charging different prices and having different release dates for the same movie depending on where you were.

The same goes for games consoles: companies like Sega and Nintendo made a lot of money charging creators for the right to sell games that ran on the hardware they sold.

If I own a Sega Dreamcast, and you make a game for it, and I buy it and run it on my Sega, that's not a copyright infringement, even if Sega doesn't like it. But if you have to bypass an "access control" to get the game to play without Sega's blessing, it violates DMCA 1201.

What's more, DMCA 1201 has major penalties for "trafficking in circumvention devices" and information that could be used to build such a device, such as reports of exploitable flaws in the programming of a DRM system: $500k in fines and a 5 year sentence for a first offense.

Deregionalizing a DVD player or jailbreaking a Dreamcast didn't violate anyone's copyrights, but it still violated copyright law (!). It was pure IP, the right to control the conduct of critics (security researchers), customers and competitors.

In the words of Jay Freeman, it's "Felony contempt of business-model."

And that's where the Ipod came in. Steve Jobs's plan was to augment the one-time revenue from an Ipod with a recurrent revenue stream from the Itunes store.

He exploited the music industry's superstitious dread of piracy and naive belief in the efficacy of DRM to convince the record companies to only sell music with his DRM wrapper on it - a wrapper they themselves could not authorize listeners to remove.

Ever $0.99 Itunes purchase added $0.99 to the switching cost of giving up your Ipod for a rival device, or leaving Itunes and buying DRM music from a rival store. It was control over competitors and customers. It was IP.

If you had any doubt that the purpose of Ipod/Itunes DRM was to fight competitors, not piracy, then just cast your mind back to 2004, when Real Media "hacked" the Ipod so that it would play music locked with Real's DRM as well as Apple's.

http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3387871/Apple+RealNetworks+Hacked+iPod.htm

Apple used DMCA 1201 to shut Real down, not to stop copyright infringement, but to prevent Apple customers from buying music from record labels and playing them on their Ipods without paying Apple a commission and locking themselves to Apple's ecosystem, $0.99 at a time.

Pure IP. Now, imagine if Microsoft had been able to avail itself of DMCA 1201 when Iwork was developed - if, for example, its "information rights management" encryption had caught on, creating "access controls" for all Office docs.

There's a very strong chance that would have killed Apple off before it could complete its recovery. Jobs knew the power of interoperating without consent, and he knew the power of invoking the law to block interoperability. He practically invented modern IP.

Apple has since turned IP into a trillion-dollar valuation, largely off its mobile platform, the descendant of the Ipod. This mobile platform uses DRM - and thus DMCA 1201 - to ensure that you can only use apps that come from its app store.

Apple gets a cut of penny you spend buying an app, and every penny you spend within that app: 30% (now 15% for a minority of creators after bad publicity).

IP lets one of the least taxed corporations on Earth extract a 30% tax from everyone else.

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Remember, it's not copyright infringement for me to write an app and you to buy it from me and play it on your Iphone without paying the 30% Apple tax.

That's the exact opposite of copyright infringement: buying a copyrighted work and enjoying it on a device you own.

But it's still an IP violation. It bypasses Apple's ability to control competitors and customers. It's felony contempt of business-model.

It shows that under IP, copyright can't be said to exist as an incentive to creativity - rather, it's a tool for maintaining monopolies.

Which brings me to today's news that Apple was successfully sued by a patent troll over its DRM. A company called Personalized Media Communications whose sole product is patent lawsuits trounced Apple in the notorious East Texas patent-troll court.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-19/apple-told-to-pay-308-5-million-for-infringing-drm-patent

After software patents became widespread - thanks to the efforts of Apple and co - there was a bonanza of "inventors" filing garbage patents with the USPTO whose format was "Here's an incredibly obvious thing...*with a computer*." The Patent Office rubberstamped them by the million.

These patents became IP, a way to extract rent without having to make a product. "Investors" teamed up with "inventors" to buy these and impose a tax on businesses - patent licensing fees that drain money from people who make things and give it to people who buy things.

They found a court - the East Texas court in Marshall, TX - that was hospitable to patent trolls. They rented dusty PO boxes in Marshall and declared them to be their "headquarters" so that they could bring suits there.

Locals thrived - they got jobs as "administrators" (mail forwarders) for the thousands of "businesses" whose "head office" was in Marshall (when you don't make a product, your head office can be a PO box).

Productive companies facing hundreds of millions - billions! - in patent troll liability sought to curry favor with locals (who were also the jury pool) by "donating" things to Marshall, like the skating rink Samsung bought for the town.

https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-south-korea-s-samsung-built-the-only-outdoor-skating-rink-in-texas

Patent, like copyright, is supposed to serve a public purpose. There are only two clauses in the US Constitution that come with explanations (the rest being "truths held to be self-evident"): the Second Amendment and the "Progress Clause" that creates patents and copyrights.

Famously, the Second Amendment says you can bear arms as part of a "well-regulated militia."

And the Progress Clause? It extends to Congress the power to create patents and copyrights "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts."

I'm with Apple in its ire over this judgment. Sending $308.5m to a "closely held" patent troll has nothing to do with the "Progress of Science and useful Arts."

But it has *everything* to do with IP.

If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me If copyright law can let Apple criminalize - literally criminalize - you selling me your copyrighted work, then there's no reason to hate on patent trolls.

They're just doing what trolls do: blocking the bridge between someone engaged in useful work and the customers for that work, and extracting a toll. It's not even 30%.

There is especial and delicious irony in the fact that the patent in question is a DRM patent: a patent for the very same process that Apple uses to lock down its devices and prevent creators from selling to customers without paying the 30% Apple Tax.

But even without that, it's as good an example of what an IP marketplace looks like: one in which making things becomes a liability. After all, the more you make, the more chances there are for an IP owner to demand tax from you to take it to market.

The only truly perfect IP is the naked IP of a patent troll, the bare right to sue, a weapon made from pure abstract legal energy, untethered from any object, product or service that might be vulnerable to another IP owner's weapons.

A coda: you may recall that Apple doesn't use DRM on its music anymore: you can play Itunes music on any device. That wasn't a decision Apple took voluntarily: it was forced into it by a competitor: Amazon, an unlikely champion of user rights.

In 2007, the record labels had figured out that Apple had lured them into a trap, selling millions of dollars worth of music that locked both listeners and labels into the Itunes ecosystem.

In a desperate bid for freedom, they agreed to help Amazon launch its MP3 store - all the same music, at the same prices...without DRM. Playable on an Ipod, but also on any other device.

Prior to the Amazon MP3 store, the market was all DRM: you could either buy Apple's DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or you could buy other DRM music and play it on a less successful device.

The Amazon MP3 store (whose motto was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me") changed that to "Buy Apple DRM music and play it on your Ipod, or buy Amazon music and play it anywhere." That was the end of Apple music DRM.

So why hasn't anyone done this for the apps that Apple extracts the 30% tax on? IP. If you made a phone that could play Ios apps, Apple would sue you:

https://gizmodo.com/judge-tosses-apple-lawsuit-against-iphone-emulator-in-b-1845967318

And if you made a device that let you load non-App Store apps on an Iphone, Apple would also sue you.

Apple understands IP. It learned the lesson of the Amazon MP3 store, and it is committed to building a world where every creator pays a tax to reach every Apple customer.

[themelodicenigma]

I’ve seen a lot more talks recently going around about Ultimanias, Benny Matsuyama, Maiden, etc. Here, on the Twitter...If there is one thing I’m genuinely curious about, is what exactly sets everyone’s understanding about epitexts? For supplemental materials like guidebooks or reference/fan books and how exactly they’re produced? How much do you understand about the history of Studio BentStuff and their way of making said materials, or even about anything related to authorship and publication?

There are just too many things thrown around so easily on the internet these days, not enough productive conversations about these things man. It’s...weird.

It’s easier to have a conversation with someone if I understand their foundational logic for this stuff, because a lot of the things I see are very strange. Or at the least, isn’t practical for what goes behind the production of these types of materials. Authorship and production knowledge is important—having a pragmatic approach for having a sense of what happens “behind the books” is a must have for decent conversations about guidebook/fan book making. Whether it’s for materials that are purely informational, for entertainment and uniqueness, or the sweet spots between—right where BentStuff typically specializes in.

There are SOOO many companies, SOOO many writers and editors, that exist and create this stuff, obviously going way beyond just Japanese related companies like that of the Famitsu, Dengeki, or V-Jump brands. But, obviously given the tags, FFVII or Square Enix games are the topic for today, along with BentStuff. For this stuff (heh), there has always been more than just Studio BentStuff, and even for them, the foundation of how they make their books is what makes them, I’d say, one of the best companies that do what they do. And what they do, how they get it done, was always set before the Ultimania series. If you don’t know about how they made their ALL ABOUT series or their Kaitai Shinsho (解体真書) series, then you don’t really know about the Ultimania—the former two being the heart of the “research and analysis” and “project”-minded approach they use to create that series. I know many don’t understand Japanese or don’t want to go through the trouble of working out translations, but....there is SO much information out there, on their website, in their books. And to be honest, so many of these misunderstandings start to not make sense to me when we have had whole online communities for decades dedicating themselves to translate stuff and provide information.

We can regurgitate the same quotes from the same books for 20 years, making circular arguments, but not talk about this in-depth?

I’ve been planning on releasing this huge thing, this “archive” essentially, of information about BentStuff, but I’ve realized that it’s honestly easier to talk about these things on a more case by case basis with interested people. Because there’s a lot, and I want to be able to talk to people about this stuff so people can really get where I’m coming from. Maybe I’ll post something at a later time to get something started, but this would definitely be a thread where it could start.

But, like, I gotta cover something I saw recently.

Honestly what set this off for me is someone saying that Matsuyama is a “rando writer” (as in being external to BentStuff) or was “commissioned” to write the Diary Entries or Maiden....

It’s just...so interesting the amount of confidence one has when saying these things without any of the proper evidence or understanding on the subject. I’m not trying to be harsh, but, it’s just weird. I just want to throw this out there, real quick:

Matsuyama essentially co-founded Studio BentStuff along with a few other writers from the BASIC magazine company, the lead in that being Akira Yamashita, who is the CEO. Matsuyama is one of the Directors of the company, along with Ichiro Tezuka, a name ya’ll probably recognize from FFIV stuff. This company was built by writers and lead by writers, but many others (some from BASIC too) eventually joined them to create what we have now. He ain’t no “external” nothing, though when it comes to their published books, it is true he didn’t do much until the FFVII Kaitai Shinsho. 

Also, BentStuff write and edit [proofread] their own books, even if there are others who will supplement this, typically the publishing editors. e.g. like with Kaitai, those in the Famitsu editing department (whoever published Famitsu at the time) or for the Ultimania, editors from SE. Naturally that is to say, they get whatever they need if they can from the developers of what book their making—this is the same for any company who makes guides, really, if they have the opportunity to be in further contact with them. However, that caption of a picture you keep quoting from the book? A line from the character profile? Story Playback? You can literally see in the back of the book who was in charge of writing that—go read their staff comments on their website (if you don’t feel like translating like I did, just use Google, you can at least get a general gist for most comments). There’s a lot (they stopped including comments around the FFXII Battle Ultimania), with Ultimania being the latest series, but check out ALL ABOUT and Kaitai Shinsho stuff, too, but there’s even stuff for Dragon Quest. It’s a treasure trove, and the staff say some funny things too a lot of the time. Either way, you’ll appreciate what it is they go through to make these materials.

On that note, of Matsuyama’s writings (particularly of the Diary Entries and Maiden for this discussion), he was never commissioned specifically to write what he does—his own staff comments on the BentStuff website and the peritext (or lack thereof) in the books counteract this alone. Not to mention, it isn’t practical in how the process of their book production works.

Yes, BentStuff as a company can either get the license or be hired to write a guidebook, but in determining who does what for the book, this isn’t done the same as, say, Jun Eishima being hired by SE to write the FFXIII or FFXV novels. Or, even, what Matsuyama would’ve had if he was able to write the originally planned novel for Lightning Returns. The decision of who does what is mostly internal of that of BentStuff, for example, who does the Scenario section, or the maps, who writes the prologue if included, who does the character profiles, boss data, speedruns, time charts, technique tables, etc. Whatever. Matsuyama, just like everyone else, does his decided part, and we can’t any more say he was specifically “commissioned” to write his creative materials than we could for all the other members doing their roles. At least, not without the proper evidence. (get into more below)

Either way, don’t create the wrong idea by using "commission” to describe the reasons as to why Matsuyama included these materials—the most practical and rational reason being, you know outside of him co-founding the company, that many companies allow creative freedoms or projects to be had about their works. Canonical or not—this isn’t new. If a company founded by writers gets the opportunity to write guidebooks, it makes sense for them to seek the opportunity to work in their own “projects” to make their books unique, and the idea of this started all the way back in their ALL ABOUT series, precedent to both Kaitai Shinsho and Ultimania.

There of course, has been other things, like “Square Enix said” when it comes to anything written in the Ultimania books, the notion that certain presentations within a guidebook suggest canonicity, that the more creative materials [their “projects”] Benny or other BentStuff members create are canonical simply because they’re in the books, etc.....oh boy. 

He isn’t a “rando”, nor was it “commissioned”, and most of his creative works are limited to the books for entertainment purposes by BentStuff, for the book, and typically nothing more like being officially a part of the respective series canon. Unless evidence supports his or other’s authenticity as author’s for the series in question, I believe the default thought for ALL his materials should be that of fun readings for the books, expressions by BentStuff. That honestly goes into a different conversation about the canonicity of any of Matsuyama’s or others materials in the guidebooks and about authorship/authenticity, but the important thing to note is the two emphasized points above. If you want to get into canonicity, we definitely can as, honestly, it isn’t really too hard to cover with the proper evidence, which is also from in-book peritext or Benny’s own comments. Other observational stuff too. There are only a handful of materials that can really be discussed based on evidence of Matsuyama’s authenticity as a writer for the respective series. At the top of my head, included would be the short stories for Brave Fencer Kaitai Shinsho, the FFXIII Omega story, and maybe, his materials for the series SaGa—some like Beender just setting-wise aren’t canonical, but the value of his interpretation for this series can be discussed considering he has worked on one of the games scenario at a later date.

I digress.

Like I said, I’m just open to discuss this stuff without having to write a huge informational dump of like, their entire history, though I know people who are researching themselves would find that useful. It’s just a lot. But if any of that above is something you believe or disagree with, please, feel free to tell me why and we can get this ball rolling. It’s fun to talk about, at a certain point, I didn’t spend all my time researching just to be miserable. 

Eh, sort of.

Misery loves company, so....

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Hello! (Different anon here). So, re the recent discussions abt the MCU/Disney as imperialist propaganda, how do you think we as fans should approach the issue? Bc--I mean personally speaking I only engage w Disney properties via fandom, don't reblog (cont.)

(part 2) or promote the films/shows themselves, but still worry about the issues of fan complicity in corporate mythmaking. And I totally understand that the answer is "it's complicated", but I wanted to hear your thoughts?

Hi ^-^

It is a complicated matter and I think there’s two major perspective on which you can see the issue and I don’t think one is ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’, they’re both valid points and sadly coexist. (Not to be like ‘we live in a society’ but we cannot decide to exit capitalism, we can only move inside it.)

One is fandom as resistance: by engaging with the text in a manner that deconstructs it and that transforms it (transformative works that queer the text up, for instance), I am doing an exercise in resistance, and my act of putting queerness in a text that evades it is radical.

The other is fandom as advertising: we’re effectively giving visibility and attaching positive connotations to a product. How many people check out shows after seeing gifsets and fanart on tumblr? A lot. We should be consuming “good” media (say, indie content over megacorporation stuff) and giving visibility to that.

I don’t think that refusing to engage with the “problematic” text at all lest we dirty our hands by making ourselves complicit of the system is a particularly fruitful approach (obviously I’m talking about collective actions, individually one can just do whatever they want within the limits of manners, it’s fandom), it seems to me more like an act of purity. Transformative works have a long, long history and I do think there’s power in that history. Transformative works do help people. And “problematic” media attracts fandoms because there’s so much fertile ground for transformation.

Also, not less importantly imo, it’s not like you can trace a line between Evil Media and Good Media. The MCU is so blatant it’s not really difficult to see it, but how much media just incorporates values that are just mainstream in the culture that produced it and are not good? How do you trace a line? Is Drarry fanfiction advertising for Rowling? Should we stop it at all? What counts as propaganda? Must it have gone through the pencil of the American military or also not?

Maybe I’m just trying to justify my own actions, but I think that maybe we kind of overstate our own importance...? Disney spends billions on marketing, and unless it turns out half of you are Disney accounts swaying the population like the Russian blogs in 2016, I’m not even sure fandom is really that big a part of the marketing strategy. (Do we stop watching actors’ interviews? Is Anthony Mackie’s face problematic during a marketing tour? We end up in directions I’m not comfortable with.) I mean, I know that social media activity is still part of the marketing strategy, and an important one at that. But social media activity comes in many forms and some of those are transformative. Where do you trace the line? Edits are good but gifsets are bad? What about a gifset with different captions that make the scene gay? Slash fanart? Non-slash fanart? Fanart of a canon straight ship? (Hint: none of those are bad.)

Something else I want to point out: this kind of talk comes up when they (not just Disney) make content aimed at progressive audiences. It’s natural. An audience that will pay attention to this kind of issues will not really care about stuff that doesn’t really ping their radar. But the result is that it seems like we’re particularly vicious against “good” things: movies with a female lead, shows with a Black lead. You’ll see arguments like “oh, you weren’t saying this before, but you’re saying it for this product about a woman/Black person so you’re misogynist/racist!”. That’s in bad faith. Of course it stands out when the propaganda is done in something that markets itself as progressive. Nobody really goes to see Macho Batman With Biceps Feels Manly Angst #37 and expects intersectional feminism in it. But they make a movie with a female lead for the first time since 1926, and you’re like “oh? Maybe good? Maybe one good thing finally?” and then brown-skinned people with beards in sandy places want more bombs. Guess which one progressive-leaning people will talk about the most?

I have one Harry Potter fic on my ao3. It’s something I wrote as a teen and found a few years ago and, while it’s not really great, I decided to publish it. I recently debated with myself whether to delete it. I didn’t want to have something related to Rowling on my account. But then I thought, then what? Should everyone delete all Harry Potter fanart ever? Sure, no one will miss my old fic because it’s bad, but that’s not the point. Do I think that deleting HP fics is a “good” gesture? Then do I think everyone should do the same? No. The world of HP fanworks is vast and rich and has a lot of beauty in it. Same with the MCU fandom.

This said, individually one chooses. If you’re personally uncomfortable engaging with a text, you stop engaging with that text. If you want to make transformative works of the most problematic text ever, you make them. (And really, who decides what is too problematic for posting on tumblr about it? Fandom’s still having debates on that nazi manga with the big monsters.) Mega-popular texts are also good collective exercises in text analysis and further debates because they become a common language for many people. (There’s also the fact that the MCU didn’t create the characters, and they have actually a long and often powerful history, although that’s not a culture I’m familiar with.)

Tl,dr... don’t subscribe to the platform :p

[mctreeleth]

I found out last night that there are companies that just scan vintage dressmaking patterns and sell the scans. They just... do that. I floated the idea of posting the pattern to a shirt that I so heavily re-drafted for my PCOS-bloated belly that every line was different from the 35 year old pattern I started with, and people on instagram started sending me - me! - condescending DMs about how that is like, not okay uwu. And people are just out there doing it and not changing anything about the patterns and CHARGING PEOPLE MONEY for them!

It has been 24 hours and I am still livid. Not because they are doing it - most of these patterns are otherwise inaccessible; the pattern companies are not selling them anymore and finding them second-hand often comes down to luck. Scanning these patterns and making them accessible is what I want people to do, what I would like to do.

No, what makes me so angry is that these people have acquired access to knowledge, and decided to say fuck you to the original copyright, and then, instead of following that urge and putting them out there for the common good, put a price on that knowledge for profit. And while a couple of these sites are re-grading the patterns for a wider range of sizes than the originals - which okay, derivative works like this are arguably legally new works - some of the sites are just scanning patterns and selling the copies and like...

Challenging the idea that monopolies should be allowed to possess a copyright over creative knowledge is good! And questioning neo-liberal capitalism’s utilisation of Intellectual Property “rights” as a core component of post-Fordist hustle culture is basically my whole deal! But I have spent so long in the depths of discourse about the ethics of letting a friend borrow a pattern that you own that somehow it never even occurred to me that people were just... doing this. Straight up, zero qualms, scan a pattern and say it is yours now.

In my research, I butt up against people who publish patterns as their livelihood. They point out that, given the amount of time and expense that goes into writing and testing and marketing and all of the other things in the process of selling patterns, the amount they actually make often equates to less than minimum wage. And they think my research says they don’t deserve even that, when actually, my research is really about asking how we got to this point – what structures contributed to their decision to do this as a means of making money, and the effect that these structures and social ideas and historical factors have had on their ability to do so. I am firmly of the opinion that they are engaging in labour and they deserve compensation for it. I would rather we all be able to do it for the good of humanity while we live off of a UBI, but we are not there yet. In the meantime, this is the system we have.

My qualms about intellectual property are rooted primarily in the idea that, much like other forms of capital, its holder can profit off of it repeatedly and at the expense of others. That something can be sold many times while other things can only be sold once sets up an unequal playing field, and this is compounded when rights holders attempt to restrict what makers can do with the finite products created from that endlessly re-sellable knowledge. Even ignoring the structural factors that dictate what kinds of sale prices the two can get, there is no theoretical limit to the number of times a pattern, particularly a digital or print-on-demand one, can be sold, whereas each shirt or quilt can only be sold once. The idea is that the multiple sales offset the fact that the time required is higher and the sale price is lower for the pattern than the product, but this is based on, you know, the pattern seller having invested all that time and effort into designing and drafting and writing and testing and making and photographing and editing and all the other stuff it takes to get a pattern out there and selling. That stuff is why pattern designers are so very pro-copyright and IP. They need to sell the multiple copies to make it worthwhile. Saying “fuck you” to copyright is for people who aren’t trying to make money off of patterns.

Which is why the combo of disregarding the original copyright and selling patterns is, I think, so unpalatable to me. I have to couch my criticisms of Intellectual Property in reassurances that no, just because I think that these systems are bad does not mean I think you are a bad person for using them if you have to, emphasising that I am rejecting the idea of copyright not in order to take from them, or to profit at their expense, but instead as part of a shift towards a future where knowledge is free and accessible to all. The fact that someone could just bypass all of this, and go, no, that copyright is being disregarded because it stops me from profiting on something I have gained physical access to and want to make money off of, just took me so very very by surprise.

Like, don’t get me wrong, the original copyright holders have been bought out and bought out and bought out, and the big four pattern companies that comprise most of their scanned patterns are now owned by a single mega-corp; I am in no way concerned for them. But that I have to be so careful and polite and respectful towards every perspective meant that seeing someone go “my copyright now” is just infuriating. I work so so hard to push for a world where we share this kind of knowledge, where we have moved past the shitty paywalls of intellectual property. These people took the same stance as mine but instead of channeling the chutzpa required to post these patterns online into doing some good, they used it to profit for themselves. That is what I am furious about.

As for the shirt pattern? The one especially re-drafted for my body; the body with the waist that is 4 sizes bigger than the bust and hips? The shirt that hides incredibly well the fact that you are bloated to the size of someone 4-months pregnant? As soon as I get my sewing room unpacked again (my Mum is visiting for a bit) I am going to take tutorial photos and post it. For free, obviously.

[personalcoachingcenter]

Research Paper: Language Matters

New Post has been published on https://personalcoachingcenter.com/research-paper-language-matters/

Research Paper: Language Matters

Research Paper By Charlene Moynihan (Ability Coach, UNITED STATES)

Introduction

A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well. –Frederick Douglass

Diversity is inherent in everything we experience such as nature and its multitude of variance, and, people and their cultures. If we are to truly celebrate differences, we must begin by knowing and understanding those differences. As coaches, that knowing/understanding must begin with ourselves. As one who will work with those who have a relationship to a disability, I must have knowledge and awareness of disability culture.

Moreover, as an individual with a disability, I must understand what it is that makes me different than others if I am to truly approach this endeavor with a celebratory mindset.

ICA teaches us that

Culture exists in the minds of the individuals that have learned from other human beings what is acceptable in their interactions with other human beings. Culture allows us to communicate with one another in a language that we have learned and share in common. -International Coach Academy

With the understanding that coaching sessions are about the client and not the coach, how to promote my work to potential clients has much to do with who I am and how I present myself. I felt I needed to address the issue of how much of my personal experience to share in the promotional process since how I am perceived affects the assessment of a good fit between coach and client.

This brings up the dilemma that many potential clients will face, exactly what, when, and how much is appropriate to disclose when it comes to disability. As a person with an acquired disability, it was a question that I needed a comfortable answer to. If I can understand the process it takes to answer that question, I can recognize a similar struggle and the need to address it with my clients.

I looked to disability theory with a particular focus on the language used to speak about disability for some insight. The language we use communicates much about who we are, how we think, and what we believe. This paper will focus on the language used to speak of disability.

Let’s start with an explanation of the predominant models of disability theory.

Disability Theory

The Medical Model

The medical model of disability talks of it in terms of impairment, deficiency, and/or abnormality. It is something that exists within the body/the person and it is the person’s responsibility to learn how to deal with it. The medical field seeks to cure and/or treat the disability with therapies that are aimed at making the person function more “normally”. Most of the language used by the medical community to discuss/describe disability are negatives, suffering from, and afflicted with for example. These words communicate that disability is not something desirable and reflects an attitude of negativity in the way the non-medical community thinks about disability.

The Social Model

The social model sees disability as simply a part of who one is; no different than gender, race, or age. The problem of disability is viewed as one of interaction in a society that is often inaccessible and unaware of the severity of the struggles it presents. The social model seeks to fix these struggles through a change in society, through awareness and accessibility. The language used by the social model is person-centered as opposed to identity-centered, a “person with a disability” vs. a “disabled person” treating the disability as only a part of the whole. These phrases are far less negative.

These are the two major models of disability at play. They are far more complicated than I have related and the advantages and consequences of each warrant much consideration. Many interdisciplinary approaches to these models exist and are not dissimilar to those related to issues of sexual identity and race when it comes to disclosure and discrimination. But the brief descriptions demonstrate incredible differences in the way people think and speak about a disability.

The Research

For this paper, I will limit my discussion to that the language used to speak of disability and its impact on the members of the community. It is the language we use that reflects one’s understanding of disability. It is also the language others use that impacts a decision to disclose ones’ identity to the speaker or not. Comfort level and confidence in the speaker’s understanding are paramount. In this cancellation culture, what language does one choose when speaking about disability? How does one speak of disability in a way that communicates comfort and confidence? My research offered some insight into these questions. I was able to locate two papers addressing this issue that struck a note with me.

A lot of controversies exist around the use of the word disability. In #SaytheWord: A Disability Culture Commentary on the Erasure of “Disability” the authors say, “The literature indicates that despite the importance of language on attitudes toward disabled people, attempts to avoid the term ‘disability’ remain and may have unintended consequences.” -Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019). Some thought by removing the word disability and substituting things like “differently-abled” would remove some of the associated negativity in the same way that person-first language helps to minimize labeling and categorizing people by identity-first.

The concern is that the use of euphemisms can serve to reinforce the idea that disability is negative and can be indicative of bias or prejudiced thinking. Such euphemisms, like Photoshop, take something less appealing and make it more acceptable to the viewer; that the viewer may feel more comfortable/more pleased with the subject matter. This reluctance to use the word disabled is more about the needs of the non-disabled who have bias and/or prejudice thinking that underlies their discomfort, and, the disabled who fear being stigmatized; the primary reason reported for not disclosing a disability. Yet many are reclaiming the word disabled. It allows self-identity and serves to place them into a community that can protect against the stigma (and fear of) by “externalizing rather than internalizing disability prejudices.”Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019).

In “Disclosing Our Relationships to Disabilities: An Invitation for Disability Studies Scholars”, Joan O’TooleCorbet writes, “…we need to examine our reluctance to support public disclosure, open academic inquiries into public signifiers, encourage public disclosure, and use signifiers of one’s relationship to disability.” I found this a fascinating perspective. She writes about how disclosure is managed in the disability rights community. Corbet goes on to say that in this community, they are “expected to locate themselves about the lived disability experience.” One would say, for example, I am disabled, or, I am the parent of a disabled child, or, I am a non-disabled teacher of disabled adults. The reasoning behind this sort of disclosure is that it explains perspectives based on the nature of the relationship to disability that goes beyond the binary disabled or non-disabled identity. It respects that each relationship to disability has valuable information to be shared. Stating a relationship to disability is not the same as sharing specifics of the nature of one’s disability. That remains a personal decision. The rule of thumb is that you may state your relationship to disability but you must not speak to the experience of another as it presumes that you know the lived experience of another and you cannot. This understanding can be applied nicely in the coaching session.

Another positive here is that “Public disclosure of the relationship to disability increases the number of people discussing and identifying disability oppression.” Disclosing one’s relationship to disability provides community membership, support, and strategies to combat ableism. Ableism is to the disability community what white supremacy is to communities of a minority race. Stating one’s relationship to disability opens a space for productive discussion of disability-related issues and helps combat ableism.

Analysis

In any discussion of oppressed populations, it behooves one to understand the issues at play. I will be focusing the efforts of my transformational coaching practice on serving clients with acquired disabilities. We live in a world demanding political correctness and the cancellation of those who are not. Use of language that, either intentionally or not, communicates negativity towards any group/community and/or culture inhibits trusting relationships and has no place in coaching.

I have chosen to use the word disabled in my marketing/promotional materials. I will use it without the shame and negativity it carries for some. My intent will be clear. I will use it to identify membership within a supportive community. As one with a relatively invisible acquired disability, I know the isolation that comes with not speaking about disability. I want my potential clients to know that they need not feel the isolation that comes with keeping silent and that there is a way to speak of it without the need to disclose one’s diagnosis and specific limitations. That information is disclosed on a need-to-know basis and most simply don’t need to know. I want them to feel welcomed to experience membership in that community, that culture that offers support and advocacy if they so choose.

I will also speak in terms of my relationship to disability because of its ability to communicate differing perspectives on disability. I cannot share my lived experience by sharing a diagnosis. My relationship to disability is relevant to my clients because of its ability to communicate perspectives and open lines of communication on the subject of disability. Since I have identified people with an acquired disability and those with a similar relationship, it also explains my desire to expand services to family, caregivers, friends, and professionals working with my clients of choice.

I will share my relationship to disability as follows. As a child, I attended a summer camp for developmentally disabled children with my siblings (where my mother worked as a camp nurse). I grew up laughing and playing with children who were different but very much the same as me. I was a friend of disabled children. I worked in schools and residential homes for adults with multiple disabilities. I was non-disabled support professional. My father became disabled due to chronic illness. I was the daughter of a disabled man. I was diagnosed with a disabling condition when my children were young. I am a disabled person.

My child has a disabling condition. I am the disabled parent of a disabled adult. I have multiple friends with disabilities. I am a disabled friend of disabled adults. I ended my career as a Disability Claims Specialist at the Social Security Administration (S.S.A.). I conducted in-depth interviews to uncover and document the specific physical, psychological and cognitive phenomenon that results in meeting the legal definition of disability used by S.S.A.This gave me an intimate look into the lived experience of many disabled individuals. I am a disabled individual with intimate knowledge of both my own and the disabling conditions of others.

This communicates so much more than disclosing that I have Multiple Sclerosis. Do you feel the difference? Asking for and providing one’s relationship to disability provides relevant and useable information in discussions of disability. The provision of a diagnosis generally either suppresses conversation due to discomfort with the disclosure or leads to additional (and inappropriate in many situations) questions regarding the personal limitations of the disabled person. I would much rather enable a productive conversation than suppress or encourage inappropriate ones.

Conclusion

I change my thoughts, I change my world. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

We are taught at ICA to, “Be aware of personal strengths and weaknesses when it comes to one’s own Coaching Mindset.” ICF talks of “the criticality of a partnership between coach and client, and the importance of cultural, systemic and contextual awareness.” For these reasons, I undertook this study. My coaching mindset needed nurturing. If I am to be a focused partner with clients, I must feel confident that I have communicated, upfront, what is appropriate for my clients to know; that they can then decide if they want to develop a partnership with me.

Despite my years of work with individuals with disabilities, I needed to look at the bigger picture. My experience was job-related and focused on meeting their needs. More caregiver than a coach. My perspective needed to shift. I needed to understand how to speak of disability in a non-directive way. More importantly, I needed to understand how the language I use communicates my thoughts, values, and beliefs. I needed to understand the mindsets of others who participate in the discussion of disability. I needed to understand disability at a different level; one that addressed the need for cultural, systemic, and contextual awareness.

The journey has been well worth the time and energy. It is no longer my role to meet the physical and emotional needs of those with whom I work. I know in my heart that they are entitled to self-determination, just as I am, and I will support and empower them to pursue their goals no longer as a caregiver but a coach. I have learned much about the language used to speak of disability. I have also come to understand the intent behind my need to do this research. I have never spent much time thinking about nor identifying myself as a person with a disability. I needed to acknowledge myself as a member of the community and find a way to communicate that membership in a way that felt comfortable. In doing so, I have resolved my questions regarding how to communicate my thoughts, values, and beliefs by the language I will use to speak of disability with my clients and promote my business. First impressions matter and the language we use speaks volumes about who we are and what we value.

Sources:

Websites

Critical Disability Theory. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://stanford.library.sydney.edu.au/archives/win2019/entries/disability-critical/

Disability and Justice. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/disability-justice/.

Disclosing Our Relationships to Disabilities: An Invitation for Disability Studies Scholars. Corbett Joan O’Toole 1 (disabled) 2 Independent Researcher. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/3708/3226.

Disability Studies Quarterly.Siebers, Tobin. Disability Theory. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008. Reviewed by Michael Davidson. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/160/160.

Medical Model of Disability versus Social Model of Disability. Living with Disability and Chronic Pain. https://canbc.org/blog/medical-model-of-disability-versus-social-model-of-disability/.

Disability Studies Quarterly. Un/covering: Making Disability Identity Legible. Heather Dawn Evans. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5556/4550.

Andrews, E. E., Forber-Pratt, A. J., Mona, L. R., Lund, E. M., Pilarski, C. R., & Balter, R. (2019). #SaytheWord: A disability culture commentary on the erasure of “disability”. Rehabilitation Psychology, 64(2), 111–118. https://doi.org/10.1037/rep0000258.

https://docs.google.com.

Original source: https://coachcampus.com/coach-portfolios/research-papers/charlene-moynihan-language-matters/

[recentanimenews]

ESSAY: Sakura Is Not That Bad

  This article written by Daniel Dockery was originally published on August 20, 2020

  Sakura is not a bad character.

  If you measure her by the amount of plot-shattering, triumphant fight scenes she gets, yeah, I certainly understand finding her underwhelming. Compared to the exploits of Naruto, she definitely lacks in that regard. And if you measure her by the amount of time the plot is focused on her decisions and her decisions alone, then yeah, I don't think she'd do very well there either. Sasuke has that corner of the market pretty much covered.

  So, if she isn't delivering knockout punches or controlling the arc of the show, what is Sakura doing? Well, Sakura is doing ... Sakura.

  Okay, I know how that sounds, so let me back up a bit. Sakura is the product of two very healthy, very normal, and very alive parents. On the other hand, Naruto doesn't know what happened to his parents and Sasuke is trying to avenge what happened to his. Already, she's the odd one out in Team 7, the only one without an intense past to grapple with. Thus, all of her relationships and struggles are mostly based in the here and now — her crush on Sasuke, her rivalry with Ino, her frustration with Naruto, etc. 

    This lack of a grand mystery to solve or injustice to right manifests itself in the fact that Sakura has an "inner Sakura character," a reflection of the way her emotions conflict with how she presents herself at the time. That is her biggest struggle. Often in Naruto, a character's actual biggest enemy is themselves, and when we talk about this, we usually talk about Sasuke and how he needs to chill out for a second and maybe stop trying to get revenge on stuff 24/7. But this is something that takes Sasuke a loooong time to come to terms with, while Sakura deals with it from the beginning. From her first appearance, her arc is based around dealing with her own limitations and confronting the things she doesn't like about herself. It's character-based more than it's story-based.

  Under that lens, Sakura's achievements become exponentially greater because she's saving herself rather than saving the day. There's a reason most people remember her cutting her hair and then, looking awesome, pinning her enemy in the Forest of Death segment of the Chunin Exams. It's so personal, as she's previously used her hair to shield herself from criticism, and it inspires other ninja to action. Her ability to control her chakra from early on is also indicative of this inner growth, as Naruto and Sasuke — both more powerful warriors — actively struggle with it. 

    While the other characters deal with the repercussions of their pride and reckless ambition, Sakura is able to come to terms with her strengths and weaknesses early, training with Tsunade to maximize her potential in an area that she excels in. It doesn't stop her from partaking in combat and doing awesome ninja stuff, and it doesn't stop her from joining with Naruto and Sasuke in their massive battle against Shippuden's Final Boss, Kaguya. But it does show her dedication to herself, eventually losing her "inner Sakura" because the person she wants to be is the person she is.

  By the end of Shippuden, Sakura has such a good grasp on what she loves and what hurts her that when Sasuke says he's sorry for everything she tells him, "You should be." She weeps for him, yet the moment is free of coddling or crushing. Instead, it's someone who has long known how to deal with their mistakes telling someone else they need to learn how. 

  Sakura is not a perfect character. Even with her focus on a non-battle skill set, it still feels like she gets shafted a little too much while the dudes wrangle together their Epic Naruto Moments 1080p compilations. And her constant forgiveness of Sasuke, while a testament to how much she believes in the goodness of him and others, does push your patience a little bit. Logically, she should've, like, thrown him into a ditch on the side of the road 400 episodes ago.

    But I don't think she's a failure. Rather, I think her measure for personal success is different from the others — especially the other members of Team 7. She doesn't want to be Hokage, nor does she desire to be the strongest warrior or to eliminate all those that have done her wrong. Instead, Sakura wants to become someone that Sakura can be proud of — a feeling that all of us have at one point. And I think that counts for something.

  Do you have any favorite Sakura moments? Let me know in the comments!

      Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features.

  By: Guest Author

[arcticdementor]

Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

…

Life in the “content” industry already sucks. A small handful of people make bank while the vast majority hustle relentlessly just to hold on to the meager pay they already receive. There are staff writers at big-name publications who produce thousands of words every week and who make less than $40,000 a year for their trouble. There are permanent employees of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines who don’t receive health insurance. Venues close all the time. Mourning another huge round of layoffs is a regular bonding experience for people in the industry. Writers have to constantly job hop just to try and grind out an extra $1,500 a year, making their whole lives permanent job interviews where they can’t risk offending their potential bosses and peers. Many of them dream of selling that book to save themselves financially, not seeming to understand that book advances have fallen 40% in 10 years - median figure now $6,080 - and that the odds of actually making back even that meager advance are slim, meaning most authors are making less than minimum wage from their books when you do the math. They have to tweet constantly for the good of their careers, or so they believe, which amounts to hundreds of hours of unpaid work a year. Their publications increasingly strong arm them into churning out pathetic pop-culture ephemera like listicles about the outfits on Wandavision. They live in fear of being the one to lose out when the next layoffs come and the game of media musical chairs spins up once again. They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”

I have always felt bad for them, despite our differences, because of these conditions. And they have a right to be angry. But they don’t have much in the way of self-awareness about where their anger really lies. A newsletter company hosting Bari Weiss is why you can’t pay your student loans? You sure?

They’ll tell you about the terrible conditions in their industry themselves, when they’re feeling honest. So what are they really mad about? That I’m making a really-just-decent guaranteed wage for just one year? Or that this decent wage is the kind of money many of them dream of making despite the fact that, in their minds, they’ve done everything right and played by all the rules? Is their anger really about a half-dozen guys whose writing you have to actively seek out to see? (If you click the button and put in your email address, you’ll get these newsletters. If you don’t, you won’t. So if you’re a media type who hates my writing, consider just… not clicking that button.) Or do they need someplace to put the rage and resentment that grows inside them as they realize, no, it’s not getting better, this is all I get?

It’s true that I have, in a very limited way, achieved the new American dream: getting a little bit of VC cash. I’m sorry. But it’s much much less than one half of what Felix Salmon was making in 2017 and again, it’s only for one year.

You think the writers complaining in that piece I linked to at the top wanted to be here, at this place in their career, after all those years of hustling? You think decades into their media career, the writers who decamped to Substack said to themselves “you know, I’d really like to be in my 40s and having to hope that enough people will pitch in $5 a month so I can pay my mortgage”? No. But the industry didn’t give them what they felt they deserved either. So they displace and project. They can hate Jesse Singal, but Jesse Singal isn’t where this burning anger is coming from. Neither am I. They’re so angry because they bought into a notoriously savage industry at the nadir of its labor conditions and were surprised to find that they’re drifting into middle age without anything resembling financial security. I feel for them as I feel for all people living economically precarious lives, but getting rid of Substack or any of its writers will not do anything to fix their industry or their jobs. They wanted more and they got less and it hurts. This isn’t what they dreamed. That’s what this is really about.

…

My own deal here is not mysterious. It’s just based on a fact that the blue checks on Twitter have never wanted to accept. I got offered money to write here for the same reason I got offered to write for The New York Times and Harper’s and The Washington Post and The LA Times, the same reason I’ve gotten a half-dozen invitations to pitch since I started here a few weeks ago, the same reason a literary agent sought me out and asked me to write a book, the same reason I sold that book for a decent advance: because I pull traffic. Though I am a social outcast from professional opinion writing, I have a better freelance publishing history than many, many of my critics who are paid-up, obedient members of the media social scene. Why? Because the editors who hired me thought I was a great guy? No. Because I pull traffic. I always have. That’s why you’re reading this on Substack right now.

…

A really important lesson to learn, in life, is this: your enemies are more honest about you than your friends ever will be. I’ve been telling the blue checks for over a decade that their industry was existentially fucked, that the all-advertising model was broken, that Google and Facebook would inevitably hoover up all the profit, that there are too many affluent kids fresh out of college just looking for a foothold in New York who’ll work for next to nothing and in doing so driving down the wages of everyone else, that their mockery of early subscription programs like Times Select was creating a disastrous industry expectation that asking your readers directly for money was embarrassing. Trump is gone and the news business is cratering. Michael Tracey didn’t make that happen. None of this anger will heal what’s wrong. If you get all of the people you don’t like fired from Substack tomorrow, what will change? How will your life improve? Greenwald will spend more time with his hottie husband and his beloved kids and his 6,000 dogs in his beautiful home in Rio. Glenn will be fine. How do we do the real work of getting you job security and a decent wage?

…

But how do things get better in that way? Only through real self-criticism (which Twitter makes impossible) and by asking hard questions. Questions like one that has not been credibly confronted a single time in this entire media meltdown: why are so many people subscribing to Substacks? What is the traditional media not providing that they’re seeking elsewhere? Why have half a million people signed up as paying subscribers of various Substack newsletters, if the establishment media is providing the diversity of viewpoints that is an absolute market requirement in a country with a vast diversity of opinions? You can try to make an adult determination about that question, to better understand what media is missing, or you can read this and write some shitty joke tweet while your industry burns to the ground around you. It’s your call.

Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you - college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well…. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.

In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?

And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.

Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?

[ill-will-editions]

The Economy or Life

First published in Lundimatin #236, March 30th, 2020.

Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives in the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralyses our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it.

—E. M. Forster, "The Machine Stops" (1909)

Not every official transmission is fake news. Amidst so many disconcerting lies, today's rulers appear genuinely heartbroken when detailing the extent to which the economy is suffering.  As for the elderly left to choke at home alone so they don't cause a spike in official statistics, or clog up our hospitals...of course, a thought for them too. But that a good corporation might die: this really forms a lump in their throats. Just look at them rushing to its bedside. It's true, people everywhere are dying from respiratory failure -- but the market must not be deprived of oxygen. The economy will never be short on the artificial ventilators it needs; the central banks will see to that. Our rulers are akin to an aging heiress who sees a man bleeding out in her living room and frets over the stains on her carpet. Or like that expert of national technocracy who remarked in the recent report on nuclear safety that, "the true victim of any nuclear disaster would be the economy."

Faced with the present microbial storm, one that we were warned of by every wing of government since the late 1990s, we are awash in conjecture about our leaders’ lack of preparation. How could it be that masks, hairnets, beds, caretakers, tests, and remedies are in such short supply? Why all these last-minute measures, all these sudden reversals of doctrine? Why all these contradictory injunctions -- confine yourself but go to work, close the shops but not the large retail outlets, stop the circulation of the virus but not the goods that carry it? Why all these grotesque impediments to mass testing, to drugs that are so obviously effective and inexpensive? Why the choice of general containment rather than detection of sick subjects? The answer is simple and ever the same: it's the economy, stupid!

Rarely has the economy appeared so clearly for what it truly is: a religion, if not a cult. A religion is, after all, no more than a sect that has taken power. Rarely have our rulers appeared so obviously possessed. Their mad cries for sacrifice, for war, for total mobilization against an invisible enemy, their calls for unity among the faithful, their incontinent verbal deliriums no longer embarrassed in the slightest by overt paradox—it’s the same as any evangelical celebration. And we are summoned to endure every single sermon from behind our glowing screens, with mounting incredulity. The defining characteristic of this brand of faith is that no fact is capable of invalidating it. Far from standing condemned by the spread of the virus, the global reign of the economy has made use of the opportunity to reinforce its presuppositions.

The new ethos of confinement, wherein "men derive no pleasure (but on the contrary great displeasure) from being in the company of one another", wherein everyone appears to us in our strict separation as a potential threat to our life, wherein the fear of death imposes itself as the foundation of the social contract, only fulfills the anthropological and existential hypothesis of Hobbes' Leviathan — Hobbes, whom Marx reputed to be "one of the oldest economists in England, and among the most original philosophers". To situate this hypothesis, it’s worth recalling that Hobbes was entertained by the fact that his mother gave birth to him while terrified by lightning. Born of fear, he logically saw in life only the fear of death. "That's his problem," we’re tempted to say. No one is obliged to make such a sick worldview the basis of their existence, let alone of all existence. And yet here we are. The economy, whether liberal or Marxist, left or right, planned or deregulated, is the very illness now being prescribed for general health. In this, it is indeed a religion.

As our friend Hocart remarked, there is no fundamental difference between the president of a "modern" nation, a tribal chief in the Pacific Islands, or a pontiff in Rome. Their task is always to perform the propitiatory rites that will bring prosperity to the community, that reconcile it with the gods and preserve it from their wrath, that ensure unity, and prevent the people from scattering. "His raison d'être is not coordination but to preside over the ritual" (A-M Hocart, Kings and Courtiers): the root of our leaders' incurable imbecility lies in their failure to understand this principle. It is one thing to attract prosperity, and another to manage the economy. It is one thing to perform rituals, and another to govern people's lives. How much of power’s nature is purely liturgical is amply demonstrated by the profound uselessness, indeed the essentially counter-productive activity of our current rulers, who view the situation only as an unprecedented opportunity to excessively expand their own prerogatives, and to ensure no one tries to take their miserable seats. In view of the calamities befalling us, the leaders of today’s economic religion really are truly the last of the deadbeats when it comes to propitiatory rites. Their religion is in fact nothing but infernal damnation.

And so we stand at a crossroads: either we save the economy, or we save ourselves. Either we exit the economy, or we allow ourselves to be drafted into the great "army in the shadows” of those to be sacrificed in advance. The whole 1914-1918 rhetoric of the moment leaves no room for doubt: it's the economy or life. And since it’s a religion we’re dealing with, what we're facing now is a schism. The states of emergency decreed everywhere, the expansions of police power, the population control measures already enacted, the lifting of all limits to exploitation, the sovereign decision on who lives and who dies, the unflinching praise of Chinese governmentality—such means are not designed to provide for the "salvation of the people" here and now, but to prepare the ground for a bloody "return to normal", or else the establishment of a normality even more anomic than that which prevailed before. In this sense, the leaders are for once telling the truth: the afterwards [l’après] is indeed being played out now. It is now that doctors, nurses, and caretakers must abandon any loyalty to those attempting to flatter them into self-sacrifice. It is now that we must wrest control of our health and wellness from the disease industry and "public health" experts. It is now that we must set up mutual-aid networks of autonomous supply and production, if we are avoid succumbing to the blackmail of dependency that aims to redouble our subservience. It is now, in the extraordinary suspension we are living through, that we must figure out  everything we will need in order to live beyond the economy, and all that will be required in order to prevent its return. It is now that we must nourish the complicities that can limit the impudent revenge of a police force that knows it is hated. It is now that we need to de-confine ourselves---not out of mere bravado, but gradually, with all the intelligence and attention that befits friendship. It is now that we must elucidate the life we want: what this life requires us to build and to destroy, with whom we want to live, and whom we no longer wish to live with. No care should be given to those leaders currently arming themselves for war against us. No "living together" with those who would leave us for dead. We will trade no protection at the price of submission; the social contract is dead, it is up to us to invent something else. The rulers of today know well that on the day of de-confinement we will have no other desire than to see their heads roll, and that is why they will do everything they can to prevent that day from coming, to diffract, control, and delay our exit from confinement. It is up to us to decide when, and on what terms it happens. It is up to us to give form to the afterwards. It is up to us to sketch technically feasible and humane routes out of the economy. "We’re standing up and walking out" said a deserter from Goncourt not so long ago. Or, to quote an economist attempting to detox from his own religion: "I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue: that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanor and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honor those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.” 

Translated by Ill Will Editions

[just-lucas-prevot-things]

The return of retro video game music

I’m sorry, I’m extremely late to publish this week. Like everyone else I have been very busy. I’m a bit disappointed since I’ll have no replies to my post because of my lateness but anyway. 

This week I wanted to talk about the return of the “retro” style video game music, which is linked to the return of the retro game genre. Long story reaaaally short for those who might not know about it: old “pixelated” games with outdated 8 bit music had been ubiquitous in the 80s and even 90s, the graphism and the music were kind of “softened” because of the limited capacity of consoles and cartridges. Music was composed and recorded in a way they wouldn’t take much memory: in 8 bit. It did not sound cheap or low quality, the sound range was just... limited to a very specific style.

Here’s a reproduction of a typical 8 bit retro game music as an example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chiptune2.ogg

Retro gaming made a comeback in the 2010s, people started to play old games again and re-discovered old classics. There was then a demand for new retro style games. Again, long story short: small teams of developers were, until then, unable to compete with big teams from big corporations because typical best selling games like GTA required very large teams/amounts of money to make. 

Independents developers were at a huge disadvantage for a long time because the only way to distribute games was through CDs or cartridges which needed funds to be produced and was risky if no games were sold.

With the rise of the internet and its dematerialized products, independents (”indie”) developers were finally able to distribute easily their games on online platforms like Steam, but there was still a problem: as I said before, games like GTA were extremely difficult and costly to make, so they needed to make cheaper games that were as interesting as big AAA games. Retro pixelated graphism allowed that. 

This is Shovel Knight, a game from 2014, funded on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. 

As you can see, the visuals are pixelated, but it’s still very pleasant to play with. 

Easier visuals and a easier time to distribute games allowed indie developers to show new gameplay ideas, original scenarios, interesting characters. Everything that big corporations were afraid to try because they couldn’t afford to lose money.

Some indie games were so original, like Undertale, a game developed by a single person, that they beat most games in terms of sales.

Undertale, 2015.

Of course, not all indie teams did retro pixelated style graphism, but some did, and totally assumed their choice, and that is were we come back to popular music.

Music can be produced by a single composer. In indie teams, music was never a problem, same for scenario, character design, etc.  Programming the game system (which include visuals, as it is determined by the game engine) was the most difficult.

Of course, I’m not saying that producing music is easy, but that programming a visually complex game needed multiple people when music could afford to be produced by a single person or two.

Those games, Shovel Knight and Undertale, were marketed as indie retro style games. They were kind of “retro” in gameplay mechanics and graphism, but they were not REALLY retro, as such visual in Shovel Knight were impossible on old consoles. Its pixel art is complex, different from old pixelated games :

Super Mario World, 1990

Undertale might look less complex, but shows some nice effects at times, and I’m pretty sure such nice effects couldn’t be handled on old consoles. 

To summarize, they used pixelated style because it was easier to produce, and branded themselves as retro to find a public. But their games were not really retro, they are “retro style” but with a lot of improvements.

But now, what about the soundtrack?

As I said, even if the music can be easily produced in a modern style, for some reason the Shovel Knight team decided to keep a 8 bit ambiance throughout their game: 

Composers: Jake Kaufman and Manami Matsumae

The 8 bit limitation is in my opinion a limitation in creativity, but the composers still chose to limit themselves to it. Probably because they really wanted us to feel Shovel Knight like a retro game, but isn’t that a bit weird when you use improved graphics that could never had worked on a retro console ?

In Undertale for example, marketed as retro style RPG with new gameplay mechanics, the game has some music in 8 bit: 

Main title theme. Composer: Toby Fox

But Toby Fox didn’t hesitate to abandon 8 bit when he felt what he wanted to depict couldn’t be shown with 8 bit: 

Waterfall. Composer: Toby Fox

Despite having the same retro style, Katana Zero decided to not even include 8 bit music: 

Composer : Bill Kiley and LudoWic

But they still used a certain music style that I feel like it could come right from the 80s. (You can even hear the click from his walkman at the start.)

So what’s the best choice between the 3 of them ? I can’t answer that, but I feel like the visual pixelated style is an artstyle, while 8 bit music is just a limitation to creativity and shouldn’t be always used in a modern game.

Good luck for your exams you all !

No doubt we’ll make it ! 

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Privacy Without Monopoly, EU edition

Tech monopoly apologists insist that there’s something exceptional about tech that makes it so concentrated: “network effects” (when a product gets better because more people use it, like a social media service).

They’re wrong.

Tech is concentrated because the Big Tech companies buy up or crush their nascent competitors — think of Facebook’s predatory acquisition of Instagram, which Zuckerberg admitted (in writing!) was driven by a desire to recapture the users who were leaving FB in droves.

Google’s scale is driven by acquisitions — Search and Gmail are Google’s only successful in-house products. Everything else, from Android to Youtube to their entire ad-tech stack, was once a standalone business that Google captured.

Monopolies extract monopoly rents — like those delivered by Googbook’s crooked ad-tech marketplaces, or Apple/Google’s 30% app shakedown — and use them to maintain their monopolies. Google gives Apple billions every year so it will be the default Ios and Safari search.

These are the same tactics that every monopolist uses — high-stakes moneyball that creates a “kill-zone” around the monopolist’s line of business that only a fool would try to enter. Tech DOES have network effects, but that’s not what’s behind tech monopolies.

We see monopolies in industries from bookselling to eyeglasses, accounting to cheerleading uniforms, pro wrestling to energy, beer to health insurance. These monopolies all follow Big Tech’s template of mobilizing monopoly rents to buy or crush all competition.

The differences between the anticompetitive tactics that monopolized these industries are largely cosmetic — swap out a few details and you might well be describing how John D Rockefeller and Standard Oil monopolized the oil markets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Big Tech does have network effects, but these are actually a tool that can be used to dismantle monopolies, as well as maintaining them. Network effects are double-edged swords: if a service gets more valuable as users join, it also gets less valuable as users leave.

If you want to understand the anticompetitive structure of the tech industry, you’d be better off analyzing switching costs, not network effects. Switching costs are the things you have to give up when you leave a service behind.

If your customers, community, family members or annotated photos and other memories are locked up in Facebook’s walled garden (or if you’ve got money sunk in proprietary media or apps on Apple’s, etc), then the switching cost is losing access to all of that.

Here’s where tech really is different: tech has intrinsically low switching costs. Latent in all digital technology is the capacity to interoperate, to plug a new service into an old one, to run an old app inside a simulator (“runtime”).

There’s no good technical reason you can’t leave Facebook but take your treasured photos with you — and continue to exchange messages with the people you left behind.

True, Facebook has gone to extraordinary lengths to keep its switching costs high, deploying technical countermeasures to block interoperability. But these aren’t particularly effective. Lots of people have figured out how to reverse-engineer FB and plug new things into it.

Power Ventures created an app that aggregated your FB feed with feeds from rival services, giving you a single dashboard. NYU’s Ad Observer scraps the political ads FB shows you for analysis to check whether FB is enforcing its own paid political disinformation rules.

And there’s a whole constellation of third-party Whatsapp clients that add features FB has decided Whatsapp users don’t deserve, like the ability to block read-receipts or run multiple accounts on the same device.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/african-whatsapp-modders-are-masters-worldwide-adversarial-interoperability

Most of these are technical successes, but they’re often legal failures. FB has used the monopoly rents it extracted to secure radical new laws and new interpretations of existing laws to make these tactics illegal.

Power Ventures was sued into oblivion. Ad Observer is fighting for its life. The Whatsapp mods are still going strong, but that may be down to the jurisdictions where they thrive — sub-Saharan Africa — where FB has less legal muscle.

With low switching costs, much of FB’s monopoly protection evaporates. Lots of people hate FB, and FB knows it. You’re on FB because your friends are there. Your friends are there because you’re there. You’ve taken each other hostage, and FB benefits.

With low switching costs, you could leave FB — but not your friends. The kill zone disappears. All we need is interoperability.

Enter the EU’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, proposed regulations to force interop on the biggest Big Tech players.

The EU has recognized that mandating interop can reduce switching costs, and reducing switching costs can weaken monopoly power.

Some critics (like me!) of the EU proposals say they don’t go far enough, asking for “full interop” for rival services.

Against these calls for broader interop come warnings about the privacy implications of forcing FB to open up its servers to rivals. It’s hard enough to keep FB from abusing its users’ privacy, how will we keep track of a constellation of services that can access user data?

Last Feb, Bennett Cyphers and I published “Privacy Without Monopoly,” for EFF, describing how interoperability can enhance privacy.

Interop means that users can choose services that have better privacy policies than Facebook or other incumbent platforms.

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

But in theory, it means that users could choose worse services — services that have worse privacy policies, services that might be able to grab your friends’ data along with your own (say, the pictures you took of them and brought with you, or their private messages to you).

That’s why, in our paper, we say that interop mandates have to be backstopped by privacy rules — democratically accountable rules from lawmakers or regulators, not self-serving “privacy” limitations set by the Big Tech companies themselves.

For example, Facebook aggressively imports your address books when you sign up, to connect you to the people you know (this isn’t always a good experience — say, if your stalker has you in their address book and automatically gets “friended” with you).

If you try to take your address book with you when you quit, FB claims your contact list isn’t “yours” — it belongs to your contacts. To protect their privacy, FB has to block you from exporting the data — making it it much harder to establish social ties on a new service.

It’s not obvious who that contact info “belongs to” (if “belong to” is even the right way to talk about private information that implicates multiple people!).

But what is obvious is that Facebook can’t be trusted to make that call.

Not only has Facebook repeatedly disqualified itself from being trusted to defend its users’ privacy, but it also has a hopeless conflict of interest, because privacy claims can be used to raise switching costs and shore up its monopoly.

In our paper, Bennett and I say that these thorny questions should be resolved democratically, not in a corporate boardroom.

Now, as it happens, there’s a region where 500M people are protected by a broad, democratically enacted privacy law: Europe, home of the GDPR.

Today, in a new appendix to “Privacy Without Monopoly,” EFF has published “The GDPR, Privacy and Monopoly,” my analysis of how the GDPR makes interoperability safer from a privacy perspective.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/gdpr-privacy-and-monopoly

Working with EFF’s Christoph Schmon and Bennett Cyphers, we develop a detailed analysis of the GDPR, and describe how the GDPR provides a lawful framework for resolving thorny questions about consent and blended title to data.

The GDPR itself seeks to promote interoperability; it’s right there in Recital 68: “data controllers should be encouraged to develop interoperable formats that enable data portability.” But loopholes in the rules have allowed dominant companies to stymie interop.

For years, Europeans have had the “right” to port their data, but nowhere to port that data to. The DMA closes the loopholes and dismantles the hurdles that kept switching costs high.

The GDPR’s consent/security/minimization framework sets out the parameters for any interoperability, meaning we don’t have to trust Facebook (or Google, or Amazon, or Apple) to decide when interop must be blocked “to defend users’ privacy” (and also shareholders’ profits).

Big Tech platforms already have consent mechanisms (and must continue to build them) to create the legal basis for processing user data. An interoperable FB could be a consent conduit, letting your friends decide when and whether you can take their data to a new service.

And the GDPR (not a tech executive) also determines when a new service meets the privacy standards needed for interop. It governs how that new service must handle user data, and it gives users a way to punish companies that break the rules.

Today, if you leave Facebook, your friends might not even notice. But in a world where FB is a consent conduit to manage your departure and resettlement, all your friends get signals about your departure — perhaps prompting them to consider whether they should go, too.

Far from prohibiting interop, the GDPR enables it, by creating an explicit privacy framework that is consistent across all services, both the old monopolies and the new co-ops, startups, public utilities, and other alternatives that interop would make possible.

Monopolies distort the world in two ways. The most obvious harm is to competition, choking out or buying out every alternative, so you have to live by whatever rules the monopolist sets.

But the other kind of harm is even worse: monopolists can use their political power to get away with terrible abuses.

Ad-tech concentration produced monopoly rents that blocked or weakened privacy law for decades, allowing for a grotesque degree of commercial surveillance.

We don’t want competition in surveillance.

Opening space for interop poses a legitimate risk of creating a contest to see who can violate your human rights most efficiently.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/08/leona-helmsley-was-a-pioneer/#monkeys-paw

Yet, it’s obvious that monopolists themselves shouldn’t get to decide where they should be subjected to competition and where they should be subjected to regulation. That’s a job for democratic institutions, not autocratic board-rooms.

Adding privacy regulation (strong privacy regulation, with a private right of action allowing users to sue companies for breaking the rules) to interop is how we resolve this conundrum, how we make sure we’re banning surveillance, rather than “democratizing” it.