#internet lurker 2006

[armoricaroyalty]

the 90-9-1 rule, or A Partial Answer to the Eternal Question of 'Why Don't My Posts Get More Notes?'

In the small amount of time I’ve been on Al Gore’s internet, I have acquired a small amount of wisdom, which I now share with you: 90% of people don’t engage.

This theory of internet engagement has been floating around online since at least 2006, and as such, it goes by a lot of different names: participation inequality, the 1% rule, the 90-9-1 principle. Whatever name you encounter it under, the principle is the same: on any given website, most of the content is generated by only 1% of the user base.

This theory divides internet users into three camps:

Heavy Contributors are people who use the website every day and generate the vast majority of its content. In earlier eras of the internet, these were people posting in forums, maintaining their own geocity or angelfire pages, and setting up webrings to link related content and form communities of like-minded people. In the current age, the category of ‘heavy contributors’ includes influencers and content creators on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, but it also includes the people who remember to like, subscribe, and smash that bell icon. On websites like Tumblr, a heavy contributor is more likely to be a person who likes and reblogs without generating original content or adding commentary to others’ posts. But heavy contributors are also the big-time posters, the ones making gifsets, fic, viral shitposts, and other kinds of content. For these people, the internet is a social, creative place, and they go online to socialize and create. They generate the vast majority of the content everyone consumes and enjoys. And according to the 90-9-1 principle, these users represent only 1% of the people who use the internet.

Intermittent Contributors are people who use the website frequently and occasionally post. In modern times, this might be someone who mostly engages through likes and the occasional reblog. In fan communities and on websites like AO3, they might be an avid consumer of content, reading every fic with their OTP, but that passion doesn’t usually motivate them to leave comments, write fic of their own, or share recommendations. The intermittent contributors might be just as active as the heavy contributors, but their online presence is smaller. They make less of a splash than their noisier counterparts in the 1%. According to the theory, these users represent 9% of the people who use the internet.

Infrequent Contributors (lurkers) are everyone else. Because they don’t generate much (or any) content, it’s difficult to track their presence and behavior. Some sign on every day and read everything that’s posted without ever adding to the conversation. They might check Tumblr on their phones during breaks at work and never think about it otherwise. They might have an account they use once every three months when they remember it exists. They might never create an account, and just browse the front pages of sites like Reddit. According to the theory, these users represent 90% of the people who use the internet.

To people in the 1%, the behavior of the lurkers and intermittent contributors feels absolutely outlandish. Why bother signing on if you’re not going to make anything or contribute to the conversation? Why follow an account if you’re never going to like or reblog? Human beings have a tendency to see their behavior as “normal” and assume everyone else is doing the same, and that tendency toward generalization can be really blinding for people who exist in tiny, exceptional categories like the 1% of ‘active’ users.

The assumption that everyone uses the internet like they do can often make the people in the 1% feel very, very lonely, especially the creatives. You work for hours on a story or an illustration, hit ‘post,’ and get only a few comments and likes. You’ve got followers, you’ve got an audience, why is your work being met with crickets? If you’re posting in the hopes that other people will engage with your content, it can be very disheartening to create something and be met with silence by the vast majority of your followers.

The truth is that 90% of your followers just won’t engage. That doesn’t mean they’re not reading your stuff. That doesn’t mean they don’t enjoy your stories. That doesn’t mean they’re not looking forward to your next update or they’re not turning your story over in their heads while they wait for the bus. It just means that they’re not engaging with it in a way that is visible to you.

Think about it. You might be very active on one platform and quiet on another. You have read many books in your life, but how many letters have you written to authors? When you see a movie in theaters, is your first instinct to get online and tweet at the actors and directors? When you watch YouTube videos and TikToks, do you feel the urge to make your own, or do you just think “cool video!” and move on with your life?

I’ve been afflicted with Chats-Too-Much since birth, so I am inordinately active on talky platforms like Tumblr and Discord. But on YouTube, I’m an internet ghost. I have a few creators whose videos I watch avidly (and often multiple times). I follow them, I have the bell dinged, I even support a few on patreon. But I don’t comment on videos and rarely ever like them because that’s just not how I engage on that platform.

The 90-9-1 rule isn’t an absolute. Actual studies have found that the real percentages of different types of users varies from site-to-site. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s, online participation required a much greater degree of expertise and technical know-how. In the modern era, with the almost-universal implementation of like buttons, voting systems, and internal bookmarking features like AO3’s, more users fall into that middle category of intermittent contributors. Social media completely changed the way we use the internet to communicate, and the social distancing and isolation of the pandemic further reshaped our ways of engagement. I’m not even going to get into the subject of engagement as currency and the monetization of everything, because those are a) immensely depressing to me and b) outside of the scope of this essay, but the idea that anyone can become a celebrity online has also radically altered the way we exist on the internet.

This essay is only meant to say: on hobby sites and in fandom spaces, try to divorce your self-worth and desire to create from the amount of engagement your content gets. Each and every one of us loves to see the numbers go up, but the numbers can’t be why you’re engaging in social spaces and sharing your work. It’s not easy, but if your only drive to create is to get attention, you will never be satisfied. You’ll get 50 followers and wish you had 100. You’ll get 1,000 followers and wish you had 10,000. You’ll always be chasing more, and you’ll never be able to enjoy the followers you do have and the engagement you do get -- you’ll always be stuck staring at your analytics page, resenting the silent 90% for not doing more to boost your content and validate your worth in the eyes of the immortal algorithm.

It’s not easy to decouple your desire to create from your desire for attention. But it’s ultimately necessary for the good of your mental wellbeing and the good of your art. Enjoy your hobbies and enjoy your posting. If neither are bringing you any joy, ask yourself why and be willing to accept that you might need to let go of something or else shift your mode of engagement. You might even be happier as a lurker, creating only for yourself.

[3liza]

i joined something awful in about 2006 i guess but was and am basically a lurker, i have never had a notable presence on the site but i used to read it a lot and had a sort of mental shortlist of favorite Name Posters, people that people knew on the site. through twitter and tumblr several of these people i admired came to be internet friends and it never fails to give me a little thrill to post with them. like wow its THE [username]! and they're posting with ME! it's a silly little happiness that makes up part of the background hum of my life

[ilraksroost]

Six Thousand Nine Hundred Sixty-Nine Words About Being a Raven and Ceratosaurus Stelliferoforme (Including the Disclaimer)

(Reading time: 54 - 69 minutes)

(Full text on both the website and below the cut)

Header art: "Masks" - A self portrait by myself circa March 2023

Disclaimer: This essay does not reflect a definite nature of reality and is only based on the beliefs and personal gnosis of ilrak, the core of the Ceratocorvus Nebula and the way that they have observed and experienced their existence. The causes are purely speculative as there is no way to truly prove or disprove the existence of this type of experience. This essay will only provide a general view as certain subjects related to this (i.e. the Ceratocorvus Nebula Gateway System and how certain members and experiences came to be, a detailed discussion about how gender, alterhumanity, and neurodivergence intersect in ilrak's personal experience, and more) will be discussed in future essays.

Introduction

My name is ilrak (a.k.a. K D Val) and I am a member of the greater alterhuman community. I have used a few different labels in the past - otherkin, therianthrope/therian, raven-kin, and my current favorites, theropodanthrope and stelliferoforme - but in trying to categorize my experiences, I find myself struggling to actually fit into any of the more established labels exactly. In this piece, I will be discussing three aspects of my identity, how they affect each other, how they are different, and how they are similar to and different from the different labels in the alterhuman community that I have used.

To help anyone who is unfamiliar with alterhuman community terms, I'll direct you to the following resources to cross reference with as they define the terms better than I can for reasons that will soon become clear.

I highly recommend looking into the works by Orion Scribner (http://frameacloud.com), House of Chimeras (https://houseofchimeras.neocities.org) and the Sol System (https://invisibleotherkin.neocities.org/Home), who are three excellent community historians. I also recommend looking into The Otherkin Wiki (https://otherkin.wiki/) which is an actively archiving encyclopedia of notable works, events, and people in the otherkin community. I also suggest visiting the Alterhumanity Archive (https://alterhumanarchive.neocities.org/Home).

A little bit about my human self before I get into the proper essay first. I am a Black, non-binary person who was born female. I am married, have a little backyard homestead, and a film and media arts degree that currently is being used to create a musical theatre podcast with my husband. I was born in the late eighties, I am formerly Christian (currently agnostic), and I did not have a decent internet connection until I was a teenager - and even then, I had grown up in the era of Stranger Danger so I did not participate in online communities outside of writing fanfiction. The first online otherkin community that I joined was Livejournal around 2006 and the now defunct forum, True Form Within, in 2007. I have been a member of many, many different websites centered around otherkin and therianthropy as both a semi-active participant and a lurker as I drifted away from some of them.

I have always identified as some flavor of non-human, even before knowing that there was a term for someone like me. I would dress as different animals, trying them on as identities, and for a while, was very into being a feline - but this also felt like putting a square peg into a round hole. When I would wear a shawl as if they were wings (or a dress that was my Diana Ross if she was a dove dress), or if I placed the maple helicopter seed pods on my nose and pretended I was a dinosaur, then I felt a sense of overwhelming euphoria (I still have the articles of clothing, even if they will never fit me again). It wasn't until my first year of college that I started to actually think more about the bird and dinosaur, however for reasons that will be outlined further in the essay, I only focused on the bird identity - specifically the raven which had appeared many times in my life as something I would see and secretly think to myself that is me.

The third identity that will be discussed later in the essay is another one that had always been there, even when words weren't there for me to describe it. An identity that I struggled with because of how outlandish it sounded. Ravens and dinosaurs are organic things that lived. The material that makes up a star is not. When I was a child, the Planetarium was just as much of a comforting place as the Aviary or the Natural History Museum. I felt like I was home when watching the laser shows that showed planets, stars, black holes, and other celestial bodies. Not in the sense that I was an alien from another planet, but rather that those forms were something I was supposed to be. I had adorned my ceiling with those glow in the dark stars. I had my favorite astrological pullout posters from National Geographic. I adored Cosmos and Carl Sagan. The history of deep geological time fascinated me. All of this influenced and was influenced by my identity.

As we go into this essay, I'll talk about how exactly I identify as a raven, a ceratosaurus, and star material, the terms I've found I prefer over the years, and what I think is the personal cause of this identity. I am generally agnostic about the causes of my own alterhumanity, however towards the end of this essay, I'll get into my current, more metaphysical beliefs regarding why I am what I am.

Now, consider the raven …

Raven

Being a raven is what I am probably more known as in the community as this is what I joined the online otherkin community as (after some, what could be called cameo shifts as a lion - however some of this will be brought into question in a later heading as these shifts may have been legitimately part of my non-humanity but interpreted incorrectly). Being a raven is the easiest, simplest part of my identity to talk about because, with ravens being extant animals, I could point to aspects of myself and say Yes. This is me. This is what my body should look like, this is how I act, this is a translation of how I think, etc. This is the aspect of myself that I was the most comfortable sharing with the therianthrope community because I was safer from grilling - the term for harsh questioning within the community that has started to fall out of favor. Part of it may also have been that, with an uncommon theriotype (the animal that a therianthrope identifies as), people either find it to be more legitimate (see the countless essays asking the question of Why are there so many wolves?) or there is simply not enough interest in questioning someone with a theriotype that is farther away from being human than a wolf or a deer. After all, the experience of being a non-mammal in a human body is very different from being a non-human mammal in a human body.

When I was still using therian terminology, I called myself a cladotherian (a term for those who have identities that are not a distinct species but rather the genus or family), as while it was easy to say I'm a common raven, it wasn't always accurate when dealing with different shifts (as will be discussed and defined shortly). Common ravens, African white-necked ravens, Thick-billed ravens, Brown-necked ravens, and the extinct Pied raven all feel like they are the same amount of who I am (and this may be partially explained with the third identity that I will talk about later). While the exact species used to be an important thing for me to ponder about, I have since just embraced being called a raven. Whatever sort of raven comes to mind when people hear I am one, they are correct.

On the most basic parts of this identity, we'll talk about shifts. When I say shifts, I mean the mindset changes and instinctual triggers that could be considered a mental shift as well as things such as your mental self image changing called an envisage shift (this is difficult to describe but is essentially how you are visualizing yourself - while I am very aware that I am in a human body, sometimes I still see myself as my theriotype when I'm interacting with the world), and, of course, the phantom shift - where one would feel they have a tail, talons, feathers, etc. This, for me, is a little bit different (and will ring true for the other theriotype that I will be discussing next). I don't so much feel that I suddenly or gradually have feathers or a tail. It's more that I do not currently have them and I am suddenly very aware of the absence and the feeling of wrongness at not having the correct body map. Some aspects of this will also blend in with my gender dysphoria to the point where I often don't know where one begins and the other ends. After all, birds do not give live birth and they also do not possess mammaries. When you're a non-mammal born into a female, mammalian body, some things get extremely alien at best and distressing at worst.

I do not have a name for the form of phantom shifting that I experience (maybe absence shifting is better - mostly joking - mostly), but other shift types, such as envisage shifts and mental shifts, I do experience. When I experience mental shifts as a raven, this often comes with behaviors that I find myself either wanting to do (flying - especially if startled, scavenging, anting, territorial urges - yes, ravens are more territorial than crows, and on the most extreme, becoming mostly nonverbal as I struggle to translate thoughts to the correct words) as well as behaviors that can be translated to a human body easily and be unobtrusive (toe walking, perching on my chair, echolalia, allopreening by mostly having my husband touch my head, neck, or back in a way that simulates preening - he is also the only person allowed to do this as per the above territorial urges). There are other behaviors that are difficult to describe other than I'm seeing a human world through a raven's mind. Capitalism and money is dumb. Coffee, chocolate, and human entertainment are cool.

Some of the more destructive urges that I've had, feather picking, scavenging, anting, and territorial urges, are things that I have had to work on and redirect. As a child I often picked at my sweaters but would get scolded which turned into me then picking at my hair, my face, my head, my ears - all trying to do it surreptitiously - and unfortunately for this one, the closest solution I've found that doesn't destroy my clothing is to rely on other forms of stimming, my current favorite being drywashing my hands because then at least they are doing something.

Scavenging is easier to redirect to other things. I currently have a garden and I love scavenging through it for the dopamine rush of a pod of black eyed peas or a perfectly ripe tomato as well as for bugs to toss to the chickens. I also have scattered high value treats (chocolate eclair ice cream bars) in our freezer on occasion for when the scavenging urge gets really bad. Anting is one that I've not found a solution for but is also one that, in my human body, I know that I cannot do so I just resign myself to the mantra, you cannot ant. Instead, showers with a good pressure shower head are heavenly and if I had the choice, I would probably stay in them forever.

For territorial urges, I've found that it ties into what I consider my introverted nature. I do not like large crowds, I find I can be territorial over my home space, my husband, and also over food - while I do share, I don't take kindly to folks helping themselves to my food without asking and the urge to squawk or peck bubbles up very quickly. Now some of this could also tie into my neurodivergence/suspected autism, however this is something that would cost a lot of money to finish the formal diagnosis I started in 2017 - which leads back to my previous statement of Capitalism is dumb.

Managing my instincts and behaviors with the raven side of my identity is surprisingly easy after years of learning to mask. I do have very strong parental instincts towards a lot of birds - eggs are both tasty food but also, at the right time, something I would want to try and incubate - and as a preteen I did try this once putting an egg in a sock drawer - I probably should have candled it first and was very lucky that it did not explode or rot when it became obvious that it wasn't viable. I've been able to satisfy the parental urge by raising chickens. Even if they are not the same species, they help fulfill that parental instinct - especially because chickens are very, very easy to communicate with, being a domesticated animal. If you do not have access to keeping chickens, taking care of a plush bird or being able to volunteer at places that have birds helps in a pinch. Due to issues with behavior and problems inherent in the parrot trade, I don't actually recommend parrots. I got lucky with my lineolated parakeet, but they are all still wild animals -which would be a whole other essay in and of itself.

I also can satisfy some of the cravings for odd animal parts that a scavenging bird would find very valuable, simply from purchasing the offal parts (hearts, livers, tongues, stomach) and cooking them up. As a raven, I would not have had a strong sense of taste and taste is what has gotten me into trouble as a human. Food is amazing and human cuisine is one of the species' greatest inventions. Human jaws and teeth also mean that I can access bone marrow much easier. One craving that I have barely been able to satisfy, however, is the craving of a whole, raw egg. I blame Joanna from the movie The Rescuers Down Under for making raw, in the shell eggs look so delicious. I have not eaten a raw egg in this manner, but the urge is there quite often. This may actually be my most embarrassing and potentially harmful strong urge since salmonella is not a laughing matter. The best replacement I've found are Cadbury Creme Eggs but the flavor isn't perfect and the shell is too thick.

Much like a raven, I do find that I enjoy collecting things that are otherwise useless to others. While rock collections are a common thing, and I'd love to one day categorize all of my rocks, things as seemingly insignificant as gravel have been a part of my rock collection. I remember being a child and bringing home handfuls of gravel that I had specifically sorted as being the best and prettiest gravel - with the occasional juniper berry or interesting seed hulls. This would have kept going had societal pressures not gotten in the way. (This is also something that will have to be discussed in a future essay about the gateway multiple system I am the core or host of.) Now that I am an adult, I still find myself grabbing interesting rocks that may not have any appeal to anyone else, along with the tops of acorns and interesting leaves.

As a raven, I do enjoy mimicking sounds and will do whatever I can to learn different bird calls, animal sounds, and on occasion try to match specific human voices (this latter one is more difficult unless I am singing). This could be tied to the echolalia from being on the spectrum, however it also does match with my raven-ness. The speed at which I have been able to match some calls gives me a lot of euphoria, with the one coming to mind the most being when I learned the vocalizations of condors and vultures in an evening in order to record them for the podcast I host with my husband. This alongside times when I've been able to have conversations with different backyard birds (as well as owls when I was just calling to a Great Horned Owl who was very confused when he saw me) provide an intense sense of species euphoria.

Now, when I'm talking about my experiences and shifts, I need to make clear that I always have some touch of one of these three kintypes/theriotypes/theropotypes going on. Usually it will go between either raven or ceratosaurus, which will be the next one I will be talking about, with regards to perspective and reactions to the world around me. My view of humanity can be confusing on occasion because some things about humanity are incredibly vexing while others make me fall in love with humanity more and more every day. As a raven, life around humans can superficially be the easiest, with more access to food and less predators - however individual humans can sometimes be cruel. On the same end, some humans can also be kind and ravens and crows have been shown to also recognize this - remembering and telling their friends and family about the humans who were kind as well as the humans who were cruel. When misanthropy shows up in the alterhuman community, it tends to trouble me because as a raven, I love humans for all of their perfections and imperfections.

Misanthropy doesn't even occur to the next kintype. This is because this animal has been extinct for about one hundred forty million years and never saw humans in life.

Ceratosaurus

The ceratosaurus kintype is one that I kept pushed down a long time, much like the third one I'll be talking about, and the main reason is because of an issue that pops up in the alterhuman community over and over again. Grilling.

Grilling was possibly born out of a fear of role players, internet trolls, and physical shifting scammers who preyed on the dysphoric members of the community and on the younger members of the community (and often still do to a lesser degree). There was often an overcompensation to some degree where because of role players, the community felt it had to act harsher to vet newcomers, with strict and constant questioning and often the pushing out or disbelieving of polyweres/polytherians - those with more than one theriotype, fictionkin, and people with kintypes that were either not animals or not even living things - plants, objects, elementals, concepts, and others.

This is why I tried to ignore the ceratosaurus side for so long even though it was alongside raven as being one of the strongest self-images I had had for the longest time. Ceratosaurus may even have been the first one my brain said yeah, that's me since I had seen ceratosaurus in dinosaur books before I saw accurate depictions of a raven (since most crows and ravens are colored like choughs instead in cartoons).

The ceratosaurus side has just as strong of phantom and mental shifts as the raven side but they are extremely different. The mental shifts as a ceratosaurus are, for lack of a better term, quieter, because they are what happens when you take a twenty-five foot long theropod dinosaur who had to hunt for their food as well as contend with much larger predators, and put it in the body of an animal that has most of their needs taken care of in one way or another. The ceratosaurus mind isn't as worried about the stresses of human life that the human mind is - or even as worried as the raven mind that observes humans. The ceratosaurus mind knows that the problems that a human faces are stressful to the human, but the ceratosaurus also knows that it does not have to face down an allosaurus or hunt a stegosaurus for its next meal. The ceratosaurus can get annoyed, get angry, but isn't as easily riled up as a human or raven mind when they're experiencing life in the current era.

With the phantom shifts, this is similar to the shifts that I get with the raven, where I'm less experiencing a presence and more experiencing the absence of a tail, the absence of the lacrimal ridge and nasal crest, the absence of osteoderms, scales and large teeth … and oddly enough the absence of feathers which has not been proven in the fossil record for ceratosaurus. This was another thing that kept me from exploring this side of myself as it was something I could not prove. At one time in the therianthropy community, some of the grilling that I witnessed related to similar things such as Blue eyed, black furred wolves cannot exist and I internalized that to try and disprove the feelings that I was having, even calling the ceratosaurus shifts cameo shifts or a misinterpretation of my raven self adjusting to the human body. However, neither ravens nor humans are twenty five feet long.

The strangest shift that I get is a ceratosaurus is related to my size. I am about an average sized individual. When I'm raven minded, I do have a mild feeling of my body being too large for me - complete with clumsiness from trying to control my longer arms and legs, but with the ceratosaurus, I feel too small. I feel like I should be twenty five feet long and with my head about ten feet above the ground (without even getting started on the posture feeling all kinds of incorrect). The feeling is difficult to describe, since it is hard to describe feeling too large for your body. A lot of my experiences regarding ceratosaurus specifically are related to envisage shifts. I tend to see myself as one whenever I am not seeing myself as a raven or as the third identity I will get into later. On occasion, when I am further into this identity, I feel as if I am a ceratosaurus looking through the eyes of a raven that is looking through the eyes of a human.

Instincts when I'm feeling more like a ceratosaurus are not as overpowering, since life is relatively easy for me compared to life in the Jurassic. Any sort of hunting instincts are easily redirected with play or just imagining myself having a successful hunt. Fishing instincts are helped because of the use of tools like fishing rods - something that ceratosaurus brain is ecstatic over - and sometimes I can even direct those instincts into non-food or actual hunting activities, such as bird watching and photography or weeding the garden as I need to be focused and observant when doing these activities.

This leads into another interesting thing as a ceratosaurus. Ravens are omnivores, as are humans. Ceratosaurus was a carnivore and was not around human cultivated plants ever. As such, when I am in a ceratosaurus mindset, human food is the most amazing thing in the world. Carrots, tomatoes, garlic, watermelon, corn - none of these existed or would have been eaten by ceratosaurus and when I'm in a ceratosaurus mindset, I savor these flavors even more. The ceratosaurus is happy to be human. It is ecstatic because it has everything it could have wanted - minus the mammalian things that do still cause dysphoria in this mindset.

Now, a ceratosaurus and a raven are corporeal with specific sizes, specific awareness, and easily describable instincts and thoughts. The same cannot be said for the third identity that I will talk about. When you look behind the human mask, behind the raven mask, and behind the ceratosaurus mask, you will see something whose awareness is entirely alien because it may not even have been aware until it landed on the molten, early Earth.

Stelliferoforme

So this one is the weird one and is one that I do not have a proper name for so I am going with The Stelliferoforme (from stelliferous - meaning having or abounding with stars and forme - from the latin form and greek morpha for bodily form, build) even though it's not one hundred percent accurate but does work enough for the basic form of this identity, being created sometime during the early stelliferous period and being made of the material that makes up stars while also being something that originally was intended to create one (other terms I have played with are Star Soul, Atomic Soul, and Stardust-kin). This is what I feel is the original form of whatever makes up the experience that my soul/atoms/what have you has taken. This is the form prior to the other two forms and encompasses the forms that could be considered cameo shifts or past life shifts. Lives that were formative but didn't shape my soul directly (such as lives trying out plants and deciding they needed to be more mobile or lives as mammals and their ancestors and deciding that mammalian life was not for them please and thank you). Shapes made by the dust or atoms that were forged in a nebula before the formation of earth - that feel so alien that it is hard to quantify because it is not life in the same way a human or a raven or a ceratosaurus would experience it as well as lives that did not form a part of my identity (much like how an experience of playing tag on the playground very much happened but it didn't shape your life in the same way as getting cast in a school play for a child who developed a love of theater).

The Stelliferoforme is the first form, the dust and elements that may have formed a star that may or may not have died out - or may have sent jets of material out towards a newly forming solar system. Being a part of that material and joining the molten ball that was beginning to form and orbit Sol before colliding with another planet. Material that could have ended up on both the cooling planet and the newly formed moon (or may not have). Material that could have been among the material that was hit by an icy comet, struck by lightning, and started to form into the building blocks that would become life. This Stelliferoforme, paradoxically, does not long for the other stars. They are quite happy remaining on earth. Earth has been their home since the first time they gained what we would consider consciousness as life began to form. Earth was where they became aware. Earth is home.

The shifts for a Stelliferoforme are difficult to describe because a body is alien to it. When I try to focus on it and peel apart the layers, I find myself feeling as if I am the atoms of carbon, helium, hydrogen, etc but not knowing what they are called because stars and stardust don't have the same names for themselves. The gasses in a Nebula don't know they are called oxygen, hydrogen or helium. The specks of dust don't know their atomic number. They barely know the form they take or will take and being in a contained physical body is incredibly alien. They feel too big and too small. They feel cramped and yet too free. Sensations are overwhelming and addicting all at once.

They know and don't know so much. They don't understand how light and color works and yet they have an intimate knowledge of it in a way that doesn't make sense to an organic being's brain. A mental shift as a Stelliferoforme is both incredibly quiet and overwhelmingly loud. The Stelliferroforme cannot do math, cannot sing, cannot talk and yet they have so much to say, the numbers pull to them even if they cannot understand them, and music is their language.

The experience of human life as a Stelliferoforme is one that puts context to what they are. They can look into books now and learn words that describe what they know and use other words to describe what isn't written. They can experience sensations they would never have experienced if they had coalesced into a Proper Star as they had once been attempting to do. They could not create a star, a solar system, collapse into a black hole - maybe creating something new in it's collapse - as a star would imagine their life cycle to be if they could imagine such a thing, but as a human, they can create a universe of their own - stories are one of the things that fascinates the Stelliferoforme the most because in creating stories, whole new universes are spawned with rules that reflect the mind of the creator.

The Stelliferoforme is compelled to create and experience because the material was there to form a star, to create a planetary system of their own, but the forces of gravity weren't in their favor. In another universe, perhaps this material is currently a star in the same stages as our current sun - perhaps even part of a star system, with their own planetary bodies and asteroid belts, pulling comets into their orbits to create a fiery display in the skies of the planets that encircle it.

But they did not become a star and instead joined other bits of star material on the molten earth - and they like it better that way because they have had more varied experiences than they would have had as a star. Through landing on earth, they could experience consciousness, sentience … and sapience.

What's in a name?

Labels in the alterhuman community have been a sticky subject for myself. I began in the community as otherkin first and foremost as that was the term I had been introduced to in high school. I should add that I had seen descriptions of therians and weres (more commonly weres) in the early 2000s but I was not active on the internet due to stranger danger fears. Otherkin worked for the most part until I discovered the therian/therianthrope label, which was what I threw myself into mostly (and in retrospect, this hindered my own personal development as therianthropy forums and websites had some cultures that did not quite mesh with my own gnosis and so in order to be a proper therian, I tried to fit the mold and over question myself, leading to a lot of confusion and identity issues that resolved when I took an unplanned hiatus in the mid to late 2010s to focus on attempting a teaching career (perhaps an essay on how underpaying and overworking teachers is what wass leading to the teacher shortages long before Covid is in order). During this time, I still was a raven. I still had dinosaur shifts that I was trying to explain away, and I still had that nebulous (pun intended) feeling of something else being there.

Rejoining the communities that have names that sound and like they would first on the surface but have their own history and very different definitions, i.e. starseed and celestials).

Perhaps the terms aren't as important. If I say I am otherkin and list off my types, save for the stelliferoforme, anyone with a basic understanding has a bit of an idea about what I am. It's not a perfect fit still, but it's an entry point.

So what am I? Well, theropodanthrope is something I've toyed with but it doesn't shorten to anything other than theropod and it is more derivative of what I used to call myself. It also leaves out the integral star part of myself - the stelliferoforme part of who I am. If I wanted to simply use raven-kin, ceratosaurus-kin, and Star Souled or spacekin, I could (and in fact Star Soul or stelliferoforme is a term to separate myself from other communities that have names that sound and like they would first on the surface but have their own history and very different definitions, i.e. starseed and celestials).

Perhaps the terms aren't as important. If I say I am otherkin and list off my types, save for the stelliferoforme, anyone with a basic understanding has a bit of an idea about what I am. It's not a perfect fit still, but it's an entry point.

However, because of the way that the identities interact, perhaps stelliferoforme is the best name for the base identity - star stuff that has taken forms that have been the most impactful and shaped itself as such. A raven and ceratosaurus stelliferoforme.

The Whys of ilrak

So now that we have covered the three different aspects of my identity, we will talk about the whys. As I said, I am rather agnostic regarding my identity as if it turns out the cause is purely psychological, I am alright with that. If it turns out to be purely spiritual or metaphysical, that is also ok. It will just better explain why I am the way I am. I do prefer to lean into a metaphysical cause because psychologically, I have not found much to confirm exactly why I am a stelliferoforme, a ceratosaurus, or a raven. I can point to traits and say this is probably related to my autism but it doesn't explain the absence/phantom shifts. This is when it is a little easier to try and look for a metaphysical cause.

In my own case, because of the nature of these identities and that without one another I would be hollow, I like to compare it to a nesting doll. In the center is the core identity. It was what first gained consciousness and is what the experiences are being built on with each life or iteration of life the cosmic material is experiencing. The Stelliferoforme is what is the smallest doll inside the nesting doll - or to use the mask analogy, is what is wearing all the masks. However, it is not something that experiences life in the same way as an organic being so it needs a filter to experience it.

The ceratosaurus is the next filter (and while, in a drawing I did, it is the larger of the dolls, the ceratosaurus is actually a filter or doll nested within the raven). This is a life or an experience that left such a mark on the Stelliferoforme that it formed part of the shape it preferred - bipedal, feathered, reptilian rather than mammalian - and this form persisted as a preferred form as long as it was extant. Were there other lives prior to this or after this but prior to a raven life? Absolutely, but they did not leave the same impact on the core identity. Life as an early mollusk was interesting but the oceans were scary. Life as an early tree was long and fascinating but movement was missed. Life as a Dimetrodon spelled the end of life in the mammal line (until human) simply because mammalian traits were a big NO to the stelliferoforme. Other archosaur lives before the evolution of ceratosaurus were close but not what the stelliferoforme enjoyed. Then along comes a dinosaur that is bipedal and enjoys being flamboyant and flashy - to the point where it is the theropod dinosaur most known for it's crests and osteoderms, and it decides this is the form it prefers (until the form goes extinct and then it's a scramble to hop from horned dinosaur to horned dinosaur in all available groups until the non-avian dinosaurs go extinct - which then leads to lives as birds).

The raven is the third filter and until this current life was the most recent filter. This is the filter that has been around since about the Miocene, enjoying lives as different types of ravens throughout the world (explaining why I identify with more than one species of raven), being curious about humans but not wanting to be one. Being a raven was comfortable and fun. It was a way to experience a new level of thought and ability and there was so much to experience even as a bird - but all things must come to an end.

The human part of this is going to be expanded upon in an essay regarding fictive that joined the system at the end of 2022, because if the metaphysical explanation of my alterhumanity is considered, then the choice that was made after my last raven life was a catalyst for a fork in the road and, much like with the possibility of different actions creating infinite universes, one universe split off where I decided to give the human thing a go while in this universe I dug my heels in and had to be pushed into a human life later than I was in the other universe. My personal belief is that, in being pushed to incarnate as human, I decided to try and get as many human experiences crammed into one life as possible to limit the amount of time I was in the strange mammal body. Perhaps this is why I so easily was converted to (read: scared into) Christianity - and why I have constantly been on the Medical Mystery Tour since childhood.

While experiencing dysphoria from being in a feminine, mammalian body is difficult and I find myself very mismatched in my body, I am glad that I ended up in the form that I did. It helped me meet the love of my lives and find someone who was on a similar wavelength as myself. This life has helped me find words to describe what and who I am and to write them down in case they help someone else on a similar journey. I would never have been able to have a somewhat concrete way of explaining this experience as a raven that I do as a human (ravens have not invented any easily translatable forms of passing on stories outside of oral tradition and until a raven to any human language dictionary is written, we won't truly know the stories told around a carcass or to the hatchlings in the nest). I have discovered the joys of coffee, chocolate, and highly developed taste buds. Most importantly, I can be with the love of my lives who, if I had been a raven this go around, I would never have been able to be with him because humans and ravens are not romantically compatible (much less ceratosaurs or star material).

Though this doesn't stop me from occasionally wanting to do a display dance for my husband that would look incredibly silly without feathers or crests. Maybe I can convince him we should be birds next time … or perhaps a binary star system.

In Conclusion …

Being a raven and ceratosaurus stelliferoforme is how I view the world and has shaped my life in ways that I still am trying to find the right words for. The more layers I pull back, the more it seems I need to find better words to describe them. I am star material that is wearing the masks from the forms that have most defined who I was and who I am currently and through those masks, I see and experience the world differently than others. I'm star material looking through the eyes of a ceratosaurus, who is looking through the eyes of a raven, who is now living out their life with a human mask. They are all as equally me as I am them. They are who I have always been and who I will be throughout the rest of my lives. These ephemeral and nonphysical identities influence me just as much as my physical ones. They intersect with my neurodivergence and my spirituality and are what have shaped who I am today. If it turns out that only one of the possible causes is correct, or that neither is, it will be alright because that doesn't change who I am or the experiences that I've had.

The experiences as a raven and ceratosaurus stelliferoforme aren't even the strangest I have lived through. They in fact have made me more open minded to others' identities and experiences. In sharing my own experience with discovering and embracing who I am, I hope to maybe make the journey a little easier for the next alterhuman who is feeling alone in the community or who feels they have a weird kintype that they cannot easily describe and are worried they won't be taken seriously.

The experiences as a raven and ceratosaurus stelliferoforme aren't even the strangest I have lived through. They in fact have made me more open minded to others' identities and experiences. In sharing my own experience with discovering and embracing who I am, I hope to maybe make the journey a little easier for the next alterhuman who is feeling alone in the community or who feels they have a weird kintype that they cannot easily describe and are worried they won't be taken seriously.

[shironezuninja]

Split Personality Inner Me: *exasperated* Oh sure, Wen. You start resuming your exploration of Spider-Man when HE voices him in a video game.

[liberty-barnes]

heey darling! recently got into your y/n lively-reynolds series and I just wanted to ask if there is any timeline? and by that i mean if you actually thought of the year blake adopted y/n, etc. thank you and have a great day!!

oh totally! so here it is

TYNLRS TIMELINE (plus bonus scenes)

contains spoilers for all chapters so it's best to read it at the end

all new additions are the ones with X in front of them

(Y/n)'s birthday was estimated to be around late October/early November of 1998. She was abandoned in front of a church, therefore they had no means of knowing her actual birth date.

November 13th 2006: Blake adopts (Y/n) from an orphanage in Los Angeles. They were 19 and 8 respectively. Blake went in for a PR visit at the request of her manager but immediately fell in love with (Y/n). After learning that she'd been in foster care for most of her life and had developed selective mutism from the constant moves and instability, Blake decided she'd start the adoption process in order to give her a stable home. Many judged her for it because she was young, and they saw it as "throwing her life away" but Blake never listened, and instead, raised one of the best actresses in our generations. November 13th became (Y/n)'s "official" birthday, as it is the day she was adopted.

March 21st 2016: (Y/n) makes her acting debut in Supernatural at eighteen years old.

April 27th 2018: Tom and (Y/n) meet for the first time at the Infinity War premiere and form a quick friendship that the public immediately adores.

December 16th 2018: Tom and (Y/n) start dating. It becomes harder to dismiss their touches as purely platonic, so the fans start to wonder if there's something other than friendship going on.

[Part 1] June 17th 2021: Tom and (Y/n) are paired up together for a Wired Autocomplete Interview. As their public friendship is very popular, their teams have taken to putting them in interviews together regardless of what they're promoting because it always brings in big numbers. However, this is the first interview they do alone. The fans promptly freak out.

October 28th 2021: Stepping Stones, (Y/n)'s debut album, comes out. She's been writing it on and off since she was thirteen and learned how to play the guitar (courtesy of Ryan), but she really put some effort into it when Taylor took a look at some of her songs and told her they were good.

[Part 2] November 6th 2021: (Y/n) and Ryan Answer the Internet to promote Red Notice and Stepping Stones. It's the first time in ten years that they're put together for an interview and the public can really get a look into their dynamic, even though they talk about each other and their family in other interviews. It was mainly put in as a ploy to draw attention from (Y/n) and Tom's relationship cause the fans were starting to connect Stepping Stones songs to Tom.

[Part 3] February 7th 2022: (Y/n) and Tom go on The Late Late Show with James Corden and play Spill Your Guts or Fill Your Guts to promote the movie To The Edge And Back. They had an official plan to reveal their relationship a few months down the line, this was part one of the lengthy seeding process so they could get the most publicity out of the revelation of their relationship as possible. Obviously, it all went to shit, but it's okay.

[Part 4] February 18th 2022: Tom and (Y/n) do the Boyfriend Tag on (Y/n)'s YouTube channel. It goes wonderfully wrong, bordering on indecent at times. Their PR teams hate them, and they hate that it worked even more cause know they have no reason to stop them other than "because society said so", and since we all know (Y/n) hates society... Let's just say it was a struggle to talk her out of actually making that Only Fans account solely for the purpose of pissing them off.

[Part 5] March 3rd 2022: (Y/n) goes undercover on the internet. The world finds out she has a Tumblr account and freaks. That's also the day she creates a public Tumblr. From there on, she'll send things she finds on her lurker account to her actual account and reblog them on there with actual commentary. It's caused many fan artists to have metaphorical heart attacks. Fanfic writers went through a two-week phase where they didn't dare put anything out, but after she urged them to keep creating content, the number of fics skyrocketed. Many fanfic writers were contacted by publishing houses after (Y/n) sent them a few snippets to showcase how good some could be.

[Part 6] May 17th 2022: (Y/n), Ryan, and Blake do the Who Knows Me Better? tag. It was brought on when Blake realised there were too many people freaking out about (Y/n) and Ryan, and not enough freaking out about (Y/n) and Blake. Therefore, she set out to prove that she was the Superior Parent and obviously succeeded. Ryan pouted for three days after that video, even more so when the picture they posted as punishment became the most liked picture on his Instagram after only a week.

Early July 2022: Tom and (Y/n) decide to move in together.

[Part 7] July 23rd 2022: Tom and (Y/n) go on BuzzFeed to find out who their Heartbeat soulmate is. It's only the second time they star in a movie together, the first time where they're protagonists and each other's love interests. In To The Edge And Back, they played Dove Cameron's love interests but were never involved themselves.

August 21st 2022: Heartbeat premiere. Their first premiere as a couple, having missed To The Edge And Back's premiere due to all the chaos and media scrutiny. They wear matching pirate-themed outfits, and the fans have a collective aneurysm. Many edits are made. Many fics are written. It's a good day for all involved. (Except for the poor PR intern who's trying to wrestle (Y/n)'s Tumblr password out of her cause she keeps reblogging NSFW things and he needs to make it Stop.)

September 28th 2022: Tom and (Y/n) buy their first house. They decide to buy completely new things to fill the house with (in order to start a new and hopefully more organised life, as well as optimising it to deal with (Y/n)'s ADHD). Their first purchase is a big soft rug and a long coffee table to put in (Y/n)'s office because for people with ADHD, working from the floor is the best way to not get distracted.

[Part 8] October 16th 2022: Tom and (Y/n) officially move into their new place, a house in a very private neighbourhood in London, so they could be close to the city for their jobs but still have privacy. Ryan and Blake help them tidy up the place (and build IKEA furniture, or at the very least attempt to). They decide to do a video for (Y/n)'s YouTube channel following a trend their fans have started called Which Reynolds is most likely to...? It's the first time that (Y/n) and Ryan are seen to be so affectionate on camera (see: the massive hug-tackle during the concert tickets question). They decide to be the ones to host Christmas and New Year's.

December 3rd 2022: Tom and (Y/n) adopt Atalanta, a two-year-old Golden Retriever who was left at a shelter in London and no one's wanted to adopt as of yet. No one understood why, since Golden Retrievers are fairly popular breeds and Tala was perfectly healthy. Tom and (Y/n) often joke that it was fate, that Tala was just waiting for them to pick her up and give her the perfect life she deserves.

X December 17th 2022: Tom proposes to (Y/n). He had a whole plan to do it at Christmas surrounded by their family, but she stumbled upon the ring when searching for the Christmas presents he bought for her. She screamed, ran to him, and threw the box into his chest. She made him ask and didn't even wait for him to finish the first word before she agreed and demanded he put the ring on her finger.

December 18th 2022: (Y/n) gets her XVII-XII-MMXXII tattoo

Christmas 2022: First time (Y/n) and Tom host Christmas. Blake and Nikki immediately get to gossiping about their eldest children. Dom and Ryan have a contest to see who can make the kids laugh the hardest, and it has the added purpose of keeping all children or child-brained adults (see: Dom, Ryan, Harry, James, Inez) occupied. Sam immediately commanders the kitchen. It's big, modern, beautiful, any chef's dream. (Y/n) helped where she could, bringing Sam his ingredients, making sure Blake and Nikki's wine glasses were always full, and helping her sisters to the bathroom when necessary. Betty clung to Tom the whole time, to the point where he got put on strict baby duty. He spent the night with her in his lap, feeding her when dinner time came, rocking her to sleep, listening to her incessant babbles of which he only understood about half. It also included a frankly criminal amount of My Little Pony. Somehow, he got hooked on the show as well.

December 27th 2022: TomYn engagement rumours start after Harry posts a picture of the family where a rectangle shape can be seen imprinted onto Tom's pocket. Many people say that's it clearly an engagement ring's box, while others vehemently deny it, showing through the proportions that it's most likely just his phone or wallet. No statements are put out anywhere.

[Part 9] December 28th 2022: (Y/n) goes on GQ and breaks down her tattoos. Her team got it as a last-minute replacement for some magazine interview, which is why she didn't think of waiting until after to get her newest tattoo.

December 31st 2022: Tom and (Y/n) host New Year's for the first time. All the clocks in the house are turned back three hours so the kids can believe they stayed up until midnight when in reality, they went to bed at a decent hour. They take the previous year's ball drop recording and play it as if it's this year's. Blake almost cries from pride at her daughter's genius idea. The Lively-Reynolds-Holland Fam's New Year's Eve 24 Hour contest takes place, and the points are put down to zero. Tom wins, much to everyone's disappointment. After sufficient pouting and a tear or two, he decided to play We Made It by Louis Tomlinson so that (Y/n) would be happy. It's a good night for him ;)

[Part 10] January 19th 2023: (Y/n) takes a lie detector test with Vanity Fair and admits to having lied during but not being caught. The internet goes absolutely bonkers. WHAT IS THE LIE trends for three days on Twitter.

X January 31st 2023: (Y/n) performs three steps to happiness at the Grammys. It's the 13th song on her second album, Serendipity, separated into three parts. The first one is about her and Blake, how they met, the adoption and the hardships that came with it, and Blake's transition from a legal guardian to her mom. The second part is about Ryan and Blake's meeting and the start of their relationship, followed by Ryan and (Y/n)'s meeting and his transition from Blake's boyfriend to her dad. The last part talks about her meeting Tom, the reluctance to let herself be vulnerable and get into a relationship, them moving in together, and how great things are now, including a mention of their engagement.

April 20th 2023: Serendipity, (Y/n)'s second album and the complementary piece to Stepping Stones comes out. The album is filled with love songs and references to Tom and her family.

X July 14th 2023: Tom and (Y/n) get married.

[yossariandawn]

fanfic asks: 1, 4, 6, 9, 15, 20, 50, & 51!!

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in? Honestly, FDTD is the first fandom I’ve done anything approaching real involvement in! I was a long time lurker of many different fandoms, but this one is where I actually made accounts on the different platforms for myself, created stuff past a one off here or there (that mostly never saw the light of day lol) and actually interacted and even made friends in! However, if we are going for the first fandom I discovered, that would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms? Since I’m only counting this one, nope! Though I will admit, several months ago I did start to see some of the rude or even nasty stuff that is scattered throughout probably all fandoms, directed at real people, normally over characters or ships. And I did make me think real hard about how much time I was putting into this, and whether it was something I wanted to continue to be a part of, even if it is pretty rare overall here. I decided to stick around, and I’m glad I did, but I definitely am trying to be much more conscious with disagreeing publicly when it comes across my dash.

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in. FDTD SethKate. Shoot, the only other kind of involvement in fandoms that I have OTPs in are Falling Skies Hal/Maggie. The Punisher’s Frank/Karen probably get in on just a technicality, since as much as I love them together, I could see them being happy with other people, but ONLY AFTER the events of the show and the impact they had on each other. I did make some vid requests waaaay back in the day for Life With Derek vids, since I couldn’t make any myself at the time! Here is one I found, but it’s not great quality anymore for some reason, and isn’t shippy, lol It’s Casey and her supportive therapist Paul, which is something I loved (VERY MUCH IN A NON ROMANTIC WAY) And I shipped Derek/Casey pretty hard, but I’m not sure they really reach OTP levels.  And a fandom I am very much not in does hold the only other OTP slot I currently have (General Hospital’s Jason/Sam) which I talk about for question 20. The truth is I’m not really normally an OTPer, most shows I watch I couldn’t care less about the ships by themselves as long as I think everyone is acting in character and in interesting ways. Which is a prerequisite for me liking a show in the first place, so 🤷‍♀️

9. What are the best things about your current fandom? The people and the talent. AND THE SHOW, which I adore, for all its faults! But the people have really made this into something special.

15. Is there an obscure ship which you love? Hal/Maggie from Falling Skies probably qualifies for obscure, as there is shockingly little stuff for my favorite badass alien invasion resistance fighters duo.

20. Any ships which you surprised yourself by liking? OK, so this one may also count as obscure, they have a big presence on youtube but basically nothing on tumblr. Jasam aka Jason Morgan/Sam McCall from General Hospital. I don’t watch soaps as a general rule (not knocking them, by any means, they just rarely have stuff I am interested in, and the nature of the format makes it hard for me to stay invested) and when I first got cable I started catching glimpses of the late night reruns on the SOAP Network of some of the weirder ones, like Passions (haha thanks Spike for referencing it enough to catch my interest) and Port Charles, General Hospital’s confusingly related (but not really?) spinoff show. And then one day I noticed one of the Port Charles actresses (Sam!) was now on one of the big deal soaps, but was playing a different character! IN THE SAME TOWN?! but during the day, with less/no vampires and more/all mob antics. ANYWAY, end result is I got increasingly sucked into her storyline, and THEN THE JASAM STUFF HAPPENED, which it was so my kind of thing it’s not even funny. PARTNERS! IN CRIME! AND IN LOVE! BADASS SOFTNESS AND TRUST AND PEOPLE WHO LOVE AND PROTECT EACH OTHER AND THEN REALIZE WHOOPS WE’RE IN LOVE OH NO WHAT WILL WE DO. And the downside of loving a soap opera character or pairing is you just have to accept the fact that at some point they will become completely UNRECOGNIZABLE, either through characterization or actual recasting. 🤣 So while I did stop watching after the god awful “Sam sleeps with her stepdad and Jason has a secret love child” arc, I did tune back in for both their Mexico Road Trip Reunion and their (First) Wedding! And I still rewatch their 2004-early 2006 storylines on youtube, and I will always scan the supermarket soap mags for little glimpses into how things are going for them, which seems to be pretty well actually! They are definitely a real Legacy Couple now, and Jason the Original is apparently back too, which is nice.

50. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction? Spuffy 😂. I don’t know how I found the first fanfic I read (other than clearly way to much free access to the internet)  There’s a chance I was watching fanvids first, which led into finding out about fics. AND IN MY DAY THERE WAS NO YOUTUBE, so fanvids were much harder to find! RIP Buffyverse Database (i think that’s what it was called lol) But Spike was my favorite character on Buffy, and  I fell so hard in love with the IDEA of Buffy and Spike having a romantic connection and acting on it, right up until it started actually happening in Season 6. It was a wild ride for twelve year old me, but I learned a ton about what kind of things I like in relationships, and want kind of things I VERY MUCH DO NOT LIKE. And for anyone who likes Spuffy, this is completely a personal preference, not a dig at the couple. I do understand the appeal, it’s just didn’t end up being what I wanted it to be.

51. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go! Ok, so this is a bit of advice with some rant mixed in! If you send anon stuff to a writer, please remember you are talking to a real person, and someone who has put themselves out there in some way enough for you to comment on. If you choose to go anon, the very fact of your anonymity means that the only information they will have are the contents of that one message you’ve sent, and that you’ve chosen to not take the risk of putting yourself out there in the same way the person receiving the message has. And if all you are sending in that message is a correction, or disagreement, or (in more extreme cases) even an attempt to police your fandom by telling someone else that they are participating wrong (meaning not in a way you agree with) then your message? May not be given the good faith extended to people who DO put themselves out there, however imperfectly they do it. Good and effective communication is so hard, I really understand, and it’s a skill that all of us are still learning and sometimes failing at. I’ve been really impressed by how I’ve seen people handle messages  I know I would not have been able to do with such grace! Personally, at this point the cons of anon stuff outweighs the pros for me, but everyone gets to make their own choice on how they handle their inbox thankfully! (anon asks can be toggled off and on, and you can even block anons instead of answering them!) But anon or not, we should all treat each other kindly, even people we disagree strongly with. And if you do, you may even change someone's mind or learn something new yourself. I know from personal experience it’s way more effective than the alternative, which doesn’t make it easier, but does make it worth trying.

Thanks for sending these in @alwaysupatnight! 💖💖💖

[momonetmoproblems]

Virtual Identities & Oversharing

The Spammer & The Paparazzi: How much is too much?

Social Media has fashioned a space for persons across the world to depart from the realities of their average lives and enter a world in which, with an email address or cell number and a few abstract characters strung together to create a password, they can be whomever or whatever they like. Sometimes these personas are an extension of the true self or they may be fictitious and misleading characters to disguise a user’s genuine identity. People develop various personalities across social media platforms to suit their audience “like a chameleon that changes colours to suit its background or settings, so the online personality can change to adapt and fit in to an online community” says Stacey Koosel in The Renegotiated Self: Social Media’s Effects on Identity. This can range from the Perfect Christian on Facebook for the approval of familial onlookers to Miss #FlewedOut on Instagram for the admiration and acceptance of other IG “baddies” to the I Hate Men posse for the recognition of Feminist Twitter. Social Media is a performative space where users carry out a balancing act, never breaking character and executing top notch shows in exchange for rave reviews in the form of Likes, Retweets and Comments. 

From the impersonating of famous celebrities to World Record Eggs, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook among other platforms are breeding grounds for Virtual Identities, most of which, arguably, are false in nature. These concocted personas are often the manifestations of who one thinks he or she is or wishes he or she could be. The Spammer and The Paparazzi, as I will affectionately call them, are two of the foremost personas plaguing the internet, shifting perceptions of reality subtly but unmistakably, often through oversharing, and the repercussions can be grave.

Jaron Lanier, Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, in the 2020 docudrama The Social Dilemma, states that social media causes a gradual, slight, imperceptible change in people’s behavior and perception altering what they do, how they think and who they are. Social Media, by nature, can turn users into “oversharers”, it is to be expected.  Afterall, Facebook prompts its users with “What’s on your mind?” and Twitter with “What’s happening?” And as more actors join these performative spaces, it can be observed that the more outrageous the spectacle, the more interactions, engagements, and impressions it will receive as it “[inspires] the passive audience to become more active, interactive and creative” avers Koosel. Gradually, there is more and more competition for the spotlight. So, what do people do? They generate more content in the hopes of finally or repeatedly going viral. Who wouldn’t want to see themselves on Good Morning America for their viral #VogueChallenge or get their artwork of Nicki Minaj acknowledged by the rapper with over 123 million followers and potential customers on Instagram? Unfortunately, not everyone is talented in these traditional ways, thus the performance becomes one of improvisation with very personal, provocative or pretended anecdotes, pictures or videos to spark a controversy. But it is imperative that we ask ourselves “How much is too much? 

The Spammer

The ultimate oversharer that will leave you screaming “T.M.I.” to your screen at least every other minute is the Spammer. Their tweets are often extremely personal and frequently appear in quick succession of each other. This type of user’s downfall is most likely that one post that the world did not need to see (believe it or not, the first tweet from the screenshot above is very real). This piece of information regularly falls in the hands of the worst person imaginable - an employer, parent, significant other or worse. This is the reality on the popular platform, Twitter. 

Take the case of Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions, Adley Duncan, for example. The series of tweets below has forced the DPP to establish a social media policy after backlash ensued on the timeline in response to Duncan’s unnecessary and inappropriate confession. He has since deactivated his account.

Twitter user and YouTuber, Niakumi, is another oversharer. Unfortunately, in her case, it cost her a little more than her Twitter account. YouTube has become Oversharing Central and has cost several vloggers their careers, accounts and fanbases because of a Storytime that never should have left their hard drive or a tweet that should never have left their drafts. 

The same can be identified in the case of the young JMMB employee who tweeted a “rape joke” which was quickly escalated to the JCF, Digicel and JMMB. The employee has since lost his job. 

The Paparazzi

Erving Goffman in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life postulates when individuals interact with others, they attempt to police how they are perceived by constructing a certain image of desired impressions. Goffman illustrates that these individuals choose their own stage, props, and costumes for specific audiences. Though Goffman was referring to real life interactions, as the world becomes increasingly digital, these performances are most appreciated on social media. Enli and Thumim, in Socializing and Self-Representation Online, posit that users meticulously select the best information to convey to their respective audiences which may establish a certain status for that user based on popularity. And where can one find the best arena for a popularity contest? If you said “Instagram”, you are absolutely correct. 

The Paparazzi, best represented on IG, generates his or her “digiSelf” as Mark Federman used in The Cultural Paradox of the Global Village, by snapping a shot of every second of the day. This often includes: 

Their outfit (the costume)

Who they are with (God forbid the person is even minutely famous)

What they are driving, and the music played

The journey

The scenery

The destination (the stage)

The food, drinks – bring out the top shelf liquor – and the bill (the props)

Cyberstalking is now birthed from oversharing in the establishing of these virtual identities as this user is not only a danger to themselves but to those around them as they enable stalkers and others with ill intent to live-track their location making them an easy target. Several Jamaican women find themselves being plagued by their very own Joe (don’t say you haven’t watched You on Netflix) which the above Jamaica Observer article speaks to as six men summarize the ways in which they kept tabs on an ex using social media, while international artistes, Tay Way and Pop Smoke, have fallen victim to this habit and the repercussions were fatal in both cases.

Users must be cognizant that their Virtual Identities or digiSelves, so long as they are associated with their governmental naming, are a reflection of whatever entity they find themselves employed, even if they do not intend it. These brands have worked tirelessly for years to maintain their image and will not hesitate to shed dead weight tainting their brand identity. Moreover, the savages viewers on social media are out for blood and will not hesitate to pull out the pitchforks and torches when someone missteps, #CancelCulture. Other users will not give the benefit of separating one’s real self and the digiSelf, they are far more likely to take one’s content at face value. Therefore, think upon what you want people to see when they type in your name or “handle”, what should they take away from your profile? 

Furthermore, social media, when overused and abused, leave users vulnerable to the ill-minded lurkers in the shadows. Tactics like keeping a low profile, utilizing privacy settings by being specific about who can view one’s content and the follow or friend requests accepted, reducing the amount of personal information associated with one’s account and, if one must snap, posting the content when safely home enable users to lessen the likelihood of being cyberstalked.

To be safe overall? 

Next time Twitter asks, “What’s happening”, or the next time you hit the road for a night on the town, ask yourself “How much is too much?”

References

Dazio, S. (2020, July 10). Police: Pop Smoke's social media led killers to LA home. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/police-arrested-los-angeles-death-rapper-pop-smoke-71695053

Enli, S & Thumim, N. (2012). Socializing and Self Representation Online: Exploring Facebook.

Federman, M. (2006). The cultural paradox of the global village. Keynote Speech at McLuhan Programme in Culture and Technology, University of Toronto.

Gartrell, N. & Bouscher, D. (2020, September 18). Richmond rapper Tay Way gunned down minutes after posting Instagram video that revealed his location. Mercury News. https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/18/three-shot-one-killed-in-richmond-drive-by-shooting/

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Knight, C. (2019, April 29). All Woman Relationships Stalker mode: 'I would dial her number just to listen to her voice'. The Jamaica Observer. http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/all-woman/stalker-mode-i-would-dial-her-number-just-to-listen-to-her-voice-_163249?profile=1263

Koosel, S. (2015). The Renegotiated Self: Social Media’s Effects on Identity. Alfapress.

Zaman, M. (2020, September 2). The People Who Created Facebook & YouTube Are Sorry. Refinery 29. https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/09/10002175/social-media-effects-the-social-dilemma-netflix-documentary

[little-apple20]

Digital Citizenship: Social media and the Election process

This week, I will be talking about use of social media in relation to politics. I will begin by explaining what digital citizenship is before moving on to discuss this week's topic.

Digital citizenship refers to users' behaviour on social platforms such as engaging in meaningful and polite discussion. It is important to consider the digital divide when discussing digital citizenship; not everyone has access to a device or to the internet (this group consists mostly of older or impoverished people (as proven in the report by Roy Morgan 2019). 

Often, digital citizenship might also be thought of as actively participating in online activism or political discussion for change in society. However, according to Nielson's (2006) 90-9-1/ Participation inequality theory, active participants are rare; 90% of users are “completely silent lurkers,” 9% are active commentators on the posts of others, and only 1% create their own content despite increasing numbers of online creators and conversationalists.  

Taking the perspective of politicians, social media is able to help connect them to a wider audience, encourage voter activation and promote campaigns. While active participation in political discussion can certainly be beneficial in facilitating social change, giving knowledgeable users “power like never before to call out falsehoods” (Trounson 2016), some argue that it can also create 'echo-chambers', encouraging a fractured politics whereby people are narrowly interested in their own concerns (Trounson 2016).  

Lately, due to COVID-19 there has been an increased need to stay informed and up to date (part of which could be interacting with politicians’ social media feeds) as it can be difficult to understand some of the regulations put in place by the government.  

 Steven Marshall (SA Premier) has used his social media presence to connect with South Australians, allowing them to clearly understand the new laws that have been created. Thus, it can be argued that during these trying times political messaging on social media has been beneficial and has allowed us to learn more about the pandemic. Here is an example of one of his posts:

https://www.facebook.com/StevenMarshallMP/

It is also important to discuss the way that an average user engages with politics on social media. While #auspol is used by politicians to debate, most of this group consists of 'political junkies' (Bruns 2017). Although users may have the freedom to post their own thoughts, social networks are also able to influence the type and amount of information to which people are exposed, curating content based on algorithmic information sorting. There is also concern of increasing reliance on politicians' social media as sources of campaign information, because political campaigns can use them to stir emotions/influence behaviour with the use of algorithms (a perfect example of this being Cambridge Analytica). This elicits critical issues that affect the development of the democratic process.

While users agree that political discussion can be beneficial, for many the influx of political content is a source of frustration. They are increasingly worn out by the tone and volume of political material on social media platforms and view it as a disrespectful and angry medium as compared to other venues for political engagement.

The tenor of debates on these platforms are partisan and prejudiced, with dissenters often demonised. Due to this, there have also been concerns that social media encourages “cynicism chic” - the value of appearing to be “above it all” and adopting a simplistic view of policy problems (which are often very complex) with often unjustified cynicism towards politicians (Trounson, A 2016). This can be seen in the inforgraphic below:

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2016/10/25/political-engagement-and-social-media/

Rather than using social media as a way to interact with voters or encourage dialogue which might empower the citizens, political campaigns primarily use social media as a channel for political marketing. The reluctance to engage in dialogues is show by recent studies from European political campaigns. In the UK, for example, online campaigns and social media usage were found to simply replicate the one-way communication pattern established by mass media campaigning (Coleman 2001; Jackson & Lilleker 2011).  

A counter-trend has also evolved to this practice, with the increasing use of de-professionalisation in politicians' posts (such as Trump's). Using an amateurish tone throughout posts creates a more real or authentic view of the candidate and is generally more relatable with a wider audience. Whereas a professional tone offers more control over the message, it may create the impression that the candidate is calculated and cynical (Gunn Enli, 2017).

https://gifer.com/en/BL2Q

Overall social media is generally used for political marketing by politicians and is rarely beneficial; it can also increase the amount of control politicians have over their message. As for everyday citizens, it is mostly only beneficial for those who are active users and have a broad knowledge of relevant issues and topics.

References:

  Enli, G 2017, ‘Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election’, European Journal of Communication, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 50 – 61

   Harris, L & Harrigan, P 2015, Social Media in Politics: The Ultimate Voter Engagement Tool or Simply an Echo Chamber?, Journal of Political Marketing, Vol. 14, no.3, pp. 251-283

   Trounson, A 2016, 'Social media politics: for and against', Election Watch, viewed 24 April 2020, <https://electionwatch.unimelb.edu.au/australia-2016/articles/social-media-politics-for-and-against>

   Zuniga, HG & Chen, HT 2019, Digital Media and Politics: Effects of the Great Information and Communication Divides, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Vol. 63, no.3, pp. 365-373

[subdee]

Fannish History

into-september mentioned you in a post

You can all thank @subdee for making me wonder what I was up to on the internet in 2006 anyway.

Heh interesting! It's totally possible we had overlapping circles on LJ in 2006 actually.

Here's mine:

1998-2001 We had a computer but the internet was slow and expensive.  I had a library card and an Amazon.com account though.  Mostly I read books, about an average of a book a day (they were short). 

2002-2003 I got into online fanfiction fandom with Ranma 1/2 (Ranma/Akane) and Naruto (Sasuke/Naruto).  The sites without pictures were the best, they loaded faster.   I was a big-time lurker on blogspot.   

2004-2006 Joined LJ and became friends with all my blogspot idols! Death Note and Hunter x Hunter were the fandoms I joined directly but it was less that I was in a certain fandom and more that I was in a loose fannish writers’ group and if my writer friends were into something I’d try it. Here’s a few I got into: FMA CCS LoGH Loveless 12K Saiunkoku JJBA ATLA.

2007-2008 Working three part time time jobs and focused on my health and so I wasn’t really in fandom at all. I helped edit an original fiction zine though.  

2008-2010 Big-time Libertines fan.  (That’s a British band.)  LJ was on the decline so in 2010 I relocated to Dreamwidth, Tumblr, AO3 and a personal Wordpress blog because no one knew then where the chips would fall. But I posted very little.  I used LJ mostly to check the Libs communities. 

2011-2013 Big-time Kpop fan. I got into 2NE1 then Big Bang then Kpop as an industry.  I mostly used LJ to check omonatheydidnt but I was active on music board ILXor too.  DW became a personal blog about the books I was reading and I used Tumblr to post about Big Bang. 

2013-2019 Work was too crazy for hobbies until the middle of last year when I made tenure!  Just watched Kpop and Bullet Journal videos on Ytube to destress basically. Still checking omonatheydidnt on LJ which is part of the reason why I have 18,378 (!!) posted on comments on that site.  

2019-present Back to HxH.  It was a nostalgia rewatch until I realized the fandom is still active; and actually a lot more active than in 2006 (when the main LJ comm would get like, one post every few days).  In fact I joined Reddit first and only came back to Tumblr to follow some of the HxH Big Bang authors from AO3.  

[chainofclovers]

How did you get into Mirandy?

I watched The Devil Wears Prada a couple times in the theater in 2006, and would’ve rated it a mediocre C-plus or B-minus, except I thought the dynamic between Miranda and Andy was so interesting! I remember spending a fair amount of time pondering the dynamic after watching the movie. It’s hilarious now to remember myself having those thoughts outside any active connection to fandom. Thoughts like: That bathrobe?! And no makeup?! And emotionally vulnerable conversation?! Andy should have tried harder to stay and, um…comfort her or something. And why did the movie have to end in such a stupid way? It’s almost like the women were more interested in EACH OTHER than in the actual outcome of the film!

Despite having been a casual, off-and-on fandom lurker since I was a teenager (I used to pop over to the Big Block of Cheese archive to read West Wing fic sometimes? I had no idea what I was doing?), it didn’t occur to me until 2008 to actually look for fic. I have no memory whatsoever of what made me think of DWP that day, much less any memory of what made me google it. I do, however, remember that some of the first fic I ever read was by Livejournal user kosmos8, and that I thought it was pretty awesome. I discovered @telanu‘s stuff shortly thereafter (this was a few months before Truth and Measure came out), and @thelastgoodname‘s stuff, and so many other phenomenal writers, many of whom I’m still in touch with today! 

Although you didn’t ask, I’ll say that my favorite DWP fic reading experience has to be The End of All Things by Telanu. It really holds up, too–terrifyingly so.

That random day in 2008 was the start of a slippery slope into actually talking back to fandom, actually engaging and sharing ideas and, frankly, being a lesbian on the internet. I was already out as queer when I got involved with DWP, but that fandom was absolutely formative to my sense of self as a lesbian, as a writer, as a sexual person. I’m super, super grateful to DWP fandom for bringing so much good into my life.

–

Here’s the ship meme. Send me an ask or play on your own tumblr!

[armoricaroyalty]

on notes

Every so often, I see people feeling discouraged because their posts don’t get much engagement by the way of likes, comments, and reblogs. A lot of people feel discouraged when they spend hours on a lookbook, story update, or render, only to see very little interaction from their followers. It can feel like you’re shouting into a void, especially when you see other people’s posts getting anywhere from 4-10 times as many notes as yours—do your posts suck? You’ve got people following you, why aren’t they engaging? Does everyone secretly hate you? What gives?

A lot of people have addressed this from a lot of different angles, but I wanted to share some excellent advice I received as a teenager, about ten years ago. I heard this from a seasoned poster, someone who’d been in the paint in online spaces since the webring days of fandom: only ten percent of readers engage.

The 90-9-1 rule

It’s called the 90-9-1 rule, it’s been observed anecdotally since the dawn of the internet and written about academically under that name since 2006, and it refers to the percentages of different archetypes of internet users. In short: if a website has 100 users, 90 will be lurkers, 9 will be ‘intermittent contributors,’ and just 1 will be an ‘heavy contributor.’

The 90 lurkers may or may not have an account. If they do, they only use their account to follow others, not to post their own content or engage with other users. On Tumblr, the lurkers don’t post, don’t like, don’t comment, and don’t reblog. Most lurkers only sign on occasionally, but others are very active. They might sign on every day and read everything that's posted, but they just don’t interact—it’s just not their mode of online engagement.

The nine 'intermittent contributors’ make more noise than the lurkers, but they’re still not particularly active. On Tumblr, they only post occasionally. They might like a lot of posts, but they never (or almost never) reblog, send asks, or comment. On AO3, they might have a few published fics, but their usual mode of engagement is bookmarking and kudos-ing, not commenting or writing. The nine casual posters might be too shy to engage, they might be too busy, or they just might not feel the need to chime in very often.

The last poster is a  ‘heavy contributor.’ They sign on every day (or almost every day), and they read almost everything that’s posted. They make their own posts and they engage with other people’s content. On Tumblr, they like, reblog, send asks, and leave comments. On AO3, they post their fics and actively engage with other people’s. The active users are the likeliest to join Discord communities or send messages to other users. The internet is a social, creative place for them, and they love to engage with other people.

The 90-9-1 rule started out as a casual observation and has since been backed up by research. I still think it’s helpful to look at a case study to illustrate the way this ratio shows up when it comes to online content creators and their followings.

the dan fandom — the ‘dandom,’ if you will

One of my favorite YouTubers is Dan Olson, who posts video essays, media analysis, and cultural commentary on his channel Folding Ideas. I watch all of his videos, usually multiple times (I have ADHD, I love to put a video on as background noise while I work on unrelated stuff…I’m actually “watching” Buzzfeed Unsolved as I write this post). I think he’s insightful, intelligent, and interesting. In fact, I like him so much that I back him on Patreon.

As of today, Tuesday, January 26th 2022, the Folding Ideas channel has 561,000 subscribers. The Folding Ideas Patreon has 2,440 patrons. I took the screenshots for this post a few days ago, when the YouTube channel had 500,000 subscribers and the Patreon had 1,894 patrons.

2,440 patrons is less than half a percent of 561,000 subscribers (just 0.43%, to be precise). 1,894 patrons is an even smaller percentage of 500,000, around 0.40%, rounding up. I think it’s fair to assume that the 0.4-0.43% of Dan’s followers who decided to give him money are superfans, people like me who watch and enjoy all of his videos (no word on how many of them also have ADHD and rewatch all of his videos multiple times).

So. How many of these superfans watched his latest video when he shared it, early access, with his patrons the day before its public release?

A little more than half.

When I took this screenshot 14 hours after the video was first shared, the answer was 1,100. Of those 1,100 turbo-superfans who watched the video right after it was shared, only 191 gave the video a like, and only 40 left a comment. Even among a tiny group that’s already self-selected for liking Folding Ideas videos, about half watched the video right away. Of those who watched the video in the first 14 hours, less than 20% of the people who watched engaged with the video by liking it. And only 40 people, 3.6% of the superfans, commented.

‘but doctor, i am blogliacci’

Most of your followers aren’t going to comment or like your posts. It’s not a reflection of you or the quality of your posts. When you see people getting more notes than you, it’s safe to assume that number represents a tiny sliver of their overall follower count. 90% of their followers are as quiet as 90% of your followers. You’re not alienating people and nobody secretly hates your content. It’s not personal, and it has nothing to do with you—these trends are bigger than you and older than Tumblr.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you’re wrong to feel disappointed or upset if you don’t get as many notes as you’d like. Even if you’re okay with the 90-9-1 ratio, you can still feel dissatisfied with your total number of followers. You can still wish more people were more engaged with what you’re doing.

There are a lot of things you can do to try to attract more followers, but not much you can do to radically alter that basic 90-9-1 ratio. For every ten new followers, you can generally expect one or two more notes per post.

If you want to grow your following on Tumblr, do some research into your fandom/artistic space and figure out how users with bigger followings tag their posts. Figure out what posts people use to search for content like yours. Tumblr only ‘reads’ the first few tags on any given post, so putting the most popular tags first increases the likelihood that your posts will show up in more searches for more people. Make sure that your tags (and your posts themselves) are free from spelling and grammatical errors. Participate in community events and challenges. Experiment with when and how often you post (including reblogs of your own content). Do your posts get more traction in the morning or the afternoon? Do people engage more with short daily posts or longer weekly posts?

Even if you’re doing everything “right,” even if you post regularly, even if you post high-quality stuff, even if you post during the optimal times, even if you follow the trends, you still might not see the kind of growth you’d like. The key factors in growing an audience are time and luck.

in conclusion

Time is easy. It just keeps going forward. The longer you maintain your blog, the better you’ll get at it. You’ll learn new ways to make better, more polished content. You’ll start building relationships with other users. More people will stumble across your blog randomly and give you a follow. The most popular blogs in a given niche are often the first in that niche.

Luck is impossible to predict and impossible to control. You can’t put a timeline on it and you can’t will it into existence. Big boosts in followers often come unexpectedly: someone with a bigger following reblogs a post or you get it in on a new trend early and your post goes viral (or whatever passes for viral in the ol’ Tumblr terrarium). It might happen tomorrow, it might happen never. You can’t control it, and you will exhaust yourself if you try.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do for your blog and your own mental health is learn to love wherever you are. That doesn’t mean giving up on your goals and ignoring notes and follower counts entirely, it means divorcing those metrics from your self worth and your enjoyment of your blog (obviously, easier said than done). Remember the 90-9-1 rule and have fun. Post for yourself and not your followers. With a bit of time and a bit of luck, everything else will fall into place.

[whatsthedraw]

What’s the Draw: Internet Fandoms, Chatrooms, and Teenage to Young Adult Fans of Cartoons

The Discord Universe server, first established in 2017 and linked to Discord through an /r stevenuniverse Reddit page, has nearly 1000 members as of 2021 and dozens of different channels dedicated to art, writing, fan-discussions, and general socializing. The userbase is aged 13 and older, and mainly comprised of cartoon fans from teenage years to their late 20s, and a minority in their 30s.

[The Discord Universe link page.]

Although the stigma of adults enjoying “overly optimistic, cutesy and one-dimensional” animation like Disney and Cartoon Network shows seems to persist past the 80s and 90s, and into present day, the size of the server and similar online spaces is a testament to the growing popularity of all-ages cartoons among older teen and adult audiences. [1] According to Den of Geek, cartoon shows such as Steven Universe, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power were among the top-searched fandoms in 2020. [2]

Thanks to the Internet, rapid connection with other fans can yield thriving communities like Discord Universe. However, some researchers point out that the internet medium itself affects areas like participation and social relationships and is unlike real-life meetups. [3][4] Still, fans have embraced the internet as a social platform and perhaps unknowingly adapted their communities around its functions.

By examining theory in fan-studies, the factor of the online medium, and the public perception of cartoons, one might gain a small insight into the ways in which the teen to young adult cartoon fans in Discord Universe define their relationship to the media they interact with.

1. Heckleton, Jeff. “The Double Edged Stigma Faced By Western Animation.” The Artifice, Oct 27, 2017. https://the-artifice.com/stigma-western-animation/

2. Burt, Kayti. “Tumblr’s Top Fandoms of 2020.” Den of Geek, December 7, 2020. https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/tumblrs-top-fandoms-of-2020/

3. Barak, Azy., and Blau, Ina. "How Do Personality, Synchronous Media, and Discussion Topic Affect Participation?" Journal of Educational Technology & Society 15, no. 2 (2012): 13-15, 22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.15.2.12.

4. Islam, Gazi. "Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences: Agency, Audience and Constraint in an Online Chat Community." Dialectical Anthropology 30, no. 1/2 (2006): 74-78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29790755.

_______________________________________________________________________

Many authors describe fandom not as a strictly consumer culture, but a transformative culture. Fans absorb material, construct their own meaning, and use this outlet to voice societal concerns through fanworks or community, including those concerns present in the source. In other words, by emphasizing what they do and don’t like through discussion or creations, this is a “patchwork” reflection of personal and societal values. Some, like Henry Jenkins, frame this in an idealistic manner, claiming that it reflects the hopes and dreams of the community. [5] Another view asserts that fandom is like a ‘shadow economy’, parallel to capitalist society, in which fan-works and source knowledge function as the ‘capital’. [6] Like Jenkins’ idea, fans then rework certain values in the outer society, reflected in their fan works. Others yet, like Nicolle Lamerichs, claim that emotional connection primarily drives fandom as an ‘extension of personal elements', not just fan-creation, and that it’s a way of making sense of the world through felt and shared experiences. [7]

[A typical show-centered discussion, as seen in the server.]

In the case of the Discord Universe community, fandom seems to exhibit all three ideas. The existence of an entire column of art-channels with different works, lively show-discussions that are rewarded with conversation, and plenty of commentary on social issues all are regular happenings. However, there’s no telling if another group, especially on a different platform than Discord, might influence what counts as participation in fandom. 

[The many different channels filed under the ‘discussion’ and ‘creative’ categories in Discord Universe.]

Five different participants in the Discord Universe server were interviewed with loose guidelines regarding their favorite cartoons, the age they started watching, and if they felt any significant impact in their everyday life past enjoyment of the show itself, in order to find how the fans might define themselves.

Although a lower starting-age was expected, the fans indicated they watched most of the current favorite cartoons in their teens and 20s. A few older respondents mentioned starting their favorites closer to their 30s.

Regarding personal impact from fandom, the most common responses seemed to fall into 4 different categories: Sense of Community, Creative Outlet, Escapism and Other Positive Associations, and an Impact on Social or Societal Views.

Some mentioned they felt a sense of “nostalgia” or “happiness” watching certain shows, and they felt connected to the “kid experience” or certain family members. Others mentioned meeting friends or significant others from shared enjoyment. Another recurring answer was that watching some shows put them “in touch with aspects of self,” grew more accepting of “new perspectives and life situations,” and changed views about “socially internalized homophobia and transphobia”.

The last category, Creativity, although mentioned once in the form of feeling “motivated to make fan-pieces” is most evident in the server itself. The posts in the art channels are often fan-expression, but not always. While fan-work is not the sole determinant of fan-status, it seems to hold particular importance in this particular group of visual media fans, given the existence of many different categories. [7]

The types of responses given, reflecting nostalgia and escapism, appear elsewhere in research. In one study regarding adult opinion of Disney movies, those who enjoy them often cited the reason as being ‘nostalgic, engaging, and reassuring.’ The author also suggested that adult enjoyment of this media might act as a ‘surrogate for memories of childhood’ which they may want to revisit. [8] In the case of those who cited feeling nostalgic or enjoying childhood experiences through the eyes of an animated character, it’s reasonable that one might turn to all kinds of cartoon media with familiar themes, not just Disney.

5. Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture, New York: Routledge, 1992, 23-24.

6. Lewis, Lisa A. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom," in The Adoring Audience, 2002, 38-57. doi:10.4324/9780203181539-9.

7. Lamerichs, Nicolle. "Conclusion: Prospects for Fan Studies." In Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures, 17-19. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. doi:10.2307/j.ctv65svxz.15.

8. Mason, James Robert. “Disney Film Genres and Adult Audiences: A Tale of Renegotiated Relationships.” PhD diss. University of Leeds, 2017. 268-276.

_______________________________________________________________________

The Internet gives voice to those who might not otherwise be able to express themselves, which is one oft-apparent aspect of fan-creation [9]. According to research by Azy Barak and Ina Blau, the internet text-chat environment gives introverts more confidence to talk, even about more sensitive issues, and creates an ‘equalizing’ effect for users, regardless of status, race, gender, and appearance.[10]

Between “developing new characters and selves” through constructed profiles and nicknames, and navigating the norms that might get others to respond, the internet seems to govern how online fandom spaces operate rather than the other way around. Those who fail to meet the ‘netiquette’ of the chat area often go unanswered or kicked out. Additionally, there are often dozens, if not hundreds of lurkers in every chatroom. Each message is sent not just to the participants, but also to a larger, silent background audience, which gives a sense of a larger publicity than the immediate group. In talking in general-chat, there’s less expectation of intimacy than, say, a direct-message, which can open up a space to have low-stakes discussions and bring anonymity to participants. [11] [12]

While there is often a distinction between the real world and the constructed internet persona, sometimes users might freely blend their identities, as in Discord Universe on occasion. The internet medium, however, makes this a choice rather than a necessity, centering the creation and sharing of works and fan-discussion one of the primary functions of the group. Additionally, instantly banishing any nay-sayers, internet-trolls, or anyone else who doesn’t follow the established social norms, the fandom ‘in-group’ can near-effortlessly be maintained. The medium of the internet therefore creates quite a difference in curating a certain type of community of like-minded individuals, which may be more difficult in a real-life setting.

A writer for Vocal Media, Nina Bi, states that the boundless possibilities in animation, easy enjoyment, and nostalgia tend to draw adults to all-ages types of cartoons. [13] Despite the alleged outside stigma, there does seem to be a trend in late-teenage to adult enjoyment of cartoons for their complexity and entertainment value, at least in Discord Universe. The server provides an outlet for transformative works that express opinions reflective of society, allows for socialization and friendships, and has a unique culture reflective of the internet age. In other words, seemingly just like any other fandom in our current understanding.

9. Lewis, Lisa A. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom," 38-57.

10, 11. Barak, Azy., and Blau, Ina. "How Do Personality, Synchronous Media, and Discussion Topic Affect Participation?" 13-15, 22.

12. Islam, Gazi. "Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences,” 74-75, 78.

13. Bi, Ninfa. “The Reasons Why Adults Are Still Watching Cartoons.” Vocal Media, 2017. https://vocal.media/geeks/the-reasons-why-adults-are-still-watching-cartoons

Bibliography:

Bi, Ninfa. “The Reasons Why Adults Are Still Watching Cartoons.” Vocal Media, 2017. https://vocal.media/geeks/the-reasons-why-adults-are-still-watching-cartoons

Burt, Kayti. “Tumblr’s Top Fandoms of 2020.” Den of Geek, December 7, 2020. https://www.denofgeek.com/culture/tumblrs-top-fandoms-of-2020/

Heckleton, Jeff. “The Double Edged Stigma Faced By Western Animation.” The Artifice, Oct 27, 2017. https://the-artifice.com/stigma-western-animation/

Barak, Azy., and Blau, Ina. "How Do Personality, Synchronous Media, and Discussion Topic Affect Participation?" Journal of Educational Technology & Society 15, no. 2 (2012): 12-24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/jeductechsoci.15.2.12.

Islam, Gazi. "Virtual Speakers, Virtual Audiences: Agency, Audience and Constraint in an Online Chat Community." Dialectical Anthropology 30, no. 1/2 (2006): 71-89. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29790755.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture, New York: Routledge, 1992, 279-290.

Lewis, Lisa A. "The Cultural Economy of Fandom," in The Adoring Audience, 2002, 38-57. doi:10.4324/9780203181539-9.

Lamerichs, Nicolle. "Conclusion: Prospects for Fan Studies." in Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures, 231-40. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2018. doi:10.2307/j.ctv65svxz.15.

Mason, James Robert. “Disney Film Genres and Adult Audiences: A Tale of Renegotiated Relationships.” PhD diss. University of Leeds, 2017. 

[shironezuninja]

Life was better without authority online…just so you know.😝😜

[craigrcannon]

Employee #1: Reddit

Employee #1 is a series of interviews focused on sharing the often untold stories of early employees at tech companies.

Chris Slowe was the first employee at Reddit. He worked at Reddit for five years, then Hipmunk for five years, and now he’s back at Reddit, writing code.

Discussed: YC’s First Batch, Meeting The Founders, Finishing a PhD While Working at a Startup, Keyser Söze, Reddit as Vocation, Maintaining a Life Outside a Startup, and Returning to Reddit.

Craig : You’re back at Reddit now. What’s your role at this point?

Chris : It’s kinda two things. I started off working on some front page redesign stuff that we’ve got planned. I’m also working on a new version of our algorithm. Our current version is about eight years old. I also wrote that algorithm.

Craig : [Laughter]

Chris : Practically speaking, we’re probably a hundred times bigger than we were when we wrote that, so that was my initial task. I’m also forging one of our new engineering teams, which we internally call “Anti-Evil.” We’re anti-spam, anti-abuse, and sort of anti-cheating. I guess we’re anti-everything. Pro-freedom!

Craig : Right on. And prior to re-joining Reddit you were at Hipmunk. How was it working there?

Chris : I really enjoyed it. I think the thing we learned most of all there was that breaking into travel is really hard. There are a lot of big players and most travel companies aren’t technology companies. I can’t tell you how many times I was on a call and the other person on the phone was referring to their engineering staff as “IT.”

Craig : [Laughter]

Chris : It was like, “Oh, we’re having one of those calls.”

Craig : “Let me get the nerds in here and they’ll figure it out.”

Chris : Yeah!

Craig : That’s hilarious. Ok, so could you give me the rundown of how you ended up at Reddit?

Chris : Sure. I was in Y Combinator’s first batch, along with Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian. I was working at a different startup and we were doing desktop search. This was at a time before desktop search was a thing. What kind of killed us that summer was Apple coming out with Spotlight, then Google Desktop came out so we had a hard problem with so many players in the field.

At the end of that summer, my cofounder decided to go to grad school. This was the first YC batch so it was totally different. It was sort of a three month trial to build a product and see what happens. We were at the first demo day, which was actually kind of fun. Something like 20 people showed up.

Craig : Wow. So how did you connect with Steve and Alexis?

Chris : By the end of the summer I had two free bedrooms in my apartment. I was good friends with both of them at that point. I think they originally planned to move back to Virginia but I believe Paul Graham talked them out of it. So they had basically given up on their flat and now needed a place to stay. My cofounder from YC, Zak Stone, was like, “Want to stay with Chris?”. And they were like, “Okay, great.”

Craig : And at what point did you start working on Reddit?

Chris : I want to say like three months later. I was in grad school at the time and I had much more grown-up hours, where I would wake up at 7 or 8 in the morning, go to work, and come back then work on projects at night. Steve and Alexis would sleep in then work until like 4 in the morning.

Because I was up early I’d check Reddit and when it was down I’d knock on Steve’s door and be like, “Hey, site’s down.” After the third time that happened, he just showed me how to log in and start it back up.

Craig : That’s great.

Chris : So I guess my first job at Reddit was in ops. But yeah, at that point it was still Steve writing code and Alexis doing everything else. We were friends and he asked me if I wanted to join, and I did. That was probably six months after Reddit started.

Craig : You were still in grad school studying physics, right?

Chris : Yeah. That’s when I was in my fifth year of grad school.

Craig : And did you have to pause everything to make that happen?

Chris : No. So I’d go to lab and work from 8 to 6 then come home, eat dinner, and join them in the living room to hack for a while. The nice thing is, I was given work that was sort of independent of what everyone else was working on so I wasn’t a blocker.

I think the first thing I worked on was traffic monitoring. This was at a time before Google Analytics. It was like processing access logs and generating summaries and trying to figure out how to do this at scale. I must have rebuilt that damn thing eight times in the first four years.

The thing about that time was we were all learning how to program web apps while we were building them and there wasn’t really a standard operating procedure or anything.

Craig : So you were essentially working part-time?

Chris : Part-time in startup hours but it was like a full-time job. I would normally work from 6 to 2. Then go to sleep, get back up, and do it again.

You know, your 20s are a magical period of time. I could get by on four or five hours of sleep without any major side effects. Basically it was like that for all of 2006. It was like two full-time jobs. The kicker is I somehow managed to meet my wife during that period.

Craig : That’s amazing. So what happens next?

Chris : Well, the four of us – Steve, Alexis, me, and Aaron Swartz – worked on it until the acquisition, which was around Halloween 2006. And it all happened really fast. We were a 15-month-old startup.

I remember the next night I was making pizza with my girlfriend, now wife, and I called Steve and was like, “Hey, we’re making pizza, Do you want to come over?” And he was like, “I am in California.”

Craig : Whoa.

Chris : Yeah. So I was like, “Oh, well, okay then.”

Craig : [Laughter] And so how long did it take before you moved to California?

Chris : I looked for apartments in January and we moved out early February. Part of the agreement with Condé Nast was that — I think it actually said this in the contract — “Chris gets to finish his PhD.”

So I got to the point where I could leave Cambridge and write my thesis remotely. It was kind of a fun transition, going from a full-time job as a researcher and a second full-time job in a startup to a full-time job at an acquired company where I could spend my nights writing a thesis.

Craig : So let’s step back a little bit. Did you think that you would be interested in working with the Reddit guys when they moved into your apartment? Or were you just buddies?

Chris : Probably a little bit of both. At the time it was just because they were buddies and they needed a place. I had no particular plans at all. I was coming off of the failure of my first startup. We were trying to solve this problem of basically like, “I can’t find anything on my hard drive. I have all these areas I can’t search!” What happened practically is that the problem doesn’t come up any more because there is almost nothing on my hard drive that doesn’t exist in some state online.

Craig : Yeah, exactly. So what about Steve and Alexis compelled you to want to work with them?

Chris : At the time it was actually interesting just to be working as a web dev to be honest. Getting into the web scene was kind of a neat thing. I also liked Reddit.

Here’s a funny story. That summer everyone in the first YC batch was a beta tester for Reddit. This was before comments existed, so it was just a bunch of links.

Eventually it kind of opened up and we got a few people Steve didn’t know personally. But for like four months most of the content on the front page was from one of the alt accounts Steve and Alexis had. They were basically populating it as a way to make it seem like there were more people there. Because nobody wants to walk into an empty room. Right?

Craig : Right.

Chris : So my username on Reddit is KeyserSosa, which is a misspelling of Keyser Söze, which is the Usual Suspects villain.

I remember a day, probably in November, when Steve took a day off. He came back a couple hours later and there was new content on the front page and he hadn’t done anything. It was like this moment of like, “Oh, my God! It’s walking!”

Craig : [Laughter]

Chris : And he’s like, “Great! There are actually people on the site who I don’t know and they are posting all the time. There’s this one guy, KeyserSosa, who’s super active!”

They we’re like, “KeyserSosa? Who is KeyserSosa?”

And I’m like, “Oh, hi guys.”

Craig : [Laughter] That’s so good.

Chris : Anyhow. I achieved my peak on Reddit probably in the first year, in terms of being one of the top posters. And then you know, it was all downhill from there.

Craig : Yeah. I was wondering what your relationship with Reddit is now. Not the company, but the community.

Chris : I’ve definitely become much more of a lurker. My use was definitely a side effect of working on it. When I was originally here for the first five years, at the time there was never more than four or five of us working on the site.

Craig : Oh, wow.

Chris : We were kind of professionally understaffed. At least at that point we were really understaffed and always growing at a really phenomenal rate–like doubling every six months. So we were kind of wearing a lot of hats as engineers. We were engineers, and also the community team, and also infrastructure.

I am an introvert who has become an extrovert via the Internet, or something like that. I feel like lots of talking and thinking in that vein is much more draining than sitting and doing engineering work. That definitely contributed to me leaving.

Craig : Yeah, that makes sense.

Chris : So when I left the first thing I did was go on a six-month Reddit detox. Essentially I was like, “Alright. I just can’t look.” And I didn’t look at it.

The thing is, it was and still is like my baby. And I can say that, I have kids now.

When one thing goes wrong, I take it personally. In 2010 I was basically in charge, so everything was either my fault or something I had to deal with. I think the only way to not feel completely attached to all the things that were happening, or whatever mistakes were being made, or whatever drama was happening, was to step away for a little while. You kinda have to do it.

Craig : So how did your relationship with the founders and the early team change over time?

Chris : I don’t think very much, actually. The team was always small so we were and still are a group of friends. I think there’s no other option than to be like comrades in arms in that case. At the very worst, we were the 300 holding back the hordes.

I think because we got acquired so early we had to really justify our budget and keep the team small. We couldn’t get an infusion of cash to grow because we were already bought and so it sort of stunted growth initially. Another side effect is that the look of the site has kind of been the same for a very long time. There’s a whole bunch we have to kind of rebuild.

The flip side of that is that we got really nimble and good at a bunch of things. But we’re now up to I think 120 people. And we’re independent again.

Craig : So now do you have startup-like growth goals?

Chris : We’re kind of acting like a three-year-old startup with ten years of legacy and some good standard operating procedures, which is nice.

Craig : When you look back and consider the early days, how do you feel about Reddit?

Chris : It’s overall positive. It’s been a lot of fun. I mean, it’s been a lot of stress, but it’s also been a lot of fun. Since I’m back now, it’s almost like it’s not so much a part of my career as it’s become my career. Maybe “vocation” is a better word. I still take a lot of the stuff really personally even though I’ve only been back for about six months.

Our fingerprints are everywhere. I think it is fair to say that the snarky tone that still pervades Reddit is an outcropping of Steve. That’s his personality and he kind of imprints it on the community. I think in the same way a company’s tone and culture is a reflection of the founders, so to is the community it creates.

Craig : You’ve been around so many startups. Do you ever have thoughts of doing your own thing again?

Chris : I am very content to be first employee in all things. I’m close enough to be able to hear about the fundraising, and the acquisitioning, and the business side of things. But I do not get invited to any of those meetings, which is just wonderful as far as I’m concerned. Right now, my job here is as an engineering manager. I have a team of like six and honestly, that is a good size for me. I would rather be an engineer who is a manager, rather than a managing engineer, or an office manager, or C-something. I actually enjoy doing the work.

Craig : Right on. Are there any signs that you would advise someone to look for if they are considering being a first employee?

Chris : I would say the first three to six months is gonna be a slog. It’s gonna be a tough slog. That said, startups have culturally matured in the last ten years and it’s been fun to watch. When the first batch started at YC, there was all this talk like, “Oh, yeah, you should work 16 hours and day and not feel bad.”

What’s really great to see is that all those people who were working 16 hours have now grown into their thirties and realized that, “Oh, sleep is really cool.”

Craig : [Laughter]

Chris : And, “You should probably date.” And, “Do you know what is also awesome? Kids. And do you know what kids don’t let you do? Work.” So there’s been this kind of progression from just working all the time to still working hard while also having a life.

Because there are only a few people around in the beginning you have to be willing to switch hats really quickly. Especially for the startups, traffic is irregular, and you’re not up-scaled, and you have to kinda deal with that stuff live.

You’ll also have a responsibility to set the tone for the company. The same holds true with the founders.

Craig : What about the founders? Do you think there any traits successful founders share?

Chris : It sounds trite but determination. Ideas are important. Luck is important. But follow-through is really important. This is sort of separate from the founders but there’s also timing.

After we started, everyone compared us to Digg for five years before Digg had its problems. But we didn’t even know about Digg when we started.

We were a dime a dozen for a while. It was actually funny. There was us and a bunch of Digg clones, which was amusing.

Craig : Right on. Let’s stop there. Any last words of wisdom?

Chris : The internet has a long memory!

[covertcreativemedia]

Preliminary Research and Summation #1

Change in technology-enabled omnichannel customer experiences in-store

In-store technologies (IST): consumer-facing devices that facilitate the shopping process in the physical store.

Omni channel retailing: The synergetic management of the numerous available channels and customer touch points, in such a way that the customer experience across channels and the performance over channels are optimized” (Verhoef et al., 2015, p. 176).

It has been researched that consumers enjoy technology driven touch points in physical retailers, and interested in in-store technologies that offer a social aspect. Photo-booths that are uploaded directly to instagram were cited as fun and consumer enjoyed the social connectivity aspect. Retailers have experimented with other smart technologies throughout the retail process including, smart mirrors. In-store tech can also offer streamlined checkout and payment processing. 

Retailers that experiment with technologies to enhance the customer experience are likely to find greater success, particularly from a consumers’ viewpoint concerning what they use and how these technologies affect their shopping experience in the omni channel retail context.

Despite these rapid advances, the type of technologies and how they contribute to customer experience remains less well known and research into the changing relationship between technologies and customer experience remains scarce.

The customer journey is defined by the multiple stages of pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase, which are increasingly seen as non-linear and more intricate.

 Social media was often a trigger for shopping: “I check their stories first” (R37). This increased over the period, with Instagram being the dominant platform. Some chose to purchase online because of the “chaos” (e.g. R15, R17, R29, R33) experienced offline in central-London shopping locations. Crowding, coupled with overwhelming choice, prompted channel switching.

The most positively memorable ISTs were the photo-booths at Lululemon, Urban Outfitters, and Topshop, which were cited for their fun, interactivity, and social connectivity. Nike's ID touchscreen shared these characteristics but included an important element of product personalization. By contrast, Tommy Hilfiger's smart changing-room mirror offered information, efficiency, and simplicity. Similarly, Zara's self-checkout for payment, introduced in 2019, was widely cited for its convenience.

Over the time period, consumers tended to agree that the prevalent ISTs available to them were basic, old, or unimportant.

The most significant friction was deemed “trivial”, meaning consumers did not care about the availability of technologies; for them, they were typified as gimmicky, unimportant, or uninteresting.

Most consumers associated ISTs with providing information, convenience, and efficiency over the period.

Alexander, Bethan, and Anthony Kent. “Change in Technology-Enabled Omnichannel Customer Experiences in-Store.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2020, 102338. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102338. 

Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang out Online

Virtual Communities: People with shared interests or goals for whom electronic communication is a primary form of interaction, as groups of people who meet regularly to discuss a subject of interest to all members, and groups of people brought together by shared interests or a geographic bond.

Virtual communities can come in many different forms and sizes with various purposes. Participants of virtual communities are called members, and many different kinds of members exist. Some members can be very vocal and expressive in the community, and some can be called “lurkers”, however, all members are consider frequent active participants. From a psychology perspective, virtual communities fulfill peoples desire for belonging and acceptance. They can also provide information and help to achieve goals. 

Typically, members become attached to their communities and visit them often, sometimes becoming so dependent upon the community that they can be described as addicted.

Virtual Communities: “groups of people with common interests and practices that communicate regularly and for some duration in an organized way over the Internet through a common location or mechanism.”

Individuals can visit virtual communities regularly and know the people in the community well, but never contribute to the conversation. This is termed “lurking.” Lurking is generally known as visiting a community on a regular basis but not posting or posting very infrequently. There is speculation that lurkers make up a large majority of visitors to virtual communities, perhaps over 90% of people visiting online groups.

Ridings, Catherine M., and David Gefen. “Virtual Community Attraction: Why People Hang Out Online.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 10, no. 1 (2006): 00–00. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2004.tb00229.x.

A study of the impact of social media on consumers

Influencer: “influencer” is an anodyne, commercial label, describing someone who monetizes an online following by endorsing products or services—a celebrity spokesperson for the social-media age.

Social-Commerce: Socially centered online marketplaces,  the use of Internet based media to enable users to participate in the selling, buying, comparing, and sharing of information about products and services in online marketplace and communities.

Research has shown that consumers enjoy real customers reviews and user-generated-content when making a buying decision. Social media is a creative environment that allows influencers and brands to subliminally sell product through image and video. Consumers also enjoy creating content and reviewing product as a means of engaging with a digital community and  collaborating with the brand. Consumers enjoy posting content that is inspired by the brands visual aesthetic while demonstrating the aspirational qualities the brand is portraying. 

Reviews are one of the key areas that have emerged from social media. Customer reviews are widely available for products and services, generating great value for both consumers and companies (Nambisan 2002). In fact, consumers are actively encouraged by firms to rate and review products and services online (Bronner & de Hoog 2010). These activities produce electronic word of mouth. This word of mouth, produced through social media, helps consumers in their purchasing decisions.

Research has shown that potential consumers are more interested in other users’ recommendations rather than merely vendor-generated product information. Hence, such interactions, provided through social media, help increase the level of trust and reduce perceived risk.

One of the main characteristics of virtual worlds is learning by doing, which enables users to learn and practise in the virtual space.

The social relationship of consumers generated through social media significantly affects the perceived trust of consumers (Pan & Chiou 2011). The interactions on these platforms generate social support. Social support generated through social media therefore influences trust (Weisberg et al. 2011). In addition, more positive comments, feedback and higher ratings lead to a higher level of trust in a vendor (Ba & Pavlou 2002). 

Consumers are now content generators through social media. They share information and experiences with other consumers and have easy access to one another’s information. This is a value that can be useful for e-commerce adoption and social commerce intention. Because consumer social interactions produce online social support, e-commerce adoption is being promoted to establish trust and, consequently, users’ intention to buy. 

Hajli, M. Nick. “A Study of the Impact of Social Media on Consumers.” International Journal of Market Research 56, no. 3 (2014): 387–404. https://doi.org/10.2501/ijmr-2014-025. 

Understanding social commerce: A systematic literature review and directions for further research

M-Commerce: The medium where any transaction, monetary or not, is completed using a wireless device, such as smartphone or personal digital assistant.

E-commerce has given shoppers the opportunity to shop from smartphones anywhere. This has impacted retail tremendously by giving retailers the chance to reach consumers all the time. As social media becomes increasingly important globally, brands can now interact with consumers on a personal level. Brands can also use creative content that is driven by social media trends to become friends with consumers and speak the right language. This new model of commerce allows for brands to evolve with the consumer. S-commerce allows for brands to easily sell directly through social media channels and give shoppers the flexibility of shopping directly through an instagram post. This is seamless commerce integration in a digital environment that is personal to users. 

The S-commerce environment has shifted e-commerce from a product-oriented platform to a customer-oriented environment.

Generally, social commerce is defined as the use of Internet based media to enable users to participate in the selling, buying, comparing, and sharing of information about products and services in online marketplace and communities.

IBM defines s-commerce as a word-of-mouth concept which has been applied to e-commerce, in that it is a combination of retailer’s products and interaction of online customers.

Recent empirical study emphasized that social interaction in the form of Word of Mouth (WOM) is a prerequisite successful element for s-commerce.

S-commerce represents the transformation of online business, brought about by Web2.0 and social computing tools, which both represent the social aspect of s-commerce.

Busalim, A. H., & Hussin, A. R. (2016). Understanding social commerce: A systematic literature review and directions for further research. International Journal of Information Management, 36(6), 1075-1088. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2016.06.005

Commercial, social and experiential convergence: fashion’s third places

Third Place: service settings that provide customers with an opportunity to commune, socially interact and foster relationships is related to the social construction of place, providing spatial boundaries that bring people together with a desire to socialize and develop place associations. He conceived third place as somewhere that is not home, the first place or work, the second place, but as a comfortable space to browse, relax and meet people, it can include outdoor markets, bookstores, garden stores, gyms and pubs.

Servicescape: the impact of physical surroundings on customers when facilitating service offerings.

Virtual platforms has given rise to a new third place, where individuals can connect over like-minded topics in a digital setting. Customer loyalty can emerge when consumers adopt a new virtual third place and can meet emotional needs. Shoppers describe third places to be like a “second home” where they can relax, socialize and feel pampered. Retailers generally acknowledge experience as a critical component in emotionally connecting and engaging with customers whilst driving competitive advantage (CITE). Today consumers are connecting emotionally with brands through virtual third places. 

Creating social, not just economic, value is becoming a requirement

In a world where almost every aspect of our lives is somehow tethered to technology, experiences that engage our bodies, our senses and our souls are at a premium. Digital is what we’ve become but visceral is what we crave.

This research diverges from extant literature by firmly cementing third place within the realm of experiential servicescape discourse, arguing that fashion consumers demand immersive experiences that engage them on an emotional, physical, intellectual or spiritual level. In an increasingly consumer-centric, competitive and digitally driven fashion-retail landscape, the necessity to emotionally connect with consumers in physical environments has never been greater; this study suggests the adoption of retail third places is one way of facilitating this.

Conceptualization of third places as service settings that provide customers with an opportunity to commune, socially interact and foster relationships is related to the social construction of place, providing spatial boundaries that bring people together with a desire to socialize and develop place associations.

Digital disruption has given rise to the virtual third place, where a network of like-minded individuals converges in a virtual environment to converse.

Loyalty,  Customers will develop cognitive loyalty when third places have a practical meaning by meeting their core needs. Community loyalty thrives when third places assume meaning as places to gather. Ultimate loyalty occurs when third places become like home and meet consumers’ emotional needs.

When asked to define third places and how they used them, “relaxation and community” resonated highly with consumers, which aligns with traditional typology. They were seen as a place predominantly to “relax”, “restore”, “have personal time”, “space to read”, as a social space (“chat with friends”) and as a treat (“to pamper myself”).

Alexander, B. (2019). Commercial, social and experiential convergence: Fashion’s third places. Journal of Services Marketing, 33(3), 257-272. doi:10.1108/jsm-04-2018-0116

The future of in-store technology

Consumers have a strong desire for social presence. Social presence means the felt presence of others. It does not mean that someone else must be physically present. Social presence might come via reading posts from other customers about the product/service on social media or video-chatting with a friend while shopping in the store. Recognizing that customers desire a convenient, easy, frictionless experience, as well as the desire for social presence allows retailers to experiment and test new technologies which will enhance the customer experience in the store on these dimensions.

There are five distinct dimensions of service convenience: decision, access, transaction, benefit, and post-benefit.

Decision convenience pertains to the time and effort needed to reach make-or-buy decisions

Access convenience instead entails the resources needed to request a service

Transaction convenience involves payment-related tasks

Benefit convenience reflects the resource expenditures needed to experience the core benefit of the product or service

Post-benefit convenience refers to the time and effort needed to follow up with a company if the consumer experiences a service failure or needs additional services after the purchase

Companies that embrace the opportunities and experiment with the technologies, to determine which technologies best enhance operational efficiency and which best enhance the customer experience, are likely to be the most successful.

The in-store experience is part of the customer journey and technologies can serve as important touch points to customers, as well as assist and augment frontline employee tasks. 

Grewal, D., Noble, S.M., Roggeveen, A.L. et al. The future of in-store technology. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 48, 96–113 (2020). https://doi-org.aurarialibrary.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00697-z

Combining channels to make smart purchases: The role of webrooming and showrooming

Showrooming: Consumers use physical stores as showrooms where they can handle products before purchasing online or via mobile devices at a lower price.

Webrooming: Searching for information online and then purchasing offline.

Webrooming and Showrooming and shopping behaviors that consumers have adopted due to the wide competitive assortment of items sold on online. Research has shown that consumers typically engage with products online, do research and read reviews before making a purchase in-store. It is often that a shopper will use different retailers throughout the research process and eventually make a purchase a retailer that is different then where the research began. It is known that consumers who use more than one channel to make a purchase are more likely to be more loyal and spend more (cite). 

In a recent report, noted that 69% of consumers webroomed to research their purchases during Thanksgiving period, whereas 46% went first to a store to examine items, then went online to look for better prices and to make their purchases.

These behaviors have both negative and positive implications for retailers. On the one hand, webrooming and showrooming threaten multichannel retailers in the form of free-riding behaviors, where consumers use one retailer's channel in their planning and preparation, then switch to another retailer's channel to make their purchases.

Webroomers and showroomers also penalize retailers that fail to provide smooth connections across channels (e.g. a service failure in one channel can prevent consumers from using the other channel.

Flavián, C., Gurrea, R., & Orús, C. (2020). Combining channels to make smart purchases: The role of webrooming and showrooming. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 52, 101923. doi:10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.101923

The Art of Immersion

-Immersive Technology, Immersive Marketing, The Hyperlink Mind

Rose discusses a unique concept called the hyperlink mind which encompasses the restructuring of the human brain that has adapted to the way we engage with modern web 2.0 technology. Similarly to the way we can rapidly click through content and preform searches, our thoughts and mind reflect that increased activity. Rose also discusses monumental marketing accomplishments that involved cutting edge immersive web experiences at the dawn of web 2.0. He also discusses how entertainment, film, music and art can create “worlds” for consumers. He uses Star Wars and Avatar as an example of building a fantasy world with digital tools for viewers to engage with on different levels. 

Like games, stories are rehearsals for life. We create a world in microcosm, an alternate reality, a world we wish were true or fear could become so. And then we immerse ourselves in it. This much never changes. But our ability to indulge that impulse grows with each new medium, and with it, the stakes we’re playing for. (Rose, 7) The Hive Mind, the spontaneous joint effort that transformed The Dark Knight into an experience anyone could take part it. (Rose, 15)There’s nothing inherent in humans that makes them want to be passive consumers of entertainment or the advertising that pays for it. (Rose, 87)We live in a moment when two modes of popular culture are vying for supremacy: passivity versus participation. Mass media versus deep media. Mass media are industrial, manufactured by someone else, and consumed by you. The deep media experience is digital; it offers a way to participate. (Rose, 98)Like religion, the arts are a form of imaginative play, a let’s-pretend game in which the artist skillfully weaves an imaginative world and the audience is transported into it. Both religion and the arts have their roots in the childhood play of ‘let’s pretend’ - ‘world-building’ and suggests that the arts immerse us in alternative worlds. They let us play with alternative identities - we can step out of our usual ego-patterns, see the world through someone else’s eyes. (Rose, 51)

Rose, F. (2011). The art of immersion: How the digital generation is remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the way we tell stories. New York: W.W. Norton &.

Gen-Z Shopping Separating Myth from Reality

Nanda shares the various strategies to reach Gen-z audiences and defines what makes this generation so unique and important to capture. Gen-z has taken on a new shared consumer culture that is socially driven through apps. Young consumers today have adapted to resale faster than any other generation, with 40 percent of Gen-Zers buying secondhand in 2019 compared to 25 percent in 2016, according to resale site ThredU (Nanda). Research has shown that Gen-Zers want to feel a part of the product process, not just an end point for brands. Brands can achieve this through influencer marketing where influencers can build that connection between the consumer and the brand and create behind the scenes content to drive awareness in a candid way. 

40 percent of American teens state that social media primarily influences their spending habits, according to McKinsey, and nine out of 10 Gen-Z consumers believe brands should detail their beliefs on environmental and social issues, according to BoF and McKinsey’s State of Fashion Report 2019 (Nanda, 6). 

Increased demand for companies that are able to quickly respond and adapt to current events and viral trends in a way that appears authentic to consumers (Nanda, 7). 

Building a community through messaging, outreach groups and affiliate or peer-to-peer platforms will let consumers guide the discussion, allowing brands to follow and develop their strategies according to consumer needs and desires (Nanda, 20). 

Nanda, M. (2020, October 8). Gen-Z Shopping: Separating Myth from Reality. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www.businessoffashion.com/professional/resources/case-study/gen-z-shopping-separating-myth-from-reality

Pixels and Places

-Video art in public spaces, digital advertising in public spaces.

Schreuder discusses the innovative and immersive way digital art can capture an audience in bold locations such as Times Square New York City, Las Vegas and more. The author evaluates various levels of public digital art, locations and and its relationship to marketing and business. He uses the Ginza Tokyo Chanel location as an example of using your logo combined with video art in a busy street. 

Chanel Store Ginza, Tokyo

Video art makes viewers aware of the time, of the work, and their own viewing behavior, whereas film, totally absorbs its viewers in a story. (Schreuder, 47)

Through experimentation with form and image, video artists make the medium visible, rather than taking the viewer to another world behind the screen. Video art in public space also seems in the first place to choose a hypermedial form in which the screen or projection indicates its own presence, rather than a virtual reality that it wishes to suggest. (Schreuder, 49)

Although art and commerce still take place in separate worlds, their visual idioms have grown closer together, so much so that the difference between them no longer particularly lies in the form, but sooner in the context and the conceptual point of departure. (Schreuder, 59)

In a certain sense, public screening places are a perfect platform for the artist who does not want want to make any distinction between high and low visual culture or between art and commerce. (Schreuder, 60)

‘Flexible building’ that continually is adjusted to the wishes of its users. (Schreuder, 88)

Schreuder, C. (2010). Pixels and places: Video art in public space. Rotterdam: NAi Publ.

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I find that people employ many tactics online to liken their tweet or posts to IRL conversations, mannerisms and actions. Its part of what makes the internet funny and personal

In my experience, nagivating online spaces like Twitter and Facebook feels particularly claustrophobic and noisy. Yet, on these largely text and video based mediums we don’t often hear sound that much. On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, videos play automatically but you must opt in to hear the video sound. Yet when on the Internet, WE HEAR LOUDNESS or play out sonic IRL moments like *sighs* or  *screams*  we ! punctuate ! our ! phrases ! for ! emphasis like that👏 or👏 like👏 this👏. We lovingly imitate our parents accents or draaaaaaaag out our words an abbreviate em to replicate how we speak in person (not sure if I would say “in real life” since most of that time is spent on the computer). Perhaps this is because, sounds represent the most intimate form of knowing one another, an ultimate intimacy.

        On the largely visual and textual internet, echoes of sound are everywhere, peripheral. I find that after following someone on Twitter or tumblr for a few months, I really start to produce a sense of voice for them. And when there’s a timeline to scroll through and ads randomly popping up. The Internet really feels quite noisy.

In her essay “Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media,” Kate Crawford characterizes the act of lurking online as a form of listening, pushing the concept into a new sonic dimension and characterizing lurkers who are often seen as absent in online participation as active participants. She writes, “As a metaphor, listening is useful; it captures some of the characteristics of the ongoing processes of receptivity that mark much online engagement. Nick Couldry argues that aural terms are more able ‘to register media’s social presence’ as they have distinct ‘advantages as a source of metaphors for thinking about the social world’ (2006, 6). He writes of the ‘reciprocal, embodied nature of listening; its embeddedness always in an intersubjective space of perception’ (6)” (Crawford 525).  Crawford then likens social media to a radio broadcast that can be tuned in and out of and often comes to sit in the background of our lives.

“The conversational field of activity in these online spaces is dispersed and molecularized, a constant flow of small pieces of information that accrete to form a sense of intimacy and awareness about the patterns of speech, activity and thought across a group of contacts. Like radio, they can circulate in the background: a part of the texture of the everyday. Twitter is itself a word that implies the sonic in both its derivations: either as the calling of birds, or the ‘idle’ chatter of humans.”

Using a phrase that I quite like, Crawford describes the sense of intimacy fostered on the internet as one of “ambient intimacy”: “It is the access to the details of someone’s everyday life, as prosaic as they often are, which contributes to the sense of ‘ambient intimacy’ in social media (Reichelt 2007).”

        In his essay, “Listening” Roland Barthes describes three modes of listening the 2nd and third of which are useful to me here. Like Crawford, Barthes calls listening an active behavior in these two modes. He ties language to rhythm and via rhythm “listening ceases to be a purely supervisory activity and becomes creation” (Barthes 249). Rhythm and creation are two words that I immediately link to sound. If we are using Crawford’s concept that lurking and reading on the Internet can be considered listening, then through Barthes’ rhythm and creation, listening seems like a means through which we recreate sound. (In our brains, like when a song gets stuck in our head out of nowhere or something).

        Barthes says that to listen “is to adopt an attitude of decoding what is obscure, blurred, or mute, in order to make available to consciousness the “underside” of meaning.” (p. 249) Again, the term “mute” likens listening to a form of uncovering “unmuting” sound.

This sense of decoding feels particularly relevant to online reading or listening because without sound, intonation, or facial expressions many statements online must be carefully written and carefully read in order to understand them properly. Barthes talks about a sense of risk in “Listening.” He writes: “Listening, then, involves a risk: it cannot be constructed in the shelter of a theoretical apparatus, the analysand is not a scientific object from whom the analyst, deep in his armchair can project himself with objectivity” (Barthes 256). There is some vulnerability in putting out your thoughts on the internet considering that they will be misconstrued and that reading them someone may end up with an inaccurate picture. As a part of this essay Im going to look at tactics people use to provide context, and how they relate to sound.

        But since I’ve mentioned echoes a number of times---I’m interested in looking into Ovid’s echo as it fits into the online space. A space full of windows and tabs, automatically updating newsfeeds and unsolicited advertisements. It can take a lot for me to realize when I’m on the Internet that I’m sitting there completely silent, staring at a screen. It almost never feels that quiet.