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dvp95 · 5 years ago

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can’t breathe when you touch my sleeve - chapter 3

pairing: dan howell/phil lester

rating: e (eventually)

warnings: none

tags: alternate universe, slow burn, fluff & humour, tiny bit of inner turmoil wrt sexuality but trust me it’s not that deep, eventual smut, idiots in love

word count: 3,385 for this chapter (12,653 total)

summary: Dan keeps making a fool of himself in interviews, to the point where it’s basically a meme. Now he’s got to sit down for the better part of an hour and sell his show to the YouTuber he’d had a massive crush on when he was a teenager.

read from the beginning on ao3 or on tumblr!

read this chapter on ao3 or here!

Dan has been dreading the seemingly-inevitable call from his family, now that filmed interviews are being uploaded and live interviews are starting in the next few days, so he’s almost disappointed when it never comes.

Surely his parents know he’s in London. There’s promotion for his show on a couple different channels they watch, and his dad has always been fairly good at keeping up with entertainment news. Adrian follows him on Instagram, but - and Dan isn’t proud of this - he can’t remember if Adrian still lives in Wokingham or not. He can’t even remember how old Adrian is without doing the math.

So maybe they haven’t been keeping up with Netflix shit, maybe Adrian isn’t home to tell their parents that he’s in town, but surely, surely some well-meaning friend of the family will say something? That’s always been the case when he comes to town.

After almost a whole week, though, Dan cracks. He calls his mum. It goes to voicemail.

That makes him panic a little, but she texts him an, at work … call you when I’m home x. So, questionable ellipses usage aside, Dan is comfortably reassured that his entire family isn’t dead.

Dan busies himself with catching up on the Heatwave cast interviews he hasn’t watched yet. Patrick doesn’t like to watch them and Jaime couldn’t give a shit one way or the other, but Dan is unable to allow a video of him to exist without knowing exactly what it contains. That’s a control thing, mostly, but he also doesn’t want to be blindsided by a new Daniel Interview Meme that he doesn’t understand.

He types his own name into the YouTube search bar and feels his heartrate pick up when he sees a thumbnail from BBC Radio One.

Thinking about Phil makes his heart race like he’s a teenager with a crush, and he presses play just so he can listen to Phil talk. He can barely remember what he said in the interview, so completely caught up in Phil’s eyes and grin as he’d been.

The interview itself is good. Nothing special, in terms of the actual things they talk about, but Dan can feel the difference in the way he speaks to Phil versus the way he’s spoken to anyone else - comfort. He had been so immediately comfortable with their back-and-forth, only awkward because he’d been trying so hard not to think about what Phil looked like under his nice clothes.

Dan wonders if anyone else can see the difference or if he only notices because he’s so attuned to his own body language, has the advantage of knowing the whole context.

He scrolls idly through the comments and feels heat rise to his face.

Yeah. People noticed.

Lots of comments are just about Dan or the show or the lack of Patrick or Jaime, but there’s more than a few that are about Dan and Phil’s apparent chemistry. Phil, being an out gay man with no partner and a fanbase, probably has to deal with these types of comments all the time, but it’s new for Dan.

Dan shakes his head to try and clear it. He doesn’t want to get stuck in YouTube comments and feel impotent irritation every time someone replies, ‘uh, Daniel Howell is straight’, like they know him. Like he’s ever said that.

He’s been photographed with women, because he’s casually dated them over the past decade, but he’s never said he’s straight. And it never works out with them anyway.

Dating girls is fine - they’re all softness and little sighs and hands that look so extremely small wrapped in his own - but he doesn’t think he can ever be with one for a significant amount of time. That thought is one he usually keeps locked in his mental box, but. He doesn’t shy away from it this time.

Even if he could admit it to himself proper, it’s easier for Dan to just not talk about it publicly. He hasn’t dated anyone seriously enough for it to be an issue in ten years. Nobody needs to know that every time he’s inside a woman he remembers why it never progresses past that.

It’s fine. It’s always fine. It’s just, if he’s completely honest with himself, 'fine’ isn’t what he wants to settle for.

“Moot point anyway,” Dan mumbles to himself, clicking over to Phil’s channel for a distraction. “Not like you’re gonna do anything about it, you big fucking coward.”

Phil has uploaded the video he told Dan about when Dan was busy trying not to stare at his mouth. It’s such a welcome distraction that Dan almost doesn’t clock the title and thumbnail for the buffoonery they are.

IS MY DOG PSYCHIC?

The title doesn’t change when Dan blinks. Neither does the image of Thor, edited to be wearing round glasses in front of a crystal ball.

“What,” Dan says, clicking on the video before any of it really sinks in.

“Hi guys,” says Phil. He already looks like he’s trying not to laugh. “I know you read the title and you’re like, what, but I promise it is not clickbait! As I’m sure many of you know, my grandma had 'the gift’, and sometimes I think she passed it on to me. The question is, did I pass it on to my son?”

Phil pulls an over-exaggerated thoughtful expression and then breaks, giggling and shaking his head at himself.

“I know it’s stupid, but, I also figured it might be funny? I dunno, you tell me.”

It’s exactly as silly as Dan expects it to be. Phil sits on his floor with Thor while the dog 'reads’ his tarot cards. Dan can see why this video gave Phil a hard time in editing. There are a lot of close ups of Thor and the cards, filmed more like a comedy skit than a vlog.

He finds himself laughing along and getting way too invested in what the tarot cards mean, and he knows first hand how much work Phil put into this, so Dan clicks the share button before he can overthink it.

tbh watching amazingthorgi do anything could make a believer out of me, he tweets alongside the link.

Most of America is asleep still, but that doesn’t stop hundreds of people replying. Dan’s really got nothing better to do while he waits for his mum to call, so he settles in to respond to some of them. He makes a couple bad jokes, commiserates with some of them over not being able to have a dog yet, and ignores any mention of Phil.

Maybe that’s childish of him. He is sharing Phil’s work, after all. He sighs and replies to an innocuous question about how he knows Phil. met during this and then he let me meet his dog so now he’s not getting rid of me, Dan says with a link to the BBC Radio One interview.

His phone chirps with a Twitter notification and he taps it warily, still scrolling through replies on his laptop.

@AmazingPhil @danielhowell You saw his face now you’re a believer? He’ll tell your fortune anytime! It’s accompanied with dog and sparkle and crystal ball and, inexplicably, sock emojis.

Dan laughs, the sound of it almost surprising him. It’s impossible not to feel some kind of way when Phil is the way he is, so cheerful and dorky and fun.

He likes the tweet, but responds by messaging Phil - do you have me on notif or are you just always online - because he doesn’t want to add any more fuel to the fire that is Twitter stans. He can already imagine the argument threads about his sexuality that he usually tries so hard to avoid.

The thought of strangers picking apart something he’s not even comfortable with himself is abhorrent, makes him itch, and he puts on some older AmazingPhil videos to calm himself back down.

That depends

on?

Which one is lamer lmao

Phil’s voice filling the lonely hotel room and his words taking up space on Dan’s screen where something anxiety-inducing might have otherwise been is almost enough to make Dan as comfortable as Phil’s physical presence does.

Almost. It’s unreal how much Dan wants to reach through both of his screens to pull Phil closer.

Dan hides his smile in his hand, even though nobody is around to see it, and replies, tbh those are equally lame so you might as well go with the truth

I was on Twitter anyway. I really shouldn’t be, I’m supposed to be responding to emails. Phil keeps typing, then stops, then repeats that process a few times before he finally adds, I should go do that, but you can call or facetime me if you want to keep talking or whatever? It’s easier not to type/text while I’m doing emails lol

And, in a third message, a string of numbers. Phil’s phone number.

Well, that sounds better than using Phil’s videos as background noise. Dan shuts his laptop and gets out of bed to fuss with his hair.

“You’re such an idiot,” he tells his judgemental reflection. It, thankfully, does not respond.

Once he’s gotten his hair into some semblance of order - it’s mostly still straight from yesterday, but it got all sleep-mussed and a bit wavy in the front overnight - Dan tosses on a shirt and video calls the number Phil gave him.

Phil picks up with a big grin and sleepy eyes, and Dan almost hangs up on him to stop the heart palpitations in their tracks. “Hi!”

“Hey, you just wake up?” Dan asks, getting comfortable in the hotel room armchair. It feels weird to lie back down in bed while they’re chatting. Phil is at his desk, phone propped up so he can use both hands to type. His glasses are a little crooked and his shirt is too big on him, exposing his collarbones whenever he leans forward. Unfortunately, he looks like serious wank material right now.

“Yeah, had my first coffee already, though,” says Phil. “You would not like me before my coffee.”

“Barely like you now, mate,” Dan says to try and hide his blush at the idea of seeing Phil first thing in the morning. Phil just laughs. It’s tinny through Dan’s phone speaker, but it still makes Dan feel warm.

“You’re awfully chatty for someone who doesn’t like me,” says Phil.

“I’m only bored, don’t flatter yourself,” says Dan. “My mum’s supposed to call me in a few hours, so I’m just kind of waiting around til then.”

“Oh, yeah, you haven’t had the chance to go home yet, have you?” Phil’s tongue pokes out between his teeth as he concentrates on whatever he’s reading. “My mum would be going out of her gourd. When was the last time you went home?”

Dan doesn’t really like the way that Phil keeps calling it 'home.’ Wokingham hasn’t been home in a very long time.

He doesn’t want to get into that, though, so he just shrugs. “Uh, Christmas?”

“Dan,” Phil says, looking appalled. “It’s August.”

“I don’t live here,” says Dan. “And I’m busy. My family gets it.”

Phil hums, a little disapproving still. Dan has to bite his tongue so he doesn’t say anything scathing, reminding himself that some people actually like their parents.

It’s not that Dan doesn’t love them, because he does, it’s just. Complicated.

“Do you get to see your family often?” Dan asks, desperate to get the attention off of how shit a son he is.

“Not as often as I’d like,” says Phil. He sounds so genuinely sad about it, like he really would like nothing more than to go visit his parents every weekend. “My brother lives in town, so I see him a lot.”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

“Yeah, he’s -” Phil cuts himself off, then, and gives Dan an apologetic sort of look through his screen. “You don’t want to hear about my family.”

“I do,” Dan says, and he’s surprised by how much he means it. He shifts in the armchair. It isn’t that comfortable. “Dude, I already know every song on your iTunes, what’s so weird about telling me stuff about your family? They clearly mean a lot to you.”

He has no idea how to interpret the expression on Phil’s face, but whatever it is shifts into a smile as he turns back to his computer. “Okay, his name’s Martyn, he’s older than me, we work together -”

This time, Dan cuts him off. “You do? I haven’t seen him on your channel.”

“He’s not really interested in being on camera. We actually run IRL Merch together, although honestly it’s mostly Martyn.”

Phil explains the business to Dan, who feels himself getting more and more awed by the amount of stuff Phil does on any given day. It isn’t just sitting in front of his camera and then in front of his computer for a handful of hours.

Granted, Dan never thought that being a YouTuber was easy, or everyone would do it, but Phil seems to add things onto his plate that he doesn’t really need to do.

Dan listens for a little while, changing positions in the armchair a few times before he gives up and flops back onto the bed.

“Phil,” he says, holding his phone high above his head and making a face at the angle. It’s fine, really, Phil has barely been glancing at him this whole time. Now that Dan has some kind of idea about the number of people Phil works with, he gets the hours of emails thing. “Do you ever take a break? Hang out with your friends?”

“What friends?” Phil jokes, but Dan senses there’s some truth behind it.

“Okay, first of all,” says Dan, “big mood.”

Phil’s laugh seems like it’s surprised out of him, and his eyes flick to his phone again. They linger on Dan for a long moment before turning away again. Although, to be fair, that may be lag from shitty hotel wifi. “Is it?”

“Yeah, man, like I’ve got any fucking friends. Second of all, you need to take some breaks or you’re going to burn the fuck out.”

“Trust me, I know,” says Phil.

“I know Thor already reminds you to take breaks,” says Dan. “But he can’t force you to. I can.”

“You’re gonna force me to take breaks?” Phil hums, his eyebrows raising. “How exactly are you going to manage that when you’re back in Atlanta?”

“I can be very annoying with nothing but an internet connection,” Dan promises. “You wanna see?”

“No, no, I believe you, and I need to get this done, please don’t.”

They both laugh, quiet, and Dan curls up on his side to just watch Phil work for a little while. Phil runs his fingers through his hair every so often and mouths along to whatever he types. Dan has no idea how one person can simultaneously be the hottest and the most adorable thing ever.

“I have a brother too,” Dan offers.

“Do you?” Phil asks, more surprised than Dan expects him to be. “That’s not on your Wikipedia.”

“He doesn’t like the attention,” says Dan. It’s a half-truth. Most of what he says about his family are half-truths. “But you’re not, like, a stan account or the media or whatever.”

“Technically, I am both,” Phil jokes. “I’ll keep it to myself, though, don’t worry.”

Dan isn’t worried. He trusts Phil not to go blabbing about him on the radio, even with something as small as Adrian’s existence.

It feels a little strange to trust someone so immediately, and part of Dan wants to pull back, put some distance between them, because the combination of trust and a deepening crush can only spell disaster. He’s not going to do that. He’s only got Phil nearby for another two weeks.

After they’ve finished their media circus in London, then Edinburgh, then Dublin, Dan is off to France with Patrick and Jaime. They’re only hitting a handful of international media press, but that’s more than they were asked to do last year. It’s exciting to be expanding this way, to have something to point to and say, 'I did that before I was 30’.

And when they’re done with the press tour, Dan… goes home. Back to Atlanta, where his apartment is being sublet during his summer travelling.

They don’t even know yet if Heatwave will get a fourth season. It’s a bit of an industry joke that Netflix shows rarely make it past the third. Dan doesn’t even want to consider how Atlanta will feel without a steady filming job down the street.

Probably not much like home. Nowhere feels all that much like home, if Dan’s honest.

“Hey, you still with me?”

Dan blinks away the doom and gloom of his uncertain future and refocuses on the conversation he’s supposed to be a part of. Phil is looking at him now, the sort of undivided attention that makes Dan’s cheeks burn.

“Yeah, sorry,” says Dan. “I’m still here. Have you made a dent in those emails?”

Not the most graceful change of subject, but Phil allows it with a small snort. “No, for I am Sisyphus, doomed to answer a dozen emails only for another dozen to arrive.”

“Maybe if you didn’t have, like, three jobs, this wouldn’t be a problem,” Dan points out. “I get maybe two important emails a day. It’s great.”

“Maybe,” says Phil. He’s still just looking at Dan, his chin resting on an open palm.

“What?” Dan asks, feeling a smile tug at his lips.

Phil smiles back, brighter. “Nothing.”

There’s a warmth in his face, visible even through the mediocre FaceTime quality, that makes Dan’s stomach twist all up in knots. He doesn’t know how to handle that at all. “My mum’s calling I gotta go bye,” he says in one breath, hanging up before Phil can even react.

While he waits for his heart to stop pounding, Dan stares at the hotel ceiling and wonders what the fuck is wrong with him.

–

Dan’s mum does call, eventually. He’s been fucking around on Guild Wars and cursing the wifi for god only knows how long, refusing to check his phone so he doesn’t have to be faced with another message - or the lack of one - from Phil. Dan finishes the raid and then calls his mum back.

“Daniel, hi,” she says, sounding frazzled in the way she always seems to.

“Hey, mum.” It feels weird, now that he’s got her on the phone, but he pushes past that discomfort. “I was just calling to let you know that I’m in London.”

The sound of a door slamming comes through before his mum says, “Well, yes, dear. I know that.”

She doesn’t sound upset with him. More than anything, she sounds confused. Like she doesn’t know why he’s even telling her this. Like it hasn’t even occurred to her to nag her son for a visit. Dan has to swallow past a lump in his throat, not sure why he wishes she was angry.

“Oh,” he says. Allows a long moment of quiet to pass, just in case she wants to explain herself. She doesn’t. “Well. Okay. Do you - are you busy weekend after next? I could come see you before we leave for the continent.”

“That’s quite short notice, dear,” his mum says, and Dan experiences a dizzying rush of relief and distress before she continues. “But I’m sure I can make some time for dinner.”

Dan exhales. Dinner. He can do dinner.

“That sounds good,” he says. Another half-truth. “I’ll text you?”

“Yes, yes,” his mum says, already sounding distracted. “Text me and we’ll make a proper plan. Work hard til then, okay? I love you.”

“I love you too. Bye.”

The call ends almost as abruptly as his call with Phil, but Dan is okay with that.

im going to see my fam before i leave england jsyk, Dan texts to Phil. Phil sends him celebratory emojis in response. And maybe dinner with his family will be horrible, maybe it will be great, most likely it will be slightly uncomfortable, but at least he isn’t disappointing Phil on top of everyone else he’s let down.

#phanfiction #phanfic #phan #dnp fic #can't breathe when you touch my sleeve #words words words

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nick-nocturne · 7 years ago

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My Statement About the UCA Situation (Midnight Marinara)

Now that David has released his statement on his own channel, I feel it’s alright to go ahead with mine. This whole incident has caused a lot more pain and damage to Allen and David than to me, and as such, I let them hold the reigns on this situation. I would speak when they were set and both of them were in a good place mentally after all of this. Here’s the first thing I’m going to say regarding Dead Palette’s comment on the Undercooked Analysis I was featured in with Allen: his attacks are based on some truth and some facts I will not deny, and I’ll explore those with you all in a moment. Where he’s gone wrong is his complete omission of all the rest of the facts and his intentional distortion of the facts presented to give you a very negative impression of me: his own, which has been negative for what I suspect is far longer than the inciting incident. You’re going to see exactly why he chose this moment to drop a seemingly random hit piece on Allen’s UCA upload when he wasn’t involved in the video in the slightest. And for the people that it hurt (Allen and David), I’m pretty angry. You can take as many shots and throw as many bricks as you want at me, Brandon. But you burned innocent people, my friends, our friends, purely over your grudge against me. You committed the crime this time and made innocent, good people suffer for your own venomous needs. ----------------- So--what even happened and how did we get to this point? Let’s walk it back a moment to mid-2016: With Night Mind, I had initially resolved to do one thing: provide channels that had made really awesome things that hadn’t been explored to their full artistic depth the chance for everyone to see and appreciate them. I started with the Slenderverse, went through Alantutorial, covered the Adult Swim stuff around that time, and then opened 2016 with an even bigger vision: take my approach to as many of the new and developing creators as possible.

Everyone I had just covered and explored, they already made it, they experienced the bit of mountain climbing to be recognized and their journeys were well underway. I wanted other people in the field who were just starting to get that to be seen in the same way, and I’ve been working towards that goal ever since.

As much success, recognition, and opportunities for the independent creators looking to make livelihoods out of their art—that’s what this has always been about. Seedlings to oak trees, however I could help make it happen.

Around the same time, I got involved with Midnight Marinara, a channel that specialized in doing much of the same thing for Creepypasta, which could be considered a text form sibling to the horror webseries field. David, Dead Palette, Slimebeast—they had all been welcoming, they were fun guys, and they were smart guys. I liked them and enjoyed what they were doing and I had a lot of personal chats with David about how to grow the field, help new writers, and see Creepypasta be more legitimized. The mainstream world knew two aspects of Creepypasta: Slenderman and Jeff the Killer, and the field was wat better than just that. Suddenly, I had two fields I wanted to watch and work on raising up.

New webseries could use all the attention and support they could get and new writers could use all the attention and support they could get. It was, however, going to be one hell of a climb for anyone, no matter what channels like mine and Midnight Marinara did. The best way forward was just to keep moving forward.

Now, enter the figure, Max Landis.

Being a new channel or creator of anything new, you’re endlessly surprised by people who end up watching you or liking your stuff. I was still very new and only just making strides, being genuinely humbled by messages I got and, sometimes, the people who gave them.

Consider this moment: you’re a new YouTuber specializing in extremely niche, under-celebrated media most people don’t care for and wouldn’t touch, and suddenly, a Hollywood writer and director reaches out sharing appreciation for your work and the stuff you specialize in. This is someone whose every day life is more busy and impactful to the entire world of media and creativity than your whole week, and they took the time to say hello to you and say they cared about what you were doing.

Yes, I was absolutely awestruck and humbled.

Max didn’t have to do this, not at all, and yet, he made himself known. I could’ve just been something he watched to keep a pulse on weird media, but he showed me the biggest rush of kindness and support from a place I didn’t even dream of being able to approach when I was still what YouTube at large considers a small channel. And then I learned he was making a tv show based on adapting creepypasta.

Oh my God, prayers answered. Creepypasta as a field had finally grown big enough to be recognized by the absolute top of the ladder for major production! The art form would be legitimized, new creators would be seen as possibilities going forward by major publications and producers! The idea that someone typing up spooky short stories online would only ever be able to entertain internet strangers and stay stuck in a dead-end job wishing they could do more was over! Had anyone at all done this, I would’ve been right there as a supporter with a smile on my face. But it wasn’t just a random studio or random executive producer: It was someone who had been unnecessarily and extraordinarily supportive and kind to me. A person who was Someone told me, Nobody, that they enjoyed what I was doing and what I stood for. That is exactly how it felt back then, and I had a chance to repay that kindness with the little passionate following I had. Max had been friendly to me and done a lot by saying just a little, probably having no idea what it meant to me; I wanted to repay that as much as I could. ... And then, when it came to the Midnight Marinara discussion of this upcoming First Big Break in Creepypasta, I found I was the only optimistic person in the room. And then the teaser trailer and the synopsis came out, and the feelings got worse. What do you do when a group of friends disparages the upcoming work of another friend that you were excited for, especially when that work seems like a gift for everyone? I felt trapped between two sides with no clear way forward. I could: A) Support this endeavor that would break down a wall for indie horror and dark storytelling creators, while also paying Max back for his support B) Leave Channel Zero alone, don’t give it any lift with this group of supporters I’d pulled together, ignore Max, and keep the peace with the friends who I’d made before him that had also been kind to me Things came to a real point of anxiety for me when Dead Palette and Slimebeast went out of their way to directly throw shade at Max publicly on Twitter:

Kris Straub is the writer for Candle Cove, the story that was first adapted for Channel Zero. In that thread, he ends up giving the adaptation his seal of approval when it comes to the writing. That tweet is in a mix of back-and-forth between Max and Slimebeast. Fun fact: you can find the public evidence on Max’s Twitter of him actually approaching Slimebeast to talk about adapting his big Creepypasta hit, “Abandoned by Disney.” Talks between Slimebeast and Max ended up not working out and broke down, so Slimebeast didn’t get taken up as a writer for the show or having his work adapted. My guess is that Max probably took the idea to the legal department and, in the wake of Escape From Tomorrow, Disney was ready to go to war over any depictions of anything related to them they didn’t fully approve. (Gee, I wonder if Slimebeast happened to have a chip on his shoulder already when it came to Max...)

But that’s just an aside to the story. This Twitter exchange was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. I was pissed off at DP and Slimebeast, especially because they were figures for the Creepypasta community. How could they look at this one big break the field they loved was getting and spit in its eye? They were writers, too, for the love of God--why would they throw rocks at the one guy who was looking to adapt their kind of work for major production? Why were you making an enemy of someone looking to do major things for your entire art field when you live to support that art field?!

I felt like I was going crazy and my time was running out to make a stand. I asked David of Midnight Marinara what to do, and he did say to discuss it privately with both of them if I really wanted to go through with this and felt concerned about the possibility of them contradicting me up and down in the comments section for any potential video. That, ultimately, is what it was about: I didn’t want to make this video, be supportive of this endeavor and a friend, and have two other friends everyone knew I was on good terms with come into the comments section and cause this big, public brawl between all of us and not only destroy my efforts, but ruin our relationship in a very open and obvious way. I wanted to keep peace. I wanted to keep friends. I wanted to support something I thought would be incredible and repay a kindness. I wanted to bake the cake, have it on the table, and eat it, too. My solution to this whole situation was absolutely how David put it: idiotic. I was an awkward, confused idiot. I ended up going into our Skype group and explaining I had a video I wanted to make about Channel Zero, and that even though I knew they didn’t like it, I just wanted things in the comments to remain neutral and be only what the viewers put. I asked them not to comment. Bad, BAD, STUPID, BAD, and RUDE.

Slimebeast shrugged it off--he didn’t care.

Dead Palette took offense. Lots of offense. About right to the point where you should be offended by someone being as stupid and insensitive as I was, and then...

Well, then we talked privately, where he took it the level you reserve for someone who calls you a racial slur or kicks your dog right in front of you. I wish I had the screenshots for this conversation--I checked my history, but the Skype database ends two days after, which is unfortunate, because if there’s anything I’ve learned by now, it’s that I should expect Dead Palette to attack me by painting things in a half-light, so don’t be surprised if he takes very cropped and specific screenshots to give you an impression that works in his favor. This was either on or right around 9/12/16, and in talking about why I didn’t want him and Slimebeast bringing the Channel Zero beatdown into my comments section for a potential video, I did talk about my reasons why. I also mentioned that even with the stuff we’d seen as promotion for it already, this show wasn’t out yet, we hadn’t actually seen the product. I think I agreed that from a standpoint of looking like a genuine adaptation of Candle Cove up to that point, it was a miserable failure, or something to that degree. But that’s besides the point; things gets weird adaptations sometimes that somehow end up better than the source material, and still, we hadn’t seen the show. Maybe Channel Zero was going to be a big bag of utter shit. But until we saw that, until we knew that, we had to give it a chance and be supportive of literally the only major thing to happen to the field of Creepypasta as a good thing. The Slenderman stabbings sure didn’t help us, so it was a miracle that we got this alone. And damn it, yes, I was going to support Max. Because even if something a friend is making looks like it’s going to suck, you be there to support them, especially when they’ve been generously kind to you. I also remember I said some pretty weak things about being a journalist as well as a reviewer, which is the extra branch I wanted to add to Night Mind videos by covering horror community news. But Dead Palette was right in skewering me on that one--a journalist just says what’s happening to let people know it’s happening, not because they want to support a friend or something that will help a cause they stand for. In talking to Dead Palette, I began to recognize just how wrong I was to ask him what I had. Truth is, I did do something stupid, and inconsiderate, and just wrong. Even if I wanted things to go cleanly for the comments section, I didn’t get to ask a friend to not speak their mind. I don’t remember precisely what happened for the end of talking with Dead Palette, but I remember the hours spent after that. I wasn’t in a good place; didn’t feel good, knew I hadn’t done good, and I’d made things worse. I began to think about things more and really analyze the situation from all sides. Yeah, I fucked up. Even if I was foolish enough to think my tactic was minimizing the effect of “choosing sides,” I still ended up choosing a side. And in trying to prevent a bad situation, I caved into anxiety and fear and created the situation I didn’t want. I went to David to talk about things:

Here’s a full version of the apology I left for Dead Palette:

That last part is where Dead Palette’s claim that I tried to apologize by soliciting “free work” from him comes from, by the way. I didn’t want free work, I wanted to do anything at all that felt like a peace offering or olive branch. Dead Palette was primarily a writer--if I could feature something he had made on my channel, that felt like a shaking of hands. I didn’t want him to just drop whatever he was doing and write something for me, I just wanted to work with him and bury the hatchet; if he had something he had written by October he was proud of, I wanted to shake hands by featuring it. Our argument was in private, not in public, but I still wanted to do something in a public nature to apologize. And this is where those of you who have had the fortune of not talking to Dead Palette will learn something those of us who have bad run-ins with him realize after the fact: he’s the kind of person who will take something you say and then twist it to use against you for the most horrible, negative connotation. Context will be ignored and he’ll even try to make it null and void so he can use your own words as a weapon to hurt you. Even if what you say is soft, he’ll somehow make it hard and say, “You tried to hit me.” So, time went by, with no replies from Dead Palette. I know I was looking for them--I wanted to fix this, to make it better, to end it. I had fucked up and been selfish, stupid, and insensitive, and I despised what I had done to the group. David was affected, Allen was affected, and the aura of “something wrong” remained. Well, things didn’t happen. I asked David in the interim if Dead Palette had said anything, and he reported that he hadn’t when I first asked. At the end of the month, he did have this to say:

Things didn’t pick up from there. On October 18th, the premiere date of Channel Zero: Candle Cove had already passed. I watched it, the whole affair of the past month still in mind, and came to a conclusion: No, this wasn’t really great--not when it comes to being anywhere near an adaptation of Creepypasta, anyway. It was time to man up and eat crow. I headed into the Skype Group for Midnight Marinara to admit I backed what looked like a losing horse and repent. My Skype setup has two issues with providing evidence for you guys right now: I’m pretty sure I’ve been blocked by Dead Palette, and I left that old chat group, so getting the full chats in the program’s front face isn’t possible. What I did manage to get are the old chat logs, which caught this moment. The presentation shows it off kind of strange, and you need to imagine an apostrophe (’) every time it says “'” but this is the text for how conversation went. I’m Nick Nocturne in here, Slimebeast is Semistable Lemontart, and Brandon is Dead Palette:

I was short-tempered in this and I know it, but this was what could’ve been considered the third or fourth apology attempt I was delivering and I was having a door thrown in my face while admitting even further how wrong I was. I came to eat crow, shake hands, and make peace, not be told I’m a problem when I had already admitted twice that I was a problem and had done wrong. I also did have a call to make that was incoming with my YouTube partner manager at the time, Melissa. That’s a fun fact for you guys: YouTube has actually set up a group to be assistants on their side of things for channels who get emails sent offering the connection. I didn’t really have time to jump in a call with DP, but I did it anyway. I really, really wish I had recorded that call, now. This is how it opened:

“YES, YOU were WRONG, NICK! EVERYTHING about what you said and did was WRONG! And you KNOW IT!”

I was so stunned by being directly yelled at as an opening line for a cold conversation that I didn’t say anything for a minute. I haven’t been spoken to like that since I was a child.

The rest of the phone call was just... hell. Me apologizing, me admitting I was wrong, that I was sorry, that I wanted to make amends. And Dead Palette? His side was this: - Wanting to hear me openly say and actively repeat, “I’m not a journalist”

- Telling me that I was a piece of shit for trying to get “free work” out of him

- That I still didn’t know what I did wrong and I hadn’t apologized for it

- I was a dirty, filthy, scummy YouTuber

- He didn’t care to know me or work with me at all

- He didn’t care to talk to me or make peace with me

- And again, “I’m not a journalist” and that I don’t understand how deeply or incredibly I was wrong

When I tell you that I begged for forgiveness, I mean I pretty much begged for it. I didn’t know what else to do, what else to say, what else to apologize for. I came through to clear things, he opened the phone line to assault me over the microphone.

I had to take some time to myself, however brief, before I could have my first conversation with this YouTube partner manager.

And from there... well, I got one more notification from the Skype Group:

I left the group, I’m pretty sure, and then just said goodbye to Skype in general for awhile. Tried to pull it together offscene and continue with my October work. And everything went completely silent from there. David knew what happened and he was sorry, couldn’t understand how Brandon could be this way, but I told him to not let things change between him and DP over me. Dead Palette had been his friend first, and our argument wasn’t involving David. If DP wanted nothing to do with me, fine--but David wasn’t about to pay that price. Peace (if you could call it that) was kept since then. Until, of course, we have what brought everything crashing down this past week.

---------------------------

Allen invited me to be on his arc of a fun variety choice event the Midnight Marinara/Undercooked Analysis guys were calling the “Spaifu War,” where David, Allen, and DP went their separate ways to make their own UCA shows after disagreeing who the best waifu was from “Totally Spies.” I thought that was hilarious and Allen is my friend, he’s been my friend since before he got involved with Midnight Marinara. I missed doing anything with Allen, so I jumped on the opportunity to have some fun, help him with his arc, and just enjoy catching up.

Allen, despite what Dead Palette or Slimebeast may tell you, did not know the depth of the hate Dead Palette has for me. He knew there was bad blood, but not to the extent that he would do what came next.

The episode went up on... Monday night? Tuesday morning? That odd mixture of the two times that to me constitute one full day. Tuesday morning, I’m heading to bed, look at my phone, and see I have a Twitter DM... from Dead Palette.

It’s been about 18 months since the whole affair over Channel Zero and my idiocy. A year and a half. I’m in a good, thoughtful mood, been working on a new video, I’m about to go to bed, and I get this random message:

From here, I’m going to give you all the full, unedited thread. THIS is what led to Dead Palette’s callout/resignation comment on the UCA video I was on with Allen, the one in which he wasn’t even mentioned, featured, or even remotely thought of:

I immediately shared screenshots with Allen and David because I knew if DP was mean-spirited and begrudging enough to do this a full year and a half later acting this way, he was about to do some more horrible things, too.

And then he did precisely that. He went into the comments section of the UCA video I made with Allen, wrote up his hit piece, and then burned two innocent mutual friends because he just fucking hates me.

And I’ve had to sit by and watch as people DP sold a lie to in a random callout post have flung arrows at me here through anonymous asks and on Twitter. But I told David straight-up: he and Allen were the ones truly hurt by this. They can lead the charge.

And, you know, I seriously didn’t expect Dead Palette to leave The Witching Hour on top of Undercooked Analysis. I didn’t even expect him to leave UCA.

No matter how horrible the whole thing with DP was, I never begrudged David over it, or Allen. I wasn’t going to burn mutual friends for something that was my own deal.

But most of all... I didn’t expect a grown man to hold a grudge like this for a year and a half and then attack me out of the blue.

After what must’ve been about five apologies.

I fully own up to everything stupid and awful I did that created the Channel Zero situation. I do own it: I asked Slimebeast and Dead Palette to not disparage the show in the comments section if I made a video, because I didn’t want public fighting, I wanted to support the show for what it could do for Creepypasta, and I wanted to support Max, who had been majorly kind to me. I was also getting a lot of questions from viewers asking if I’d cover it--it was, after all, indie online horror that was now taking major media form.

I felt pressed to cover and support Channel Zero in a bunch of ways. I felt trapped by my need to light a torch for it and my desire to stay friends with the group who first befriended me on YouTube. I chose one of the dumbest, most selfish routes possible to go about it and chose to ask friends to be silent about their opinions for my sake.

I was wrong, Dead Palette. You’re right about that.

But no matter how much I said it, and no matter how much I owned it, no matter how much I wanted to fix things and make it right and be better than what you saw me as, you just kept spitting in my face and screaming me down.

But now you hurt innocent people. And what’s more, you hurt my friends.

Mix yourself a drink for that, DP, and call it The Bitter Grudge.

---------------------------

I hate internet drama. I hate having to engage in it, I hate having to hear about it, I hate having to see it. But this is one monster that involved me and I had to say my piece.

Let’s go ahead and put this thing to bed, now, and move on with good things and good people.

And finally...

Long live Undercooked Analysis and Midnight Marinara!

----------------- Edit: Please, please, please do not attack Dead Palette! This case is closed, here. Leave the guy alone. Don’t message him, don’t tweet at him, don’t comment on his videos about this, don’t attack him. Leave him be. We’ve all had enough hate and grudges and mudslinging. Enough of the blame, enough of the hate. It’s spring. Let’s go forward in peace.

#night mind #midnight marinara #statement #what really happened #i hate drama too

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seungcheolrk · 7 years ago

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● SPHERE NOVEMBER EVALUATION: INTERROGATION !

NOVEMBER 30TH, 2017 A MOCK INTERVIEW

he’s almost embarrassed to admit how nervous he is for the end of the month— perhaps more so than he has been for an evaluation in a long time, if ever. after all, it’s no secret that talking is not seungcheol’s forte.

it has to be said, however, that amongst all the nerves is a building excitement. the particularly appropriate challenge for this month’s stressful final day only serves as a reminder of what’s to come — endless grilling from the public, perfecting answers to questions he should never have to expect and, thus, of course, debut. momentarily, his mind wanders to his million curiosities about how it’ll all unfold, but he doesn’t allow it to stray too far, since they’re about to start and seungcheol already knows that actually listening is the most important part of an interview.

his coach makes himself comfortable in the seat opposite him, prepared with questions hidden to seungcheol’s eye. ( though, admittedly, as tempting as it might be, seungcheol is far too scared of being caught to have even tried sneaking a peek. ) anything could be written on those papers, and whilst seungcheol doesn’t think he’s ever done anything to be challenged on in an unanswerable question, it doesn’t hurt to anticipate the worst. he’ll either get what he expected or be pleasantly surprised to be spared; isn’t that foolproof? he supposes he’ll find out.

“please introduce yourself.”

easy enough, he thinks. “h-hello! I’m s.coups, o-one of convex’s m-main rappers.” he hesitates to playfully add ‘dancing black hole’, but quickly decides against it. it’s difficult to get his tone across when he’s stumbling over his words like this and he’d rather not be misinterpreted. still, he knows he can’t leave it at that — it’s far too plain, tells the coach nothing about him as a person or a performer. he inwardly cringes as he considers his trainee title as a last resort after he’s left too long of a pause between answers, but the moment has passed before he can think of anything else.

“we hear you’re ‘sphere’s scaredy cat’. where did this come from?”

he supposes it’s wishful thinking to think he’ll ever escape it. he doesn’t mind it too much; after all, he gave himself the name. he just doesn’t want it to be his only identity after debut. he’s much more than a scaredy cat, really. “I get st-startled v-very easily.” he breathes out a weak chuckle. “l-loud noises, mostly, so y-you can imagine w-what it’s l-like for me living in a d-dorm of th-thirteen.” speculation, of course, but he doesn’t think it’ll be far off the truth.

“it’s becoming expected now for rappers to write their own lyrics. you don’t. why?”

he sucks in a deep breath. “for a long time, I’ve been p-passionate about making rap more acc-accessible to all. I w-want to rid the industry of th-this idea that you ha-have you have an extensive b-background in underground r-rapping to be a rapper. o-of course, if you h-have that, that’s great, b-b-b-but— I think it discourages a lot of y-young people from pursuing rap.” his eyes widen in panic, wondering if he’s perhaps talking too much or even sounding judgemental to those who have that experience under their belt. of course, he doesn’t mean any harm by his comments; he can’t help that his own experiences with underground rappers has so often been sour. “I want to be a g-great idol rapper, so I c-can inspire mo-more future idols to feel c-confident in their skills.”

“we heard that you sang for your audition, though. if rap is so important to you, why did you sing?”

“singing is important to me, too.” he answers evenly, the first sentence to come out free of trembles. maybe it’s because it feels like an attack, like he can’t be passionate about more than one thing, like he’s being accused of being unfocused, indecisive. “I’m v-versatile musically. rap is my f-focus, but I have a lot of tr-tricks up my sleeve I h-hope to show more as time passes. at the time, I had o-only singing publicly for a f-few months, so it fe-felt right to h-honour that new e-era of my life.”

“you also sing monthly on your youtube channel, right? can you tell us more about that? we’re all curious who WZ is.”

he laughs heartily, a soft pink dusting his cheeks. he wonders if they truly feel as if they’re catching him out here; as if he’s going to stumble ( not too much of a stretch to believe ) over an excuse for ‘WZ’s identity, but the real truth is— “WZ is convex’s shortest lead dancer, lee jihoon!” it’s rather noticeable how his stutter drops immediately at the mention of his best friend, and even more obvious how his features light up and his shoulders relax. his hands hidden under the table have stopped rubbing against one another, instead animatedly gesturing as he speaks. “we share a love for gfriend’s music, so I decided to dedicate the first cover of my monthly project to him. it’s also one of the two videos I showed him when I told him about the channel and my past with singing, so it has a lot of sentimental value.” his eyes curve as he pauses for a few beats. “my monthly project started as a way to ensure I uploaded semi-regularly on that channel,” and a way to keep sane through the rollercoaster that was 2016, he bites his tongue, “but it’s also now a testament to my growth both musically and personally over the past— wow, almost two years. you can see how I’ve matured from the early days, writing out raps to avoid bringing my two worlds together, to now. there’s so much more vibrancy in my covers now, even if I do have to record them late at night after training.” he chuckles, running a hand through his hair, hoping his blush isn’t too obvious.

“speaking of jihoon, you two seem to be close. you’ve both posted about each other on instagram and you speak very fondly of him.”

“jihoon and I have been best friends for almost four years. we’re— kind of opposites in a lot of ways and that’s why we work so well together. jihoon’s helped me through a lot, and he’s helped me to get closer with the other convex boys, whether he realises it or not.” he has a proud grin on his gentle features as he thinks to the endless encouragement the younger gives him, the unconditional support and patience. he nods softly. “it’s through his friendship that I’ve grown more confident in myself and learnt to take risks. where he is brave, I am cowardly, and where I am gentle, he can be unintentionally sharp. he has an attention to detail I don’t, and I have a nagging voice he sometimes needs. we’re always helping one another grow to be better and better versions of ourselves.” he hums quietly. “I have lots to learn from every member of convex; charisma from hyun, dance from the performance unit—” he pales, realising he’d uttered the word he’d been trying to avoid.

“it’s no secret that dance isn’t your strong point. in a predebut performance in july, you fell a lot. do you think you’ve improved since then?”

they really don’t hold back, he thinks, blinking once, twice, before he snaps back to reality. july is still a month he doesn’t really enjoy looking back on, and that much must be obvious, or he doubts they’d have honed in on it specifically. “I d-definitely still have a long way to go,” he admits, “but it’s something my interest in is growing in ra-rapidly. I’ve been working on it a lot recently, so please anticipate my next stage! you’ll see!” he smiles brightly, sighing inwardly in relief.

“you didn’t take the college entrance exams, correct? so if you weren’t an idol, what would you be doing?”

“music.” he answers immediately, not a moment of hesitation. “being an idol is the path th-through music that I want more than anything, but it’s not the only path. I have an interest in classical music, too, and a particularly strong interest in movie scores. my family also own a music store, so I would find a way to be part of music somehow.” he nods, adding quietly, “it’s my destiny.”

“why do you think you deserve to debut?”

“hard work, dedication and passion; just like everyone else. everyone deserves to debut if their heart is in it.” it’s probably not the answer he should be giving. maybe he should be selling himself, talking about how he alone has worked hard and how baek jiyoung deems him ready and he feels it in his bones, too, that this is the right time, but it’s not in his nature. he knows idols are supposed to lie from time to time— white lies for the sake of image aren’t foreign to him, but had he or had he not worked so hard to rid himself of that? to be honest? he doesn’t think he has a personality that’s particularly un-idol-friendly, so maybe he’s reasonably safe. maybe his white lies can be about ideal types and how easy he is to wake up in the morning. we’ll see, he thinks.

“finally, what are your goals for the future? do you want to have a solo career on the side one day? perhaps acting or modelling? radio hosting?”

“my only goal is to continue to better myself for fans and for the other boys; to be the best performer I can each and every time I step on stage, and never to give up or falter. I want to help convex grow to being a highly respected name; a group that is known for their charms and performance skills. anything beyond that, solo activities, modelling contracts, for myself alone are bonuses.” still, he laughs softly as he adds, “that being said, I’d really love to go on king of masked singer, or something similar, one day.”

once he’s finished talking and the coach clicks the lid shut on his pen, he breathes a sigh of relief. he doesn’t doubt that he’ll launch into a full analysis of his performance in a few minutes, once he’s organised his criticisms into a more natural order, but for now, he can’t say he doesn’t expect the obvious, “you definitely need to work on that stutter,” that fills the stifling silence.

“I’m w-w-working on it.”

the coach doesn’t make eye contact as he adds, “and to think you considered yourself a contender as a leader with it.” he bites his bottom lip nervously, hands returning to rubbing against one another under the table. it’s not a statement he’s undeserving of and perhaps that’s why it stings so much more than he expects at first, digging into his confidence and dragging it into the ground. he wants to argue, clarify that he didn’t explicitly name himself for it, he simply laid everything on the table, said he’d do anything because he would— if it meant pleasing everyone, he’d do it— but it’s not worth it. he has to develop a thick skin, anyway, right? then comments like this ( and worse ) won’t hurt so much after debut.

he can see it now: convex’s black hole, convex’s unlucky number 13. he chews through the skin.

his pride was fun while it lasted, at least.

#rknov17eval #jihoonrk #cheol;solo #cheol;sphere #cheol;eval #( +3 charisma )#( +2 debut )#( wc; 1912 )#( jihoon is heavily mentioned so!! )

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dippedanddripped · 5 years ago

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The first time Lucy Kyselica’s face was stolen, it turned up in the window of a beauty salon in small-town America. Kyselica is a Dutch beauty YouTuber who mostly makes videos about historical hairdos, but she had also made a video showing her subscribers how to thread their own eyebrows. The salon took a screengrab from that video, enlarged it to poster size, and used it to advertise their eyebrow threading services. Across the ocean in the Netherlands, Kyselica only found out because some fans recognized her, and asked her if she was working with the salon or if she even knew her image was in its window. She wasn’t; she didn’t. She sent an email, and never heard back. “It may still be there,” she says.

In the six years since, Kyselica has seen her image used to sell other people’s products over and over. She’s been the face of hairstyling tools, hair thickening products, and beauty pills. “The products are always kind of dodgy,” she says. Most recently, it was clip-in bangs sold by a Chinese merchant on Amazon. Kyselica decided to publicize her problem, and made a video about it: “I Ordered My Own Bangs Off Amazon 🤔 🙅‍♀”. You see, Kyselica’s bangs, which are her signature look, aren’t actually clip-ins. They grow from her scalp.

Image theft isn’t unique to Kyselica, or even social media influencers. If you’ve ever seen (or bought) a designer handbag or a pair of sunglasses that “fell off a truck,” you’ve seen a version of this before. The internet has made selling knockoffs a breeze, especially because vendors can just use a picture of the genuine article on the listing and the customer won’t know the difference until the inevitably plasticy and awful fake shows up on their doorstep.

As influencer marketing has grown in popularity, using images from their accounts has became the logical next step. Instagrammers often complain about Chinese fast fashion companies copying their looks and using their photos (often with their faces cropped out) to sell cheap knockoffs. Beauty YouTubers constantly encounter ads featuring their own eyes, nails, or whole faces, as well as inboxes and DMs full of fans telling them about such ads. In an economy based on audience trust, the products can be a real blow to their businesses. More often than not, they have no idea what to do next.

While it certainly isn’t good, a brand making a low-rent dupe of your outfit and selling it with a photo of your headless body can be a sick sort of best case scenario. For one, you’ve got that plausible deniability: If I really endorsed this (crappy) product, why would they crop out my face? Plus, for some, the scandal of it all can actually be a benefit.

That’s what happened to YouTuber Bernadette Banner, who makes historical sewing videos. One morning around 6 am, she found her DM inboxes—Facebook, Instagram, Etsy—stuffed with messages from fans. They were all telling her that a fast fashion company was advertising one of her dresses—a 15th century gown she had copied from a painting and hand-sewn over the course of over 250 hours—with her (headless) image for $40.98, which is not even half of her materials cost. “I had just woken up. I was incoherent. I never got to the point of rage,” Banner says. “I thought, ‘What would happen if I bought it? That would make really good video content.’ Without getting out of bed, I ordered the dress.” The resulting video, which she calls “an educated roast,” went viral. It got 3.5 million views, doubled Banner’s subscribe count, and made her five figures in revenue.

Banner’s business is based on showcasing her expertise: She didn’t design that dress, and she doesn’t sell it anywhere, so the knockoff didn’t really cost her anything in lost business. It’s the same for many beauty influencers. They derive their income from images of their faces, hair, and nails, so they stand to lose a lot more when those images are stolen. Even celebrity YouTubers have been affected. Nail artist Simply Nailogical, who has 7.5 million subscribers, has experienced so much image theft that she watermarks every image and video she uploads—and people still swipe them for advertisements. Makeup guru Tati Westbrook, who has over 9.5 million subscribers, has made a video detailing every time her image and voice have been used to promote products she doesn’t endorse.

People are almost always dismayed when this happens. “It's just kind of creepy to see my face in something I’m not associated with in any way,” Kyselica says. “It hurts my business. Also, on a personal level, the trust of my followers means a lot to me. I feel iffy about having my face used when the products are made in a way that is likely not ethically produced, like in a sweatshop in China.” The ethics concern comes up a lot: Banner is publicly critical of fast fashion companies in general, so to have her dress copied by one was extra frustrating. “There is probably somebody working basically as a slave to make this dress,” Banner says. “I got uncomfortable buying it, but I’d like to think that I’m keeping hundreds or thousands of other people from buying it, too.”

Among YouTubers and other influencers, there’s a sense that nothing can be done, of screaming into the void. There is frequently a language barrier between the influencer and the seller; the companies rarely (if ever) respond to their emails, and the images often pop up online again as advertisements for different companies entirely within a few days or even hours. (Typically the brands all share a parent company.) “It’s always disheartening to find out that it’s happened again,” Kyselica says, especially because, in its own way, it’s a symptom of her success. “It’s our job to produce nice images of ourselves and make them findable on Google,” she says. “When you Google images of girls, it's not surprising that we come up.” Put another way, SEO is now an occupational hazard.

However, if the products are being advertised on US-based platforms like Instagram or Amazon, recourse is possible, though somewhat complex. Using someone’s image for your commercial gain without their consent is illegal. “The platforms are supportive, but need to be communicated to in their format. If someone is sending an email that says ‘I want my image off here,’ it's not sufficient,” says Fred Dimyan, CEO of Potoo, a company that handles this issue for hundreds of major brands. “You have to note the specific infringement. Is it a trademark, or is it a registered trademark? That’s the level of granularity.” People without lawyers or platform experts on hand will find that difficult, but it’s not impossible.For now, platforms are not proactively dealing with image theft on behalf of influencers. It’s up to the individual to report it. But fortunately for them, they have legions of fans watching feeds on their behalf, and can publicize the misuse of their images when it happens. Sometimes it even helps. After talking with me, Dimyan agreed to help Kyselica approach Amazon about the advertisement for those clip-in bangs. Her images have been removed—for now.

#influencers #fashion blog #australia #streetwear blog

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ralphmorgan-blog1 · 7 years ago

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Laughing at ISIS to defeat them

Mumbai, India (CNN)Deep in the outskirts of Mumbai, India, tucked away in a small conference room among dozens of buildings known as Bollywood's "Film City," the US government is implementing a unique, and until now, unknown counterterrorism program aimed at diminishing the online influence of terror groups like ISIS - by making fun of them.

Standing next to a white board that reads "Fighting Terror With Comedy," Mathur is joined by East India Comedy, a wildly popular collective of stand-up comedians and sketch writers based in Mumbai, who, like the other comedians in attendance, have been invited by the US government to participate due to their influential social media accounts and online presence.

They screen and discuss East India Comedy's latest video sketch, "I Want to Quit ISIS," which spoofs one man's attempt to quit the terrorist group. It is set in a boring, run-of-the-mill business office, where the man's efforts to quit the terror group turn into a bureaucratic nightmare as he's forced to debate his boss on the tenets of Islam, all while artfully highlighting the contradictions of ISIS' ideology and methods.

"The basic premise was the corporatization of the terrorism process and just the idea of terrorists wearing blue shirts and ties and going to an office to get work done was what the idea was and I think just like every other brainstorming process it just changes and changes," Kunal Rao, a member of East India Comedy, said.

Uploaded to their YouTube and social media accounts just a few weeks earlier, the five and a half minute video had already been viewed well over one million times by their fans and followers in South Asia and despite tackling such a thorny subject, it was one of their most well-received sketches. Compare that to the number of views the State Department's previous videos garnered in an effort to dissuade those interested in joining ISIS and it's clear Mathur's approach has been more successful, at least in terms of getting eyeballs.

"There are a few government controlled YouTube accounts that put out anti-ISIS videos, the Global Engagement Center by the State Department has put out about 42 videos in the last couple of years but you know, they've gotten a combined total of about 55,000 views," Mathur said. Most of the State Department videos have hundreds or a few thousands of views, although there are some exceptions. One video that pairs extremely violent and graphic content with irony has close to a million views, but that video is also several years old.

"So, if you're a 16-year-old kid in Islamabad, what would you rather watch: an exciting action movie that looks like "Call of Duty" or a PSA from Uncle Sam? You would watch the action movie," says Mathur of videos put out by ISIS as opposed to the others from the government. "But what if we could fight back with our own entertaining videos that didn't look like government PSA's because they weren't made by the government, they were made by local, social media superstars that local people actually looked up to and enjoy watching."

The journey from stand-up comedians to counterterrorism advocates began the previous month when East India Comedy members received a mysterious phone call from their manager informing them that officials from the State Department had invited them to lunch at the U.S. Consulate and wanted to have a discussion about counterterrorism. "We had no idea why they were calling comedians," Rao said. "It was free lunch, that's why we went," recalled his colleague Azeem Banatwalla.

It was at this meeting that they met Mathur, who had pitched his idea to former counterterrorism colleagues in Washington, DC. Keen to see it implemented, they helped him find funding through the little known, and currently unfilled, Office of the Special Representative to the Muslim Community that existed during the Obama Administration. They're hoping the success of their video could lead to more videos in other countries through different government agencies.

Asked about the program a spokesman for the State Department offered this comment:

"The Department of State continues to engage with Muslim communities and leaders both domestically and internationally on key foreign policy priorities through bilateral, multilateral, and civil society outreach. We are in the process of exploring and evaluating ways to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency, including optimizing the impact of available resources."

"It was a really strange meeting because no one in that room ever thought they would ever be in a room with the other people," Mathur recalled. "I said you guys ought to be working with local social influencers in places like India, Pakistan, Indonesia, where there is a large Muslim populations and create videos that are actually cool and are entertaining that people would want to watch that also, kind of subtlety, counter the narrative of these extremist groups and reveal how absurd their ideologies are. And the State Department, to their credit, was open to this idea."

Home to approximately 175 million Muslims and a population that has the second most cell phone users and the fourth most internet users in the world, according to the CIA World Factbook, the cultural conditions in India made it an attractive location for a pilot program for the State Department to test this idea. But these same conditions are also what makes the Muslim population in India an attractive recruiting pool for ISIS, although Indian officials pride themselves on the country's pluralism and democratic values that they believe are perfect antidotes for violent extremism.

Having already recruited tens of thousands of young Muslims from dozens of countries around the world, ISIS dramatically transformed the strategy of terrorist propaganda. Long gone are the days of Osama bin Laden taping a message for the world to see three months after being filmed in a dimly lit cave surrounded by bodyguards with AK-47's casually propped up around the room.

And while the Muslim community in India has not yet experienced having hordes of its youth eager to go fight in Syria, like many other Asian or European countries, the bullet holes that still riddle the facade of the Leopold Cafe, one of the many targets of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that killed more than 150 people, are a constant reminder that India will never be immune from terrorist attacks.

ISIS knows their target audience and they appeal to it as any other company or brand would hocking their products in the West. By using slick imagery, fast-paced music, and action sequences, ISIS has been able to best government efforts to dissuade young people from joining.

"I thought, how are we, the country that invented Madison Avenue and Hollywood and arguably the greatest messaging machine in the history of all time - how are we losing, what is essentially a messaging battle to folks halfway across the world that are operating on a shoe sting budget. And so I think to counter what they are doing, we need to up our social media game," Mathur said.

And while Mathur had the US government on board, he anticipated a hard time getting an influential comedy group to publicly mock ISIS. "This is a risky ask, when you ask someone to make a video that criticizes ISIS or some other terrorist group, that's a lot to ask because you're asking them to put themselves out there and put themselves potentially in harm's way and no one wants to attract the ire of a terrorist group like ISIS," Mathur said.

"I never really found there to be a risk in it because I'm Muslim anyways," laughed Banatwalla. "And I've made all the terrorist jokes about having like four wives, and blowing yourself up, and haram, and not drinking, and pork and all of that and I've never really felt any problems."

So, to Mathur's surprise, none of the comedians had any reservations, despite knowing the inherent risk involved. Mathur even recalled one comedian explaining that, while they usually get approached by brands to sell soda or potato chips, they've never had the opportunity to do something as important as fighting terrorism.

"I didn't think what we were most afraid of was the terrorist implication but the fact that terrorism and religion is unfortunately connected. So we were most worried about was the pushback in terms of like 'why are you generalizing it in terms of this religion.' That's where we found it difficult but otherwise a joke is a joke is a joke," Rao explained. "But it's cool man, I think it's great that the government, some government is taking action and trying to do it it in a very different way and that's what we like about it," Rao said.

"I Want to Quit ISIS" was not the only video funded in India by the US government through Mathur's program, but the State Department was hesitant to discuss these types of programs further with one official saying, "we fund these types of things all around the world and we don't always want people to know about them."

While Mathur begins searching for funding to export his project to other countries with large Muslim populations, he's hopeful the Trump Administration will see the value in continuing this program. "I do think the new administration is uniquely poised to appreciate exactly what we're doing and that's because who better understands and who better appreciates how effective social media and entertainment can be in spreading a message than President Trump," Mathur said.