#like how does not having Instagram or any form of social media equates to having depression

[asmallcafethatslove]

There is so much to unpack from this message I got from an online uni friend (whom I have never met and we just reconnected after ages of not talking)

[acourtofwhatthefuck]

Random thought that I’m probably not articulating well, and maybe I’m deeping it too much, but I do find it a little alarming how much fanart I see that captures these characters’ beauty in the form of what is, essentially, Instagram/social media standard of beauty. Don’t get me wrong, everyone has the creative freedom to create what they want to create, and I can’t exactly say shit because I can barely draw a stick figure, but I’ve seen so many depictions of ACOTAR characters where they look like they’re pumped full of lip filler and other shit, where it looks like they have an Instagram filter on them, where there’s almost an uncanny look to them, and I find it interesting and, quite frankly, a little worrying, that that’s what so many people equate these characters’ stunning beauty to, as if they could not be beautiful any other way. We know that they’re supposed to have an ethereal, otherworldly beauty, because they’re ethereal, otherworldly beings, but it’s almost as if people have forgotten that there is beauty in things like freckles, and dimples, and different body types, and natural features and characteristics that make us who we are. It’s interesting that so many people translate that beauty into the carbon copy social media influencer standard of beauty, as if natural beauty isn’t quite enough. This isn’t everyone, of course — I’ve seen so much beautiful fanart that captures the beauty of these characters without turning them into instagram models. But there’s also a scary amount that does exactly that — maybe from younger members of the fandom? I don’t know. And I guess that has me wondering…is that all many people see beauty as now? Have we stopped appreciating the natural things about people that make them who they are? 🤔

[whatiwillsay]

blog/pod faq:

first go support abortion rights

hey guys my name is cam (or cameron, camcake, cammy, camcorder, camborghini etc) and i'm the producer of the what i will say podcast! i use she/her pronouns and i'm gay as hell. i'm from the southeast of the US and i'm here to talk pop culture, gossip, celebs, and offer a bit of sisterly advice should you so want it! this started out as a gaylor swift blog but now I'm open to talking about just about anything that piques my interest so let's jump in!

if you use any of my original theories or analysis please credit me by tagging me on whatever social media platform you're creating on

podcast links (can be found wherever you get your podcasts):

spotify

apple

google

patreon

cash app (for 911 pods)

follow me on tiktok!

follow me on instagram!

follow me on twitter!

1989 is about Dianna Agron masterdoc

Red is about Dianna Agron masterdoc

click keep reading for blog/pod info and overview!

community guidelines:

1. i used to call it dark shipping but let's just call it what it really is - harassment. if you read or interact with this blog you agree never to contact a celeb or person that we gossip about in regards to their personal life. you agree never to tweet at someone about how gay they secretly are or dm them on instagram about a suspected ship or comment on their pictures gossip about them or contact their friends and family. this is harassment and i know for a fact celebs sometimes see it and they do not like it. be respectful and keep fandom content such as gossip and shipping to the appropriate fandom spaces or you ruin it for the rest of us.

2. absolutely zero racism, homophobia, transphobia, or any other form of bigotry will be tolerated here.

3. understand that I am here in good faith. this means I am not here to troll people, to be petty, to be unfairly and overly critical, or to get into pedantic pissing matches based on semantics with people. i am generally, or I at least strive to be, a sweet person (a camcake even). i do not want to fight with you. if you want to have good faith debate I'm all for it but if you just don't like me, that's completely fine, but please just dni. we don't all have to get along it's a big internet there's room enough for all of us.

4. understand that disagreement and conflict do not equate to abuse. just because I may hold a different opinion than you do does not mean am harming or abusing you. when I answer questions with a disagreement please read my comments as if I have a calm and respectful tone because that's how I intend it. i'm not here to fight with you.

5. please do not seek out fandoms that we "disagree with" and try to "educate" or "convert them". for example if you think taylor swift is gay please do not seek out people who think she's straight or people that ship her with joe alwyn and try to tell them they ought to think otherwise. it just makes people dislike you and all of us and can lead to abuse of innocent people. another example would be if you think swiftgron is the superior ship to kaylor. that's all well and good but please leave kaylors alone. in general, let's all be cool and stay in our own lanes. 6. i consider this blog to be an R-rated space. act accordingly.

faq:

q. what can I anon or message you about?

a. basically anything but I can't promise I have an answer! i don't love to post anything explicitly sexual, mean-spirited, salacious, or critical + i don't like to talk about e.d.s, judgments on bodies, or granular level queer politics.

q. why haven't you answered my message yet?

a. i get dozens of questions and comments a day and sometimes it takes me a while to get through them all or i may be researching my answer! but there's a chance your message is repetitive or just not Discourse i want to host here and if that's the case it may never be answered. that's ok just try another topic!

q. i saw (or heard) you say something the other day and then the next day you said the exact opposite! what’s up with that?

a. i am here to have fun, goof around, but also to report as close to the truth as i can. if i get new information that contradicts my previous beliefs i will update them accordingly! i also love a thought experiment where i just try on believing something for a while. in general, this is a gossip blog and a very speculative space. please try to just go with the flow as we all try and sort out what we believe together. q. you offended me personally or made me mad or hurt my feelings! what can i do about this?

a. i’m sorry i promise i didn’t mean to! like i said in my guidelines i am here in good faith. if you want to have a calm and level-headed discussion with me about something i am doing or saying that’s bothering you i beg you to IM me or DM me and i will be happy to talk it out with you like adults! i am not here for fandom drama, or childish behavior. i am very open to feedback and constructive criticism and i want to get along with everyone and i want to make you personally feel welcomed in this space! q. why don’t you follow me?

a. this is a side blog i can’t follow anyone from this URL!

links of interest (to be expanded upon):

swiftgron masterpost

taylor's ok with speculation on her sexuality

songs about dianna

best "proof" of swiftgron

1989 is about dianna agron powerpoint

watch my swiftgron playlist on tiktok

link to my old faq

@tilynation for tily content

pro-tip: if you hit a dead link somewhere on this blog taking you to a blog called "swiftgron-get-married" with a missing post, simply replace the "swiftgron-get-married" bit of the URL with "whatiwillsay" and you'll be taken to the post properly!

also, i'm trying to get better with tags. you can filter "ot" to not see off-topic stuff, i will put advice under the advice tag, and if you see me guys missing a tag don't hesitate to let me know! my trigger/content warnings will be typed as such: "tw topic" so for example "tw abuse". i will also try and tag posts with sarcasm as "light-hearted" for those that have trouble discerning tone in text.

this faq is a work-in-progress 😉

[uncloseted]

I wish people weren’t so black & white in their view of skins. Yes teenagers do go through these issues and it needs representation but you can acknowledge that and also see the show does glamorise some aspects of serious topics. (Drug abuse, eating disorders) it’s kind of evident in people’s anonymous confessions that I see a lot. People seem to wish they were more like Effy/Cassie or feel like they missed out if they haven’t had drug filled teenhoods. The Cassie ones are sad because a lot of people seem to echo the statement that Cassie worsened their ED’a or encouraged it because they wanted to be like her.

So I think there's kind of a larger question in here that a lot of media has been struggling with recently- should media portray life as it is, or as it should be, and what should media do to protect those who may be vulnerable?

It might not be obvious to people who are newer fans of Skins, but Skins was incredibly groundbreaking and controversial when it came out. Up until then, shows that dealt with "teen issues" were basically like Degrassi; ones where "real life problems" were discussed, but the "bad thing" the character did was always punished, and there was always a lecture about why the Bad Thing was Bad and they shouldn't do it ever again. That rang hollow to a lot of people who had seen the people around them do Bad Things without any serious consequences. So when Skins came out and started showing things as they are (albeit in a heightened kind of way), it was huge. I don't think they knew what would happen, or really had any guidelines for what "safe depiction of dangerous activities" might be. They were trying to tell stories that were authentic to the teenagers they knew, and all the writing was informed by actual teenagers' experiences. I bring this up because in retrospect, I think it's very easy to say that they should have known better. But there wasn't really any point of comparison for them to learn from. They were going into this blind, and I think one can make the argument that mistakes were made because of it.

Back to the original question I posed, I'm honestly not sure if there's a good answer. Maybe we need both Skins and Degrassi, to show the ways in which things arguably should be (a person tries drugs, immediately gets in trouble, never does them again), and the ways things actually are (sometimes people try drugs, use them in party settings, and nothing particularly bad happens), to provide a balanced look at the issue. Maybe we should be trying to mimic real-life statistics as much as possible in our representation. We certainly need to be thoughtful about which stories are being told and which are being left out of the conversation, which in a weird way, brings me to my next point.

Eating disorders are an especially complicated thing to show on screen. By and large, media representation of people with eating disorders is a Thin, Pretty White Girl who just doesn't eat. Usually at some point, someone will tell them that Not Eating is Bad, or they'll faint, and then they'll recover and it's never talked about again.

Cassie was groundbreaking, because she was a Thin, Pretty White Girl who just didn't eat, but she talked about how she got out of eating, was shown putting weights in her pants to pass a weigh-in, and was hospitalized for her eating disorder (although we never really saw what that was like for her). Instead of telling her Not Eating is Bad, Allen told her You Want to Eat, Actually, and even after that, she struggled with her eating disorder before eventually recovering (I guess??) and then never talking about it again. There's not actually a huge difference between Cassie's portrayal of anorexia and the "very special episode" portrayal of anorexia that we were used to before that. But she was (and still is) controversial, because her portrayal shows some of the (less graphic) ins and outs of what life is actually like for someone struggling with an eating disorder.

My issue with the approach the Skins writers took with Cassie is that it's simultaneously too much and too little. It shows just enough of her life that some people tore it down for being an "instruction manual on how to have anorexia" (which, 🙄, in my opinion), but it didn't show enough of the grossness of the reality of actually having an eating disorder, which would help people to better understand what having an eating disorder actually looks and feels like. Other eating disorders, like bulimia, almost never get shown on TV, because there's not as pretty to show, and I think that's a real problem. We also rarely see men with eating disorders, or fat people with eating disorders (or even average weight people with eating disorders), or people of color with eating disorders, or LGBT people with eating disorders, which reinforces this idea that eating disorders are just anorexia, and anorexia is a Vain Straight White Girl Problem.

The reason I find the concern around Cassie's character a bit eye-rolly is that I think it's not an honest depiction of what's actually happening. I do absolutely believe that Cassie's character acted as a trigger for some people with eating disorders, but I think that's the key- some people with eating disorders. Cassie's character wasn't inspiring anorexia in perfectly mentally healthy teenagers as some sort of social contagion; she was impacting people who were already struggling.

And that's where this becomes complicated, because some people with eating disorders will purposely and compulsively seek out triggering material in order to further their disorder. I don't think removing Cassie from the equation would have actually made a difference in that regard, because triggering material is easily accessible and literally everywhere. I think the argument can be made that Skins should have added a trigger warning to episodes where Cassie is explicit about her disorder eating habits (and I do think they should have), but I think on the whole, she created more good than she did harm. She helped people who don't struggle with eating disorders to understand some of the internal logic of the disorder and to see what it's like to actually live with, and she helped people who do struggle see themselves represented in a way that they hadn't been before.

I guess I just think that instead of wringing our hands about what we can and can't show on TV, we'd be better served by adding warnings so that people can avoid potentially triggering content (and so that, in turn, that content can be more honest in its discussion of eating disorders), and providing support for people who are struggling so that they can recover. We should make it mandatory that any image that has been retouched must acknowledge it, and we should show more diverse body types in media and in advertising. But it's easier to wring out hands in a "what about the impressionable children" kind of way than it is to make systemic change to support people who are predisposed to mental illness. Instagram influencers are a much bigger culprit in shaping body image issues than Cassie ever could have been.

I feel kind of similarly about the drug usage of the Skins kids. Should Skins have shown teenagers doing illegal drugs at parties? Probably not. It did definitely make doing drugs look cool and fun. Did Skins need to show that kind of thing for realism, or to get its target demographic to tune in? Maybe. At the end of the day, I think teenagers would be (and are) doing illegal drugs with or without Skins' influence. It's not like we saw a giant spike in teenage drug usage from 2007-2012 that immediately disappeared after episode 10 of series 6 aired. Art imitates life and life imitates art. To me, the bigger questions here are, "what other factors (home life, peer pressure, curiosity, a need for novelty, anxiety, depression, etc) are leading teenagers to want to do drugs?", "if teenagers are going to do drugs, how can we make sure that they do drugs in the safest way possible," and "how do we help teenagers who struggle with addiction recover in an evidence-based way?"

I'm not trying to say that media plays no role in people's life choices and perceptions. We know that it absolutely does. But I think Skins as an individual TV show has a tiny, tiny impact, even if it's your favorite show and you watch it constantly, when compared to all the other factors that contribute to eating disorders and drug use. We absolutely need to be thoughtful about how we tell these stories, and we have to make sure that they're tailored to the audience who's watching them. But we also need to be thoughtful about our media consumption as a whole- which stories are being reinforced over and over again, which stories are entirely missing from the narrative, and which forms of media we're being exposed to all day, every day. We need to be thoughtful about the way we talk about and teach about difficult issues in our day to day lives. We need to have comprehensive support systems for people who are struggling. Those types of actions will do much more than taking even the most graphic portrayals of drug use or eating disorders off the air ever would.

[shinwhoohoo]

hi britt! i hope 2021 has been good to you so far! i just read that jinyoung was leaving link8? um wut? all this time i had believed it was *his* company that he started up before leaving wm. changes my opinions on him somewhat. i couldn't wait to read your thoughts lol i hope a shinwhoohoo word vomit is incoming. people in the replies were hoping for a bipo 10th anniversary ot5 reunion, now that baro's back from military service too.

hello~! ♡

Alright, time to dive right into this! (Bless you for wanting the word vomit!!)

So, yes, according to Tenasia who was the one to first drop the news (instead of LINK8... first of a few odd things) Jinyoung has ‘ended his contract with LINK8′... (in the midst of him still being in public service lol, another odd thing)... and is ‘seeking out a new agency while considering his comeback work’.

Let’s look at LINK8 and what’s been odd about the company. Jinyoung’s contract with WM initially expired around B1A4′s 7th anniversary, April 23rd, 2018. A 2 month extension was agreed upon due to a Japanese album release. LINK8 was established May 28th, 2018. Within a few weeks, Jinyoung had officially announced he was leaving WM, and soon followed up that he was signing with LINK8.

Why would Jinyoung, who at this point was pretty publicly well known as a composer and actor, sign with a company that literally was just created, with no other artists, no track record and no foundation? Jinyoung’s smart. He wants to get ahead. I truly don’t believe he’d take this risk, unless he had a personal stake in it. As in, he was a part of forming it. Now, I’ve never said he was like, the actual owner of LINK8-- but I have held the firm position that he was part of it’s inception. I think LINK8 was created with a small team that included Jinyoung, in the hopes of starting with him as their posterboy and eventually signing others and building themselves up into a small but functioning company. 

And I still hold this position. If Jinyoung wasn’t an essential part of this company and it’s founding, and just happened to solely be the first artist signed under LINK8, why wouldn’t the company have signed a new artist or done more work to stay active? If you look at their Instagram and Twitter, Jinyoung is literally the only one they ever posted about. And they haven’t kept active even with that while he’s been in the military. They only follow him. Their VLive channel is just as inactive. And the real kicker, the fact that their website has been down even before this news broke. When you go to their webpage, this is what you’ve been greeted with for some time now:

It basically says, “The site you are accessing has expired. If you are the site administrator, you can extend the service by going to Login>ManageMyService>ServiceExtension”. So... yeah. Doesn’t look too good.

What does this actually mean, though? Well, again, probably that Jinyoung wasn’t just an artist signed, but in fact an shareholder/co-founder/etc. however you want to put it. It just wouldn’t make much sense for LINK8 to completely throw in the towel, or at the very least, like I mentioned prior, not even try to recruit more artists.

And why did this all happen? If I had to guess, Jinyoung probably realized that he wasn’t getting anywhere with this (*coughs* his) company. Maybe he realized he bit off more than he could chew. That trying to start up a new company, in combination with crappy timing of getting your enlistment notice, thus rendering you inactive for the next year and a half, really isn’t an equation for success. He, along with the others who formed LINK8, I’m sure came to this agreement mutually. And, given the fact that no one has even kept the social media sites updated, were probably like, ‘eh shit, just let another news site report about it, there’s no point in us being the ones to break the news first’. This also makes sense then, why Jinyoung could just randomly ‘end’ his contract in February of 2020 when he first signed in June of 2018. Like, most contracts tend to go by years, ya know? Not a year and 8 months. No artist is walking in a signing a year and 8 month contract.

I’ll take a breather for a moment and play a bit of devil’s advocate. 

Could Jinyoung just have taken the big risk of signing with a (very) newly formed company, and just been their first artist? Sure, then again, this risk of not knowing how LINK8 will treat their artists seems to contradict the reasons why he left WM in the first place. But yeah, it’s a possibility. 

Could LINK8 just have folded because after they signed Jinyoung, they weren’t able to sign a single other person, and once Jinyoung was assigned public service, just decided to do nothing, make no moves, keep their SNS near silent, and eventually just go under, thus rendering Jinyoung’s contract obsolete? Sure, again this is a possibility, but why wouldn’t a company at least try to stay afloat? And let’s not even get into the fact that the SNS posts LINK8 did make when active, or the fanmeets they held, seemed to always shade WM. (Fly More, anyone?) Why would LINK8, if they were just a new company not ran by someone who left WM, feel the need to shade WM? They wouldn’t. Jinyoung would though. Finally, It also makes the statement that was published by Tenasia not completely accurate since he is said to be ending his contract by his own choice. But hey, Jinyoung’s lied before! (I swear I don’t mean to be shady when I type that lmaoo). 

Yeah, I just can’t get behind him not having a major role in LINK8; not being more than an ‘artist signed’.

Now, one last thing to address. The people on Twitter (from what I’ve seen) hoping this means B1A4 will reunite as 5 for their 10th anniversary... lol ok. Let me say, I would LOVE for this to happen. Really. I’d cry. But... we have to be realistic here. Not to be a broken record about this, but we all have seen how torn apart Shindeulchan were about Bayoung leaving, and more so, how they went about leaving. We’ve seen their tears, their anxieties and fears. We’ve also seen that since then, besides Baro liking some posts (which I’ll take any interaction crumbs I can lol) nothing else. Especially nothing from Jinyoung. I know the timing looks good, with Baro having finished his army service, and Jinyoung scheduled to finish his public service April 19th... but I mean c’mon. What do we realistically think the chances are of Shindeulchan just being completely over and OK with Bayoung (*coughs* Jinyoung) joining up with them, all together, in person, when we’ve seen nothing, to celebrate their 10th anniversary? Maybe Jinyoung will post something himself about the anniversary. But I wouldn’t expect more than that. And if you actually go to the source article of Tenasia, when it refers to Jinyoung’s ‘comeback work’ it’s talking about his acting. The rough translation I could gather is ‘[Jinyoung] is currently reviewing  his next work to resume his activities as an actor.’ Not to rejoin Bipo.

I always like to end these critical word vomits with an ‘anything’s possible~!!’ and yes, anything is. Maybe something good will come out of this. Maybe this will give the opportunity for the boys to meet up and make amends. I hope so, that’d be nice. But in the meantime, let’s just take this as Jinyoung basically realizing that starting in a new company, if not helping to start the company itself, is hard work. That maybe his critiques and reasons for just peacing out of WM the way he did were a bit out of line. 

Hindsight is always 20/20 though.

[studiopeachz]

Women Empowerment Research

What is women empowerment?

“Women's empowerment is the process of empowering women. It may be defined in several ways, including accepting women's viewpoints or making an effort to seek them, raising the status of women through education, awareness, literacy, and training” Empowering women is a part of a person’s well being to enable them to feel ‘powerful’ in their own way. Being powerful can mean a lot of things and can come from philosophy, wisdom, talents, work ethic, and so much more that helps build a person’s character.  

What is the history of Feminism and Women Empowerment in New Zealand?

https://theconversation.com/why-new-zealand-was-the-first-country-where-women-won-the-right-to-vote-103219 

125 years ago today Aotearoa New Zealand became the first country in the world to grant all women the right to vote. The event was part of an ongoing international movement for women to exit from an inferior position in society and to enjoy equal rights with men. Many supported universal male suffrage and a less rigid class structure, enlightened race relations and humanitarianism that also extended to improving women’s lives. These liberal aspirations towards societal equality contributed to the 1893 women’s suffrage victory.

At the end of the 19th century, feminists in New Zealand had a long list of demands. It included equal pay, prevention of violence against women, economic independence for women, old age pensions and reform of marriage, divorce, health and education – and peace and justice for all.

During the 1880s, depression and its accompanying poverty, sexual licence and drunken disorder further enhanced women’s value as settling maternal figures.

New Zealand gained much strength from an international feminist movement. Women were riding a first feminist wave that, most often grounded in their biological difference as life givers and carers, cast them as moral citizens. With hindsight, the feminist movement can be implicated as an agent of colonisation, but it did support votes for Māori women. Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia presented a motion to the newly formed Māori parliament to allow women to vote and sit in it.

What does women empowerment mean to Gen Z?

https://www.thinkhousehq.com/insights/bodies-blood-brilliance-gen-z-feminism 

“Everyone should be feminist, because it’s about equality. It’s not about telling women what they should or shouldn’t do, if someone wants to wear make up then they can, and if they don’t want to wear make up then they don’t have to. But there is an issue with many self-proclaimed feminist being gatekeepers. My friends and I think that TERFs, particularly, are a major issue. Feminism is also about helping men, helping them express their emotions and not have to be the breadwinners of a family and destroying toxic masculinity.” - Grace, 18

From actresses to survivors, artists to poets, and models to musicians, what Gen Z feminist icons all have in common is that they channel their creativity expertly to tell their stories, while adopting an unapologetic activist approach to opening conversation and fighting for justice, change and equality.

Representation in popular feminism today takes many forms. It’s about equal representation in society, with regard to industry, politics and policy making and equal representation in culture. Initiatives like Her Story aim to raise the profile of women’s stories, as a way to combat the global phenomenon of amnesia of women’s stories in history and more contemporary times.

Gen Z are talking more openly about vaginas, periods, miscarriages, body hair, the lot. This celebration is not only about the differences between women’s personal experiences, but also of the distinctive traits all women hold. The representation particular feminine traits and the unique brilliance of women comes to the fore in conversation here: 

“While equality is important, to me it’s more about valuing the traits that a woman has. Creating more feminine, comfortable environments could bring about a positive change in different ways.”- Alwyn, 25.

Ultimately, what these trends tell us about feminism today, is that young women today are radical about owning who they are and being recognized accurately by wider society. They are unashamedly channeling their intelligence, digital currency, agency and creative skill, with purpose, to shout louder and more powerfully as a group than ever before.

https://musebycl.io/7-ways-empowering-gen-z-girls-change-world 

These girls—especially those born from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s—have the ambition, confidence and desire to make a difference in the world. So much so that they've inspired me to take the leap from communicating to women to making a real cultural change.

Having other strong, supportive women to look up to will be a motivator to these girls when they enter the workforce. With initiatives like the #SeeHer movement, the advertising industry is already making an effort to accurately portray women in media, and hopefully strong women will continue to take the spotlight.

Individuality is important to Gen Z, so encouraging them to pursue their passions is vital. Recognizing that their lives are multifaceted and giving them the tools to explore and grow will help inspire them both at work and beyond.

https://psmag.com/ideas/why-generation-z-is-embracing-feminism 

In many cultural contexts, Generation Z appears to be embracing feminism as a positive thing, demonstrating confidence in the power of activism, particularly via social media.

Malala Yousafzai, or 18-year-old Emma González, who's at the heart of the #NeverAgain movement protesting gun violence in the U.S.,

Online feminist campaigns such as #everydaysexism, #MeToo, and #TimesUp all draw energy from the new consciousness among this generation.

How is women empowerment done/displayed in a Gen Z way? - consider what inspired you to do a women empowerment campaign.

“HOT GIRL SUMMER”

https://time.com/5632924/hot-girl-summer-meme-explained/ 

If you’ve logged onto Twitter or swiped through your Instagram at any point this summer, you’ve definitely seen a post declaring it’s a hot girl summer. The now-ubiquitous phrase, a call to live your most confident and unapologetic life, was coined in the early months of the season by Houston rapper Megan Thee Stallion, whose colorful monikers for herself also include “the H-Town Hottie” and “Hot Girl Meg.”

Contrary to what one might assume when hearing “hot girl,” the lifestyle is not focused on aspiring towards conventional beauty or influencer clout. Instead, it’s an embrace of confidence at its most essential: loving who you are and doing what you want, without caring what others think.

hot girl summer is for “women — and men — having a good-a– time, hyping up your friends, doing you and not giving a damn what anybody has to say about it.”

(the hashtag #hotgirlsummer has been used over 170k times on Instagram, while the hot girl summer has been used on Twitter a whopping 2 million times over the past month) distills an affinity, exhibited by many women in 2019, towards body positivity and self-affirmation. Hot girl summer, a hip-hop feminist manifesto, taps into these movements from many angles, championing confidence, sensuality and fun.

Tacho explained why she embraced hot girl summer to TIME thusly: “It’s a positive movement! Having a Hot Girl Summer is all about being the best version of yourself and doing what you want to do. It’s all about having fun.”

And as with most things on the Internet, it’s attracted its fair share of controversy. Although Megan clearly stated that hot girl summer is gender neutral, some trolls on the Internet were determined to make hot girl summer a battle of the sexes, pitting it against a “hot boy summer” or a “city boy summer,” the latter being a play on the rap group the City Girls (the duo is known for their fierce, take-no-prisoners approach to love and sex in their music).

“I CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW, I’M DOING HOT GIRL SH*T”

https://www.buzzfeed.com/andriamoore/doing-hot-girl-sht-tiktok-trend 

Megan Thee Stallion gifted us the slogan of a lifetime when she broke onto the music scene and coined the phrase, "real hot girl sh*t."

If you don't know, the phrase has basically become a battle cry for female empowerment.

But the latest TikTok trend is putting a hilarious twist on that sense of empowerment. People are uploading videos of themselves doing... well, things that aren't typically in the realm of "hot girl sh*t"— like shaving your stomach.

If anything, this trend has only further increased the purpose of the hot girl anthem: feeling proud and confident with who you are already.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3v873/hot-girl-shit-meme-megan-thee-stallion-tiktok 

Over the past couple of months, “hot girl shit” has swept through social media like a heat wave. These videos feature people, mostly those who identify as women, embracing their most everyday, banal moments—shaving their upper lips, putting on face packs, savouring the last few puffs of a joint, involved in an intense gaming sesh or simply taking their 23rd nap in the day—under the guise of doing something that could be considered hot, a term that generally refers to the sexual attractiveness of a person.

But what they may lack in logical reasoning, they make up for in deeper meaning: letting the world know that being “hot” isn’t just equated to someone’s physical appearance anymore. That being hot is a mentality, a mindset that involves extra dollops of extreme self-confidence, and something to be found inherently within us rather than something you’re blessed at birth with or what your cosmetic surgeon helped you achieve.

TikToking and Reels-ing our way to chipping away centuries of female objectification and sexism, prompted by the male-dominated industry ideal of how women should look and behave to “qualify” as hot.

“This trend proves that ‘hot girl shit’ lies on a spectrum, and is ultimately just about feeling confident,” Uchenna, the first known creator of this meme format, who goes by her screen moniker @makeupbychelseax, told VICE. The young creator sees the trend as a way to reclaim the identity of what a “hot” girl should be, after centuries of the concept hanging on the hinges of the male gaze.

Mulvey theorises that essentially the male gaze hypersexualises women, reducing them to objects of attraction for the male lead. The male gaze, which has been dominant throughout the history of pop culture, ultimately drives the perception of what the ideal woman should look like.

Over decades of women being seen through a stereotypical lens in pop culture and art, mostly crafted by heterosexual men, the male gaze has also conditioned many young women who consume this content to strive to achieve the same standards of the perfect on-screen female lead.

“The stereotypical idea of the ‘hot girl’ would be a tall, skinny, fair girl with big boobs,” Shreemi Verma, a film critic and marketing professional told VICE.

“hot” girl is a socially conditioned prototype, a fantasy fuelled by the lack of female filmmakers and critics in the mainstream industry. so many of us connected with this meme trend is because of how real it was.

Verma stressed that by showing the raw reality behind what can be considered hot, this trend became a relatable way for women to challenge the on-screen stereotype. the idea of “hot” continues to evolve into a more empathetic, all-encompassing ideal. Supriya Banerjee, a 24-year-old social researcher based in the Netherlands, told VICE. It normalizes simple things like art, dance or cooking meals for children as things a hot girl does.” For Banerjee, the trend has a simple underlying message: that everything women do can be considered hot girl shit.

What does Gen Z women empowerment suggest?

Feminism and female empowerment within Generation Z shares the idea of positive cultural change in female stereotypes through technology and social media which can be easily flowed into the mainstream of society and news. Gen Z is all about individuality, authenticity, and diversity and is always up to challenge  stereotypes and break the norms unapologetically in order to be truly happy because Gen Z is passionate about wellbeing and mental health. Gen Z sets out trends on social media to spread messages and ideas that influence other social media users. Overall, Gen Z’s way of breaking female stereotypes is through trends, social media, music, and many more types of media just to get the word out.

[miaswetnambcu]

Brand Group Meeting 2

Our second brand meeting was based around finalising our original ideas as well as establishing a customer profile.

Our first point was to decide a name for our brand. Our first idea being the name ‘Sensuell’ which means voluptuous in Norwegian. As the word would be pronounced as the English word ‘sensual’, we thought it would work as a double meaning for the brand name. However, our brand does not hold any link to Norway and it would not make sense to use a Norwegian word for the name of our brand. 

Our second idea was Curvé. The idea was derived from the word curve and as our products are aimed at curvy women, we though it would be fitting. We added the accent on the end of the ‘e’ so that it is pronounced as ‘curvay’, which makes it sound more luxurious. Also, the word curve on its own is not very interesting and wouldn’t draw people into our brand. 

We decided to do a mood board surrounding the colours we are going to use for our products. Our initial idea was black with some nude shades as well. Both of these compliment each other and will work for many different skin tones for our customer. For a statement piece, we chose a lilac colour. We chose this colour as it is a soft colour that will flatter most body types and skin tones, as well as it being a very wearable colour.

Our design inspiration was found on plus-size models that showcase different styles of clothing. We decided our outfit ideas were going to consist of one dress, one skirt and top co-ord and one trousers, top and blazer set. The products from the sets would be able to buy separately, as well as being able to choose the sizes for each individual item if they were to be bought as the set. Figure-hugging silhouettes is the main idea, with some corset style elements into the garments. 

Our social media is based around the same colour theme as our products, which is black, nudes and lilac. The Instagram posts will be centered around plus-size women with various body shapes. This is to ensure that all types of plus-size people are included in our brand and so that each customer is able to find someone showcasing the same body type as them on our page. This should make the customer feel more included and accepted into the brand to improve our customer engagement. 

Once we had established these elements, we decided to create a customer profile. We chose to do this to ensure we are aware of what our customers likes and dislikes and can hopefully portray this through out brand outcomes. 

The ideal customer we created was 22 year old woman, either a post-graduate or in her last year of uni. The customer would live in the main part of a city such as Manchester or Liverpool. She is a size 18 and is very active on her social media by constantly checking her timelines and liking other people’s posts. She would be likely to follow some sort of plus-sized model such as Ashley Graham, as well as other influencers such as Kylie Jenner or Molly-Mae. We decided she would most likely follow these possibly look for tips for make-up and hair. In contrast, she may follow these people as she would like to look or dress like them, but cannot find the right clothes to do so. This is where our brand is needed, as it would give people like her the opportunity to wear clothes like Kylie Jenner to make her feel just as beautiful.

To look further into customers and a current need for our brand, we decided to create a survey to look into these aspects. 

The first question on the survey was for the person to state their age. The responses ranged from 17- 27 year olds, which is close of our age range of 20-30 year olds. This indicated the results would be in significant relation to our brand. 

The second question was centered around people’s plans when we are out of lockdown. 27.7% said a restaurant or pub and 23.1% said they would go to a bar or club. This equates to just under 50% of people on the quiz saying they would go to the places where our clothing range is most likely to be seen. This idicates that there is a need for our brand in the near future. However, this question was slightly misleading as our brand is for when we are out of the current pandemic, not lockdown. This lead to there being such a high percentage saying they would stay home. If we were to do this quiz again, we would have to alter this question to be more specific. 

Our next question posed as to whether the person would buy new clothes for this. It is split quite evenly on both sides. This may reflect the previous question as around 50% said they would go to a bar or a pub. Those 50% would most likely say yes to this question, with the other 50% saying no.

The next question was based around the brands that people tend to shop at. 23 people said ASOS and 8 said Zara. Pretty Little Thing was said 7 times, with House of CB and Missguided mentioned 3 times each. Most of these brands have a similar price range, which could help us to asses the market for price. ASOS has multiple brands on their platform so their price range varies between each one. House of CB sits slightly higher on the price range than other like Pretty Little Thing and Missguided.

The people or things that influence people’s fashion choices was asked in the next question. 27 people stated some form of social media, such as Instagram and Tik Tok. Friends was the second most popular with 5 people stating it, as well as catwalk fashion being said by 2 people. This gives us insight as to how to promote our brand, with social media being the obvious choice.

Our next question was based around the price range that people would pay for a dress. We decided to include this in the survey as it would give us a rough margin as to how much people will pay. 54% said £0-£30, with £28.6% saying £30-£50. This indicates that 82.6% of people in this survey would only pay up to £50. This is something we will have to take into consideration when planning our pricing for our products. 

The last question on the survey asked what the person would wear on a ‘night-out’. 49.2% said jeans and a nice top, with 9.2% saying a dress and 7.7% saying a co-ord. This shows that there is a market for the products that we decided to make.

After the meeting, I decided to interview someone who was previously plus-size to see if our brand is needed in the market. Paige was a size 20 when she was age 20. She displayed her stress to me regarding her weight and the clothing that was available to her at that time.

I explained our brand identity to her, which is to make plus-size women feel beautiful and confident in their bodies. I added that our brand is a party/eveningwear brand for plus-size women with products such as dresses and co-ords. After I explained our brand to her, she said that she “needed a brand like that” when she was that size.

According to Paige, the clothing that was available to her was not made for her age and were made for people upwards of 40. With her only being age 20, the clothes were obviously not her style and would not have made her feel confident when wearing them. She showed me a picture of her at a party where she wore a blue leopard print dress. The dress was obviously not something that a 20 year old would usually wear to a party as the dress seemed to be made of a thick cotton and was not very flattering on her figure. Although she could not remember where she got the dress from, she stated that it was not from a standard high street store like New Look or H&M. She said it was more likely to be from a brand like Evans. Evans is a plus-size clothing brand in the UK that stocks sizes from 14-32. The standard customer for Evans would be women 50+, which Paige is not part of. The dress she wore to the party did not make her feel beautiful or confident and she even felt the need to wear two pairs of fat pants and a pair of shaping tights underneath the dress. She said that even though she wore these shaping garments underneath, she still did not feel confident in the dress and though that it did flatter her figure. 

The way she described this is exactly why we wanted to create a plus-size partywear brand. She was unable to find any dress that she thought was flattering on her body, and even the dress she chose to wear did not make her feel beautiful and confident. Our brand is centered around making plus-size women feel empowered and confident enough in themselves to wear our garments. People like Paige are exactly the target market we are looking for and this interview reinforces the fact that a brand like ours is needed in the fashion industry. 

Paige eventually lost a lot of weight and dropped from a size 20 to a size 10. She stated that even though she has lost a lot of weight, she still does not feel confident in her body. She said that this was because she was unable to build that confidence when she was younger as the clothes that were available to her did not make her feel good about herself. Paige could not build her confidence up when most people do as she did not have the resources to do so, and had to resort to feeling uncomfortable in any piece of clothing she wore. Although clothing brand make clothes in her size, they did not make clothes for her size, which led to them being unflattering on her body. The picture above shows this, as although the clothes do physically fit on her body, they were not made for the structure of her body, leading to the proportions seen on the top and the shorts not fitting as well on her body as it would on a smaller sized person. As our products will be made to fit a curvy body, this will not be a problem for our customers.

[thepermanentrainpress]

EVERYBODY LOVES FIN: EPISODE 19

Canucks Twitter has never been more passionate, divisive and heavily opinionated; let’s go with an all-encompassing—vibrant. Any fan base is a community of people with thoughts to share, and luckily for others, content to create for a wider audience. I have to admit, I’ve been largely on the outside of Canucks Twitter, merely because I tend to direct my opinions to a TV screen rather than on social media. That being said, lately my sister, Pass it to Bulis contributor and Botchford Project recipient, Natalie Hoy, has been encouraging me to listen to more Canucks-centric podcasts. It’s been a fun time.

2010s: Does Vancouver really need two all-sports radio stations? 2020s: Does Vancouver really need 741 Canucks podcasts?

— Jyrki21 (@Jyrki21)

June 9, 2020

The world of ‘audio blogging’ has only grown over the past few years. Listeners are able to multi-task - exercising, cooking, cleaning, driving or on public transit - while plugged in to a new episode on practically any personal device. It’s a form of entertainment, often interactive, and a perfect creative outlet for amateur (and experienced) broadcasters looking for a new project. There is no shortage of podcasts courtesy of Canucks Twitter, a testament to the commitment and drive of fans, and the accessibility of the art form. With the Qualifying Round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs just about underway, there is much to be talked about. Let’s take a look at what’s out there.1

C4 Podcast

Founded: July 2013

Players: Chris Golden (@lyteforce), Anna Forsyth (@aforsyth03),Matt Lee (@mattlee_61)

Premise: The longest-running, active Canucks podcast (birthed from Canucks Hockey Blog) has been on-air for 7 years! Originally co-hosted by Chris and parody song creator Clay Imoo (@CanuckClay), the podcast offers commentary about current Canucks and NHL affairs, prospects, expectations, reminiscing on the team’s past (memories of the retired taco lover Eddie Lack and past playoff runs), and features interviews with guests. This past season, they’ve had Patrick Johnston (The Province), Satiar Shah (Sportsnet 650), Cam Robinson (Elite Prospects, Dobber Prospects) and Dan Murphy (Sportsnet) in the hot seat.

Twitter | Patreon | Discord | Listen

In the "longest-running" #Canucks #PodcastLikeThat, @risingaction joins @aforsyth03 @lyteforce & @mattlee_61 to talk about the summer training camp so far, how the Canucks match against the Wild, Rathbone, Tryamkin and so much more! https://t.co/ACreWPcPWC

— #PodcastLikeThat (@TheC4Podcast)

July 21, 2020

Area 51

Founded: December 2019 (relaunch)

Players: Sean Warren (@SeanyeWest234), Samantha (@samanthacp_), Malcolm Ert (@malcolmert), Bradley Thomas (@bradthomas_96), Eric (@breakawayeric), Bailey Broadbent (@baileybroadcast)

Premise: Area 51 celebrated a relaunch last December since their inception in July 2019, and in May welcomed a team to join host Sean Warren. Aside from their cool, alien conspiracy branding, at the mic they cover a broad range of hockey talk with notable guests (writers and broadcasters in the media, content creators, musicians, WHL players, fellow blog/podcast owners, Canucks Autism Network). I love that they’ve started to cover important topics beyond the gameplay, like anti-racism, inclusivity, and diversity in sports, and have actively sought out the guests to do so.

Twitter | Instagram | Listen

HERE WE GO! @CanuckClay enters A51 in GLCPC to discuss: -Sports debates -Being a hockey media creator -Plan a Vegas trip -Drinking and Parenting tips And complete the famous Guest Shootout! Find out whether Clay is responsible for the Luongo trade!https://t.co/Zg629tWvLG

— Area 51 Hockey Podcast (@Area51Hockey)

July 24, 2020

Cap Space Wins Cups

Founded: February 2020

Players: Hassan Ahmed (@_hassanahmed9), Ahsan Ahmed (@ace103196), Hussain Ahmed (@hussain11ahmed)

Premise: The newly formed podcast has a light, humorous tone - evident by their inaugural episode introduction about their lack of social media followers. They cover quick hits of the Canucks week, roster situations, hockey culture, and of course, cap space. They’ve hosted fellow podcast hosts and media (Satiar Shah, J.D. Burke, Matthew Sekeres, Jeff Paterson), and even a fellow Burnaby kid, Massimo Rizzo. Rizzo was a 2019 Carolina Hurricanes draft pick. It’s clear they have a lot more to share, including takes in on their corresponding blog – see: How the Canucks Can Acquire Dougie Hamilton & Build a Cup Contender. I’ll read anything related to Dougie Hamilton.

Twitter | Instagram | Listen

🚨🚨Another HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT the boys have their own website 🚨🚨https://t.co/JfQXqiXcz2, the site has all the podcast epidoes and links to all their social media. The boys have also started blogging and have 2 big article out already! It’s 100% free sign up on the site to L&C!

— Cap Space Wins Cups Podcast (@capspacecups)

June 21, 2020

The Broadscast

Founded: July 2020

Players: Vanessa Jang (@vanessajang), Georgia Twiss (@georgiatwiss), Samantha (@samanthacp_), Mallory (@sports_lesbian), Danielle Huntley (@danihuntley)

Premise: Your ‘local hockey girl gang’ talks Canucks, sports culture, and soap operas. All 5 hosts have a significant following on Twitter and are bold and uncompromising, which makes for great statements and table chatter. This was written with only their Teaser episode released, but you can expect no shortage of pop culture references, fashion discussion, NHL wives and girlfriends (WAG) and pet content, along with team analysis. It’s trailblazing for a group of females in Vancouver to start their own podcast that’s hockey-focused, meant to be a casual chat amongst friends. They know the team, know their media, can gossip, and are having fun with it.

Twitter | Instagram | Listen

The Broadscast is officially LIVE!! 🎙 Just 5 girls and some light-hearted hockey talk with a soap opera twist. Catch our teaser episode NOW on your podcast medium of choice!https://t.co/91KE8LnOJE pic.twitter.com/XH0fIfhmHy

— The Broadscast (@BroadscastPod)

July 27, 2020

PUCKS ON NET

Founded: September 2013

Players: Ryan Schaap (@schaaptop), Geeta Reddy (@geetanjalireddy), Paul McLellan (@McLellanPaul), Dave McPhail (@PucksOnDave)

Premise: The group of 4 has created a casual, honest atmosphere with their roundtable conversation. They’re good friends, which equates to great camaraderie. They run a ‘contradictory’ fantasy hockey league and don’t talk ‘fancy stats’ (while still being very knowledgeable). I think they’re engaged with their listeners, and relatable as human beings amongst their talk of Tim Hortons NHL trading cards, player safety, current signings and acquisitions, and Green Day at the All-Star Game. Reaching 7 years of consistent hockey talk and recapping the team’s evolution is a feat in its own.

Twitter | Patreon | Instagram | Listen

And on Sunday, Ryan sat down with his old man for Father's Day to talk about growing up playing minor hockey in Calgary, bonding over the Vancouver #Canucks and even his words of wisdom when it comes to talking to your kids about drugs.https://t.co/BaQFM53Yws

— PUCKS ON NET (@Pucksonnetca)

June 24, 2020

The Canucks Conversation

Founded: November 2018

Players: Chris Faber (@ChrisFaber39), David Quadrelli (@Quadrelli)

Premise: Faber was joined by Quads in 2020, and the pair has perhaps the most praised local podcast so far. They’re both BCIT Radio Arts and Entertainment students (and writers for CanucksArmy), and their dedication, preparedness, branding and reporting level are top notch. They break down topics with great chemistry and perception - roster moves, Nikita Tryamkin, Olli Juolevi, and the Judd Brackett situation. Some of their notable guests include Utica Comets Kole Lind and Brogan Rafferty, and ‘bionic’ Finn Sami Salo.

Twitter | Patreon | Instagram | Listen

🎉SURPRISE! 🎉 Episode 91: “Jake Jets out of the lineup” ft.@CraigJButton We dropped our episode early! Craig Button stops by to chat about the NHL and #Canucks prospects. We breakdown the exhibition game against the Jets & some exciting news at the end!https://t.co/NMWBVOU7ko

— Canucks Conversation Podcast (@CanucksConvo)

July 30, 2020

Canucks & Pucks

Founded: April 2019

Players: Matthew Zator (@MatthewZatorSC)

Premise: Matthew Zator, writer for The Hockey Writers and Hockey Ops Director at Overtime Heroics, made a return to the airwaves this past July (after a lengthy regular season hiatus). Since getting back up and running, it’s full steam ahead – Zator has been joined by contributors from The Hockey Writers, The Canuck Way, college hockey newsletter Fresh Ice, and fellow podcast hosts. He has good insight and as a writer who goes into depth about NHL draft picks, the Vancouver Giants, and both the Nucks’ positives and negatives in his work, it gets noticeably transferred to the on-air conversation.

Twitter | Listen

🚨 NEW EPISODE 🚨 Episode 7 ft @CanuckClay, @JDsays2much, and @BaileyAJohnson_! - #Canucks & #mnwild with Jack & Clay - Will Lockwood and Quinn Hughes with Bailey - The Mailbag segment debuts and of course news from the #NHL and @TheHockeyWriter! #THW https://t.co/lW9FQms35P

— Canucks & Pucks Podcast 🏒🎙️ (@CanucksPucks)

July 28, 2020

Canucks Speakeasy

Founded: August 2019

Players: Pete Edwards (@pete_gas), Doug (@dougvenn)

Premise: Pete and Doug are 2 “mildly educated Canucks die-hards” who chat about current team news and trending topics. They’ve covered trade talk, the Collective Bargaining Agreement, prospects at the World Juniors, scouting, and the BLM movement. They’re occasionally joined by guests including podcast friends, and fellow fans/Tweeters Chris Conte, Jenna Fabulous and Ray Hatt.

Twitter | Listen

We're back with Episode 37: Powderkeg. Playoffs, play-ins, Judd and BLM are all discussed. Give'r a listen!https://t.co/dwoEQVNudThttps://t.co/7ZSogAjWsuhttps://t.co/r5HqX26czU pic.twitter.com/QKScnR9Q6G

— Canucks Speakeasy (@CanucksSpeak)

June 4, 2020

The LarschCast

Founded: June 2019

Players: Tej Dhaliwal (@DrTejDhaliwal), Sat Oberoi (@SatOberoi), Nav Dosanjh (@NavDosanjh1983), Ryan Cassels (@cassels_music)

Premise: The Larschcasters are known for their entertaining banter and debates, mostly on hockey and a little NFL. They’ve picked the minds of seasoned media (Scott Oake, James Duthie, Joey Kenward), legendary broadcaster Jim Robson, and former Canucks Kirk McLean, Chris Higgins and Shane O’Brien. They’ve been generating healthy content during the pandemic, including a spirited debate with Minnesota Wild podcast hosts, discussing media personnel moves, prospects, NHL Award contenders, and the toxicity in the Vancouver Canucks market. In June, they released a special with hockey coach/trainer Jennifer Chefero, sharing her story facing sexual abuse and harassment in her career, while candidly discussing women’s rights and sports culture.

Twitter | Facebook | Listen

Episode 61 ft. @hustlerama!#NHLJets centric epi, with an outlook of the Jets vs #flames. Not a lot of love for Calgary in this one😬. Also insights into the #nhlbubble, before ending with #Canucks talk & Rapid Larsch! 🍎:https://t.co/vZ2lyQ9zoO Spotify: https://t.co/XdV1y3ls7V

— The LarschCast (@larschcast)

July 29, 2020

The PP1 Podcast

Founded: October 2019

Players: Brayden Ursel (@bkursel23), Ted (@tee3ree), Ryan Hank (@always90four)

Premise: A tagline like “three guys from Kelowna bringing the heat and spitting the takes” doesn’t need further explanation. Appearing at the beginning of this season, the podcast (which features writers from The Canuck Way and CanucksArmy) has had some nice guests like the Canucks inaugural captain Orland Kurtenbach, retired centre and current Kelowna Rockets Assistant Coach Vern Fiddler, and Paul “Biznasty” Bissonnette. They’ve been nominated for Kelowna Now’s Best Local Podcast, and have a ‘Dudes and Guys’ segment where they pit 2 players against one another and talk it out (criteria is debatable).

Twitter | Listen

Episode 46: Bouncy Castles, Boeser Bombshells, & Backchecking w/ @mattsekeres. We chat Boeser rumours, cap crunch, Rathbone, Tryamkin, Markstrom, Sundin vs. Vanek, the best cold-open since Nikolay Goldobin, and how you can win a #Canucks jersey. https://t.co/KouGJr6GKH

— The PP1 PODCAST (@ThePP1Podcast)

July 15, 2020

The SCT Show

Founded: September 2018

Players: Nam Mann (@CanuckAgent007), Tanbir Rana (@TRana87)

Premise: SCT is Strictly Canucks Talk. Aside from reminiscing about ‘where were you when’ pivotal moments in franchise history occurred and the regular shop talk of performance and #NamStats, they draw in guests to talk about trade value (The Athletic’s Harman Dayal) and stickhandling (specialist/trainer Pavel Barber). They’ve also hosted local defenceman and last year’s 4th overall draft pick Bowen Byram, and hockey analyst/retired winger Anson Carter for a chat about the pressure of the market in Vancouver and the Sedins. Like any good heated debate, there are also trade and Team Tank vs Playoffs scenarios.

Twitter | Listen

.@CanuckAgent007 has a proposal to get Loui Eriksson off the #Canucks books 🤔 EP 14 - Links below ⬇️ 🍎 https://t.co/Z9snNdSuI1 📱 https://t.co/AJILh0IaWJ pic.twitter.com/LZblDE8GLW

— The SCT Show (@SCTShow)

July 17, 2020

Johnny Canuck Talk

Founded: August 2019

Players: Adrian J. Haug (@adrianjhaug), Roy Styles (@roy_styles)

Premise: Takes from 2 arm chair GM’s, the pair discuss a wide variety of topics like losing streaks, hockey safety, report cards, line-ups, and trade deadline. They’ve also shared an insightful chat with Harman Dayal (The Athletic) about his career and the late and great Jason Botchford. It’s laid-back and conversational, with mentions of farmers’ tans, celebrating birthdays during quarantine, and the school system strung across introductions. What’s cool is they record the podcast from near and far away places – Kamloops, BC and Germany (!).

Twitter | Listen

(1) Episode 37 is uploading now! @roy_styles and I talk #Canucks #hockey and @Canucks topics, issues, news, etc. We also talk about the incredible impact our Jim Carey impressions have had on our wives. Yikes. Featuring tweets from: @Canuckgirl20 @TSN1040 @DanRiccio650 pic.twitter.com/6oA7mZh6jb

— Johnny Canuck Talk (@JohnnyCanuckPod)

June 28, 2020

1 This list is not exhaustive, but there is something for everyone and I hope you find your Canucks fix. There can be an argument made that the podcast market is oversaturated, but I like to see it as an opportunity for any fan or audio bird to let their voice be heard! So, don’t be negative about it.

Posted by: Chloe Hoy

[misskaygray-blog]

Model, producer and co-creator

Model, producer and co-creator of YouTube channel ComeCurious, Reed is essentially the physical embodiment of sex positivity, which she defines as trying to make people feel like what theyre doing and what theyre into isnt wrong, its normal and its absolutely fine. Shes a huge advocate for removing stigma and taboos around sex, and we caught up with her to learn more about webcamming, a line of sex work that is seldom talked about. That wasn't always the case. Before she started stripping — both online and off — Domino was a suit: working at a Fortune 500 company as a graphic designer. She quit the firm out of boredom in 2010, and now mainly flexes her aesthetic skills to push her online sex shows. Unlike most cam girls, Domino isn't affiliated with a network like LiveJasmin. She's completely independent, streaming strip and fetish sex shows from her home studio, straight from a website she built herself. Stripping at a local joint came first, but after breaking her wrist, Domino segued away from brick and mortar clubs. She'd heard there was good money to be made doing pretty much the same stuff online — and she could be her own boss.How did you get into webcamming?Part of the misconception comes from the fact that it's not policed. It's a very underground industry, and there's no governing body you can turn to, so people can be taken advantage of. It's an online community and it's hard to police. Anything can go wrong; people can be abusive and feel like they can go away with it, but then you can also just turn off the screen. But many women feel like they need to stay because of the money. I've never felt like I had to do that, but then again, it's the same when people stay in the wrong job for so long because they're scared of leaving and losing that financial security. It's so close to the porn industry and a lot of the sex industry isn't policed. If you have a problem and you go to the police about it, most of the time they'll just say well, you're asking for it, which is not acceptable. We're freelance and self-employed. We work for ourselves and these are our decisions, and we should be respected in the same way everyone else is respected.

As with most sex work, webcamming doesn’t have the best reputation. It’s often seen as exploitation or a last-resort hustle to pay off debt, but Reed Amber, 26, explains how webcam models are just your average self-employed freelancers with the same amount of agency and independence as anyone else.For the unfamiliar, camming is where clients pay to either watch a livestream of or have an individual video chat with a sex worker. It can’t be pirated and watched for free because the whole point of it is that it’s intimate and personal—you’re actually interacting with the person behind the screen.So as I sat there, in front of my laptop, I thought to myself, Why didnt I just respond the way that I normally do when somebody proclaims something which I dont agree with? Why didnt I just say, firmly but reasonably, you are wrong and these are the reasons why… Perhaps it was because it was so personal, that I felt like for once, I wasnt defending femininity as a whole, but just myself. Which on the surface would seem like a less daunting task, but for me it left me stumped. I knew that I was a feminist and it wasnt often that I had to justify myself to anybody. I was used to breaking down all the reasons that men used to justify their behavior.And as a cam girl, you won't know where it's coming from. You'll get your split — typically around 35-percent, but sometimes upwards of 70 — siphoned to you via an innocuous credit card processing site like CCBill, while the site takes the rest of the cut. However you earn that cut is up to you. Some sites, like Streamate, allow actual sex to the point of orgy, while others limit your act to a solo show. You can do whatever you think will earn cash in the form of dollars-per-minute private shows or instant "tips". That's the formula. You're up against tens of thousands of women (and men, to a lesser degree) offering the same product in varying versions. That's a tough stab at making a living, even with your clothes on.

If abuse were such a big problem, Anna says, then why would any Romanian girls bother with it at all? Why wouldn't they just find some other job? In a country whose GDP only stopped shrinking two years ago, with 20 per cent of the population living below the poverty line and personal income levels far below Kazakhstan, Iran and Gabon, that question answers itself. There's a reason Anna's so happy to be independent from her former employers, a status she equates with nothing less than her "freedom".Her conditions at the next studio were bare at best, and at times the most personal privacy she had, while performing for strangers on live camera, were a few hanging sheets separating her from the others walking in and out of some rundown flat. Although she was the frequent victim of what would certainly qualify as flagrant, physical sexual harassment in any other business, Anna stuck through it, priding herself on her ability to talk a path out of a "bad situation" with male employers.Youd think that all an Insta celeb has to do is look hot, but its actually a full time job. Ona Artist posts new photos every day and does a week of photoshoots every month. She manages all her social media and built her own website. The way her business model works is that she advertises on Instagram and from there, people can go to her private site and cam with her naked. On Instagram, because of censorship restrictions, you cant see her nude. So, the more you want from her, the more you pay, and the more explicit it gets. It's just like any other online business, really.It happened through a friend of a friend of mine. Thats usually how these things go. She had found, through a network of girls, a website that paid decent money for cam girling if you put the work in. I signed up, submitted my name, ID, bank details and some photos and within 24 hours I was approved as a bonafide Cam Girl ­with no bloody idea of what I was doing. CONTINUED BELOW...

[theliterateape]

The Regret Soup of Temper Lost and Reason Found

by Don Hall

Despite the ongoing parade of grown people acting like angry children in 2021 America, I'd like to hope that with age comes some modicum of temperance.

As I sit in the desert sun smoking Captain Black Cherry pipe tobacco and sipping on a Modelo, I drift into that perilous territory of regretful nostalgia. I remember those many times when, in an effort to exert control of a situation, I lost my ever-loving shit and resembled nothing less than a random Wal Mart customer throwing a tantrum at an insult or request to follow the rules in place.

It's a bit embarrassing to think of the occasions in my youth (and, in some cases, well beyond what any normal standard of youth could entail) when I lost control, screaming and thumping and doing my damnedest to intimidate someone enough to simply have them acquiesce to my demands. Tantrum-throwing is an art-form and I was a master at it.

The times they be a changing. 

I'm no longer angry. I mean, pretty much at all. Either I wised up, find myself lacking the energy to become outraged, or am truly embracing my More Spock, Less Kirk mantra. Whichever the case the rage has all but subsided completely. That's good for me because so many others are in full-on battle mode at the drop of a hat and these days that can equal serious injury or death.

About 30 murders nationwide have been attributed to incidents that started with road rage. More than 12,500 injuries to driver violence, out of 10,000 car accidents since 2007. Of the deaths related to road rage, most have been considered deliberate murders.

SOURCE

Anger, frustration, and other mental stress can trigger abnormal heart rhythms that may lead to sudden death, new research shows. In the first study of its kind, a group of researchers has demonstrated that mental stress alone can provoke these dangerous heart rhythms.

SOURCE

Although anger can be channelled constructively, it seems clear that aggressive behaviour can compound. Aggressive actions most often increase the likelihood of further aggression, and enacted aggression does not reduce aggressive impulses.

Violence and aggression beyond a mild degree almost always involve additional factors. A tendency towards impulsivity and keeping company with delinquent peers are risk factors.

SOURCE

When I see a woman screaming at a convenience store employee because he refuses to sell her a case of Miller Lite until she puts on a mask, I start to judge. And then I remember that time when members of an improv group I was in decided to complain about the lack of audience to a point that I threw a bar stool across the room.

When I watch a video of a man so angry that the McDonald's he goes to consistently puts onions on his "made-to-order" hamburger that he starts pulling cash registers off the counter and smashing them, I think What a fucking asshole. Then I recall that one time when I jumped on top of the hood of a Subaru because he was banging into the back of my car in his own moment of pique due to my shitty parking.

When I hear about Frederick Joseph routinely provoking white people with his camera and charges of racism (including a woman putting her feet up on a plane and a drunk woman telling him to 'stay in his hood') I think that the only difference between him and the people he films is who is doing the filming. The idea that Joseph has never lost his temper in public would indicate a level of maturity that his ongoing obsession with garnering social status by instigating incidents does not support.

"Say it one more time and I'll kick your ass!"

The nerds were a little drunk on wine coolers and false bravado so I knew there would be no such ass-kicking in the near future. Having been a few bar fights in my day, I knew the louder the bark, the less vicious the bite.

It was an odd thing to get so ginned up about.

I had been invited to a party by a theater friend. I wanted to get out, thought I might meet a girl, and the prospect of free booze was always a winning strategy for me in those days.

The party was full-on nerd. There was a party-wide game of Vampire going on. Cosplay Nosferatu everywhere, pretending be the sexy creatures of the night in clothing that was perhaps a bit too tight and made many of the dudes in tow look like overstuffed sausages with capes and slicked back hair.

The thing I said that got me in trouble came when I encountered three incels arguing the merits of Star Wars. I love Star Wars but I'm not speaking in Wookie any time soon. At one point in the heated discussion over the feasibility of the Millennium Falcon to go into hyper-drive with a broken something one of the nerds looks at me. "You joining in or just lurking?"

"Oh. Just listening. When it comes to Star Wars, I think I was Lucas's audience of choice. I was twelve years old when it hit the theaters and the whole franchise is just a space opera written for twelve year olds."

It was as if I had shat right there in their punch bowl.

There was no parking lot melee. The thing that perplexes me is how angry the subject matter spun everyone up. Sure, it's a movie that has crossed cultural boundaries and inspired billions to "use the Force," a tale of heroism at a time when we desperately need heroes, a milestone. But it's just a movie, right?

You'll discover that losing your temper is just that—a loss.

We've been this angry as a nation before. We've been this divided. The margins of society have been at war this aggressively many times. 1984. 1968. 1933. This partisan divide we all bemoan as if the failure of democracy is at hand is overstated and old hat. What's different is the speed and frequency at which we communicate this sense of cultural outrage. What's new is a series of social media algorithms designed to push the outrage to the front over anything else.

These algorithms intentionally exaggerate the reasons for the anger. The media, in a complete paralysis on how to deal with Twitter, reports news that 10,000 retweeted some hyperbole about police racism or vaccine authoritarianism as if 10,000 was a serious number. So we spend more of our time dwelling on our frustration and our anger sits ready, at a moment's notice, to explode.

Like a section of society bracing for a fight all the time, spurred on by our smartphones, we lose our shit more often without a single thought to what the expression of that anger will actually accomplish. All practicality is tossed out the window in order to exact revenge upon the microaggression or the guy who cut you off in traffic.

When my mother—a kind and loving soul, the type of person who goes out of her way to show generosity to anyone in need—expresses that she hates Donald Trump or any supporter of him, I am alarmed. Hatehas never been in her vocabulary but she says it without a thought these days. When ordinary people routinely use social media to wish rape, mayhem, and death on strangers they encounter online with the same casual nature one might merely flip someone off, we're in trouble.

1

Limit Your Presence on Every Social Media Platform

Sure, I was a belligerent manchild in my earlier days without the internet but I can also say without contradiction that worst threat I ever threw out in those spewing babyman incidents was an ass-whopping. No guns. No threats of lethal violence. No wishes of rape. No desire to get someone fired.

Add the secret sauce of hour by hour contact with assholes is not the desirable behavior. We already know that Instagram fucks up young girls, that TikTok is more addictive than sugar, that Faceborg is more like a hostile foreign nation than a communication platform.

It's unreasonable to get you to eliminate these outlets because they’re ingrained at this point but you can moderate your presence.

2

Stop Doomscrolling

We already know how fucking skewed and biased almost all media is today so give them less of your attention. Less swimming in the putrid pond of how awful the world is and more time focusing on what's right in front of you.

3

Examine the Pragmatics of Losing Your Temper

You'll discover that losing your temper is just that—a loss. And you will lose far more than your temper in the equation. Practice patience rather than a need for vengeance. Be less judgmental and more understanding.

If that all sounds a bit too kumbaya, try this—grow the fuck up. As a former raging shitass, a recovering rage-aholic, I had to grow up and become more rational and less emotional. If a hardcore RageBaby like myself can grow up, so can you and you’ll regret less in life if you start now.

Yes. I'm saying to suppress some of your emotions. At least in the Wal Mart or a nerd party.

[mineofilms]

The 3As of The Delusional Mind

I have been thinking about writing this BLOG for a while now. It took me a little bit of time to really sort my thoughts out on this subject, as one could see some of the things I will say here, EVERYWHERE… Especially on the INTERNET and that is how this all came to be…

As I usually do, I am crawling down the YouTube Rabbit Hole and I stumble upon this video, “The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts,” from YouTuber - Super Eyepatch Wolf. The video is about 30-minutes and in most cases I would not sit through a video of this length on this subject for more than a few minutes. However, after a few minutes I was hooked on what Wolf was presenting here. With 1.22 million subscribers I felt like this cat knew what he was talking about. The video has 6,577,655 views and was uploaded on February 1st, 2020. It has 241,000 Likes over 4,100 dislikes at the time I started writing this blog. So, yeah, all the stats are there to show this video would be something I may get something out of and I did. In a lot of ways it isn’t much different than how I attack subjects.

Now the video is about “The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts,” but that is only the label, the thing that is being discussed; the example. This video is really about:

Delusional people…

Their Delusional Behavior…

How they are able to convince people the delusion is real…

How SINISTER it really can be…

The format is just describing how this is associated to Fake Martial Arts People. If you all have the time to spare, the video is a must watch. It connects a lot of dots about how batshit crazy people can be and we allow them to be that way. We basically give them a pass to behave this way. I have never believed this is acceptable. We have become such a society full of pussies that many times people’s insane/delusional behavior gets a free pass. So, let us dig into the 3A's of the delusional mind:

Acceptance…Attention…Appreciation.

Delusional people require these “3As” from ALL people, ALL the time and now our society is becoming like this. We do not usually associated the 3As to people like this. We use buzz words like, “Attention Whore,” a “One Upper” or“Drama Queen.” We’ll use other medical terms like ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) to describe this sort of behavior, but rarely will we refer to these people openly as delusional. If you watch a lot of YouTube of people acting crazy and/or senseless out of the blue with little cause to generate that effect then you might label people “delusional” more often…

Most people know someone like this, either in life or on social media; especially social media. Hell, a lot of the end fighting on social media these days is usually a direct result of a delusional person saying some crazy-outlandish-shit to post; or comment on a post that triggered someone. They posted and/or commented with the intent to trigger… Not just, so it happens to be something triggerable. No, they want you pissed off or feeling insecure.

You do not dare call out delusional person on social media for being delusional. They will troll you and break every single word down to try to find some sort of witty angle that they can come at you with to show you are wrong about them. They will continue to harass you until you give them an acceptable reply, ala Acceptance, Attention, Appreciation. AKA you buy into their delusional fantasy. If people didn’t give these people a free pass back in the day or even now, before they could hide behind the INTERNET, perhaps we would have less sinister delusional people out there.

“There is no delusional idea held by the mentally ill which cannot be exceeded in its absurdity by the conviction of fanatics, either individually or en masse” ~Hoche

“Absurdity by conviction,” to me, defines the delusional. Talk to a few conspiracy theory people about what they believe in. They are completely convinced what they believe is real. It is their conviction about it that is scary as it defies logic, common sense and most of the time real-actual-facts about said subject.

In pretty much every blog I write and the concept of “facts” comes into play I tend to explain it the same way. You cannot base real theories on Pseudo-Science, where is,“Pseudo,” literally means, “not genuine; spurious or sham.” AKA not real…

A fact, by definition, is a theory… A theory is (an unproven fact, and educated guess without verified testing), that is later tested to be NOT FALSE.

That is what a FACT is. I use the basic 1+1=2 analogy. Theory… 1 of something + 1 of something, = 2 of something.

Go and test that theory in all the ways you can ADD a 1 of something to another 1 of something, the answer is?

Well, in this case its easy math. So say we test it 10,000 times. In 10,000 tests of different varieties we get the same answer, 2.

By that process, the scientific method, this theory is now a FACT. Here is the Wikipedia entry for a FACT...

Granted, as more complicated theories come forth more complex testing, variables, more complicated mathematics, and such come into the equation. So it isn’t always this simple. It’s almost always never this simple…

Acceptance – (Psychology) - a favorable attitude toward an idea, situation, person, or group . After reading this textbook definition of acceptance I have a sour feeling Cancel Culture will take these few words and expand on it to a point that there will be this textbook of psychology and a second one just for this word. It is the very feeling/emotion about this that is the problem. If everyone sees reality differently and unique to them, which is true, just not on a perceivable level, then why do people feel they need more acceptance than has been given to them?

I was, for a lot of years, on the outside of a particular bubble, while heavily inside others, or passively in others. I never wanted/needed more from the ones I was passive and heavily entrenched with. However, I always felt like I needed more from the bubble that I was on the outside of. After a time, I stopped caring and treated all bubbles the same, which was confusing at first for my peers, family, friends, girlfriends; girlfriends especially… It went against what most of us were taught about how we treat situations like this.

As I have gotten older I do not feel I need/want anything from any of the bubbles I currently perceive. I do not mean that literally as much as it sounds, but that longing to be part of the bubble I was outside of, yeah, that, isn’t there anymore. I believe, it started when I was young and it took this many years/time for the result to happen, nearly a lifetime or at least, a very large portion of one.

The delusional ones, go in the extreme opposite direction. The older they get, the needier they get. If a person is fixated on you, for whatever reason, it is hard to convince them otherwise.

Subtle, usually doesn’t work very well.

Remember, these people are seeing you in a completely different light than how you see it. It’s so radically different it is that difference that makes one uncomfortable, “creeped-out.” They want you to accept them, they are desperate for you to accept them. That is what makes it scary. You do not know the exact extent of their delusion or delusional state and why they are so heavily convicted with this power of belief that seems to leave you stupefied.

“The analogy I like is this; imagine being able to see the world, but you are deaf, and then suddenly someone gives you the ability to hear things as well, you get an extra dimension of perception. We must remember that we do not observe nature as it actually exists, but nature exposed to our methods of perception. The theories determine what we can or cannot observe... Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. It is entirely possible that behind the perception of our senses, worlds are hidden of which we are unaware. The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural science. Since, however, sense perception only gives information of this external world or of "physical reality" indirectly, we can only grasp the latter by speculative means. It follows from this that our notions of physical reality can never be final. We must always be ready to change these notions - that is to say - the axiomatic basis of physics - in order to do justice to perceived facts in the most perfect way.” ~Albert Einstein

Attention – (Psychology) - The concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli. Attention is awareness of the here and now in a focal and perceptive way. If you have ever dealt with a delusional person on a regular basis you will notice trying to talk about details from the past, be it a story they told you or things in their life, they always seem to never either remember it clearly or they really work hard to change the subject of the conversation. It is all about here and now with them. Its always onto the next manipulation. The next con… The next delusion…

It is about; look at them, fixate on them, pay attention to them,now… Not yesterday or tomorrow, past and future, but “here and now in a focal and perceptive way.” It could be they have to be up in your personal space all the time, you must text them before you go to bed or go to work. It is always attention on them and what they are doing… All the things that you do for yourself must be in direct relation to their self-serving nature.

You must comply with their delusion…

Appreciation – Since in textbook form, appreciation does not have a specific definition in relation to psychology; the word is used many times to describe a person’s emotional state indirectly over directly like the other 2As… However, appreciation is still defined as; “Acknowledging the value and meaning of something—an event, a person, a behavior, an object—and feeling a positive emotional connection to it.”

To “try” and put this in some sort of every day context; the celebrity Instagram posts that are about, being humble and their dreams coming true because of all our support as followers and/or fans, feels like an effort to get people fixated on a person’s accomplishments. The constant political and social takes “some” in the celebrity community takes is always shifting the focus one what “they” are “doing” for “others,” but they do not want to take credit for it but its all over social media. Their face is everywhere…

More self-serving feelings.

In the video, “The Bizarre World of Fake Martial Arts,” all the delusional people being profiled are people in their respective world’s, the leader of their mini cult of followers. The Master, the sensei, your boss, your best friend; perhaps a girlfriend/boyfriend. All people at that could be considered the head of the table; when it comes to people you are surrounded by.

What do we know about people that are in positions of power?

They always seek appreciation for what they do and more specifically what they do for you… You ever borrow some money from a friend? Not a lot of money but a little bit. Even after you pay the friend back. They never let you forget that you asked them for help and that they were the one that helped out. Not someone else, but them. It was them; they want you to know that and never forget about it. They turn around and use that against you too. Anytime they need something, which now, all the sudden, seems like it is more often now since you asked for help from them.

And this is where we come to; “How they are able to convince people the delusion is real…” And… “How SINISTER it really is…”

Predators come in all forms. At a young age we put the face of a monster on the face of the human predator that stalks us. To a child, the human predator is a monster. Sometimes, how the ignorance of a childlike mind can be the most honest thing in the Universe.

In the caveman days all you had to do was overpower the one you wanted to prey on and the fear would cripple them into submission. As the centuries came and gone people got smarter, able to think for themselves under distress and problem solve. That didn’t eliminate strength, power and aggression, but it could no longer 100% of the time work all the time. We invent martial arts and self-defense in general. We invent knives, mace, tasers and guns. Things change. The predator also got smarter. They figured out what a lie can do and if they can make a lie passable as a truth they could use that to manipulate their prey.

However, this technique has a fatal flaw… It only works on the weak-minded. It isn’t that all predators out there are master manipulators. Some are, sure, but you cannot manipulate someone who doesn’t take what you have to say as 100% truth and delusional people require that you do. If you do not believe them or in them then this trick won’t work well. It might for small things here and there, but it won’t work indefinitely.

I have straight up destroyed life-long friendships with former friends; because they were delusional people, and I couldn’t buy into their bullshit anymore. As a friend, a real friend, one tends to stand by their friend, especially when they get heat on them. However, I, personally, have never been a very self-serving personality. I mean this in; I do not do whole lot for others just because or just because they asked, begged, whatever. It isn’t in me to be that way, naturally.

I do things for the people I care about that I know care about me, and if I am not sold at that level, you are not going to sell me on it. So, I have always have one foot in and one foot out with those types of friends. There were a few instances where time got in the way and I couldn’t get rid of said friend till the timing was right. Mentally though; I had checked out as being someone they could manipulate on a reliable basis. Delusional people require you to believe in them and if you do not they have very little mental power over you. These are the few instances that they may leave you be as they only want the 3As from people they can sell the delusion to. If you do not believe them, in them and in their delusion. You do not have with which what they seek most.

Time can, and will, get in the way of critical, logical, thinking…

The prey of the delusional tend to be people that are a little down about their status in life. Be it depression, be it a weight thing, a popularity thing, whatever it might be. They do not feel ACCEPTED and they want to belong. The prey usually are people/kids who lack either/or/both the confidence and the knowledge to really decide for themselves if what this person is, is real or not. They want to believe so badly. They want to believe because they themselves have been convince by the delusional that without their help they will not be able to overcome…

This is exactly how I was trained to be a salesman in the fitness industry. I trained to be personal trainer, because I wanted to help people get through these rough patches in their fitness goals. As I once had people around me to get me where I had been at my pinnacle. Was I out to make a million dollars? No… I knew I was taking about a 50% pay cut going into fitness over doing what I was already doing. What I was already doing, I hated.

I felt so deflated every day…

Drive an hour to work. Work for about 40% less than the industry standard but does double, triple the work for 8-10 hours in an industry full of self-serving personalities that were all about 3As, all the time, as customers. Drive an hour home. Try to squeeze in my own gym time which ended up becoming obsessed about. Basically it was the only time/thing I did that genuinely made me happy and happy about myself. I wound up doing nearly 3 hour workouts, because I was so miserable with my current job. That was how I got involved in the fitness industry.

Flash-forward and all the gyms’ taught me to be was a delusional piece of shit. How to learn about people’s weaknesses and use that to convince them that they cannot achieve their fitness goals unless they sign up with my “personalized training / diet package.” It should be noted we were not allowed to technically teach them anything about diet. Actually that would have been counterproductive to get them to sign back up after their 6 weeks was done, with only moderate gains. Where we are taught to shift blame to them. As we cannot control what they do, eat, after they leave the gym. Hence why, even if qualified to, not to get overly suggestive with dieting.

Anyone that does fitness as a lifestyle knows what you put in your body, when, is far more important than what routine you do and how often you attack your body physically in fitness. Diet, Rest, Exercise is what most Doctors tend to say. Notice the word Diet frequently comes first and not because D is before E or R…

So the fitness industry is part of a mass-delusion. I have written about fitness in the past, a lot, and about how the industry is a hideous fashion show of itself. Just go on Instagram for a few minutes under a few fitness related hashtags, you’ll see. I was heavily involved in training all sorts of people and selling products, both in person and over the INTERNET. I was more than happy when I finally said, FUCK YOU, to the Industry. I lift now, only because it still gets me like it did the first time I lifted as a kid.

I was fooled about the fitness industry, because delusional people tried to get me to buy into this mass-delusion. I did what they said, but I never believed in it. Ultimately; that was what freed me from this going next level and actually changing me. Changing me to become the predator.

I wanted none of that.

I went back to jobs that made me miserable over losing my humanity. So when I talk about the 3As like this I do feel like I have some perspective here about how delusional minds work. My professional life, my personal life, even in my dating life.

It’s everywhere… People want to belong… People want to feel accepted…

When they don’t most of their life and someone comes along, makes a lot of huge claims on how they can make their life better that is the person a delusional predator wants to consume. You see all these older women being Catfished by people overseas for money and its all the same. The woman is lonely… She doesn’t feel good about herself. What does it say about her confidence if she is willing to let it all out on the line with a complete stranger she cannot see, really talk to or interact with? All she literally sees are texts on a screen. It is her fantasy and delusion that makes her believe that this could be real. There are plenty of signs in the internet dating world to tell if a person is real or not. If their intentions have any credibility to them. It isn’t that much different than the real world.

People behave like people.

If a person really cares about you they will do things to show that. Not just words on a screen, empty promises, but people will believe in what they want to believe. Even if you have proof, facts and other compelling data the person won’t believe you. That is how serious they hold onto these delusions.

Do not allow a delusion personality corrupt your mind. They will poison you, turn your reality upside down with a whole lot of nonsensical logic that they demand you to accept at face value without question. If you see this and are not 100% confident in yourself find someone who is to deal with that. You cannot convince them they are wrong. Only someone 100% not a believer in this specific delusion is able to defeat the delusion.

Sometimes KARMA comes when you least expect…

One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought. ~Albert Einstein

The 3As of The Delusional Mind by David-Angelo Mineo 9/29/2021 3,604 Words

[makingmoneyonlinemethod]

Affiliate Marketing: How to Turn Product Recommendations Into Passive Income

 Smart entrepreneurs running a thriving business know there’s always more they can do to make that business grow. One way of taking things to the next level is by finding an alternate stream of income. That doesn’t mean starting a second business, but finding ways to complement and grow the business you have by offering more value to your customers and followers.

If you aren’t participating in affiliate marketing, it’s time to consider taking advantage of this lucrative revenue stream.

What is affiliate marketing?

Affiliate marketing is an online sales tactic that lets a product owner increase sales by allowing others targeting the same audience—“affiliates”—to earn a commission by recommending the product to others. At the same time, it makes it possible for affiliates to earn money on product sales without creating products of their own.

Simply put, affiliate marketing involves referring a product or service by sharing it on a blog, social media platforms, or website. The affiliate earns a commission each time someone makes a purchase through the unique link associated with their recommendation. Done well, this performance-based opportunity can go from side hustle to profitable business by netting you a healthy income.

How does affiliate marketing work?

To participate in an affiliate marketing program, you’ll need to take these five simple steps:

1.   Find and join an affiliate program

2.   Choose which offers to promote

3.   Obtain a unique affiliate link for each offer

4.   Share those links on your blog, social media platforms, or website

5.   Collect a commission anytime someone uses your links to make a purchase

Commission rates vary dramatically, depending on the company and the offer. On the low end, you’ll earn about 5% of the sale but, with some arrangements, you can earn as much as 50%, usually when promoting a class or event. There are also affiliate marketing programs that provide a flat rate per sale instead of a percentage.

Benefits of the affiliate marketing model

Affiliate marketing offers several benefits to affiliates (i.e., you), one of which is its ease. Your side of the equation simply involves handling the “marketing” side of building and selling a product—educating customers. You don’t have to worry about the harder tasks, like developing, supporting, or fulfilling the offer.

Affiliate marketing is low risk. Since there’s no cost to join affiliate programs, you can start making money with an established affiliate product or service without any upfront investment. Affiliate marketing also can generate relatively passive income through commission—the ideal money-making scenario. Though initially you’ll have to invest time creating traffic sources, your affiliate links can continue to deliver a steady paycheck.

Finally, successful affiliate marketing offers the potential to significantly scale your earnings without hiring extra help. You can introduce new products to your current audience and build campaigns for additional products while your existing work continues to generate revenue in the background.

Before you get too excited, know that great affiliate marketing is built on trust. While seemingly there are an endless number of products or services to promote, it’s best to only highlight those you personally use or would recommend. Even when a product interests you or fits within an existing hobby, becoming a great marketer for that product takes a lot of work.

How to find affiliate programs

If you’re wondering how to get your feet wet in affiliate marketing, you’ve got a few options. Not every company offers affiliate programs—some businesses manage their own affiliate programs while others use an affiliate network.

An easy way to find affiliate programs is to visit an affiliate marketplace or platform. Browse your niche to find top performing affiliate platforms. Here are some of the most popular:

·         AffiliateNetwork

·         AvantLink

·         CJ by Conversant

·         ClickBank

·         FlexOffers

·         LinkConnector

·         RevenueWire

·         ShareASale

Another option is to visit the websites of the products and services you use and like to see if they have an affiliate program. Large companies often have programs they promote on their site, such as Amazon Associates or the Shopify Affiliate Program.

You also can take a more direct approach. Reach out to the owner of a great product you come across and see if they offer an affiliate marketing program. If they don’t, they might be happy to set up an arrangement with you, such as offering you a special coupon code to share with your followers. The best deals often are found when you’re the first to inquire and have a relevant distribution channel, such as approaching the seller of a new fitness product if you’re a health and wellness blogger.

Affiliate marketing programs will have terms of service you need to follow, so read the fine print. For example, your link usually will have a cookie with a specified timeframe, and some programs don’t allow you to purchase pay-per-click ads using the product or company’s name.

Choosing your first affiliate program

As you brainstorm products or browse through affiliate platforms, the most important criteria to keep in mind is that the product should be aligned with your audience, or the audience you hope to build. Ask yourself, is it something your target audience would find valuable? Does it fit with your area of expertise?

A food blogger probably wouldn’t promote beauty products, for example. A wide range of other products would make more sense, such as cookware, meal kits, gourmet ingredients, or even aprons.

Also make sure the product or service you’re promoting is a fit for the platform you’re promoting it on. For example, home decor and clothing are well suited to image-heavy platforms like Instagram. However, if you’re promoting more in-depth purchases, like software, your review may convert better on longer-form platforms, like a blog or YouTube.

Creating a plan to promote your affiliate offer

As we mentioned earlier, affiliate marketing revenue eventually can become a form of passive income, but you still have to do some heavy lifting up front. The success of your program will depend on the quality of your review.

To create a good review, it’s best to get personal. Share your experience in your blog, social media post, or video. If you’re writing a personal review, give a candid opinion based on your experience with and knowledge of the product. The more open you are, the more authentic you will be. People will be more comfortable following your advice if they feel they can trust you.

Trust is a key factor in your affiliate marketing efforts, because people need to trust you enough to act on your recommendations. The level of trust you’ll need to make affiliate sales depends on your industry and the products you’re recommending—for example, it takes more trust to be an effective affiliate for a $1,000 course than it does for a $20 t-shirt.

Beyond just sharing your experiences, you can build trust by limiting the number of affiliates you promote, or by only becoming an affiliate for products you personally use, and sticking to your area of expertise. For example, people trust my recommendations for Canadian financial apps, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to have much luck as a Sephora affiliate. —Desirae Odjick, founder of Half Banked

Talk to a product expert

Another option is interviewing others who use the product or service, or even interviewing the person who makes or sells it. This can give your review more depth, creating a narrative for the reader.

Create a product tutorial

While your success with affiliate marketing can depend on the overall size of your following, another way to drive higher-converting traffic is by providing a tutorial on the offer. People often perform “how to” searches on Google, such as “how to save money for college” or “how to decorate a laundry room.” If you offer a tutorial that solves a searcher’s problem and clearly showcases the value of the product, your referrals will make more sense in context and you’ll provide the customer with a stronger incentive to purchase the product you’re recommending.

Find relevant search terms

If you’re promoting an offer through a blog post, research which keywords someone might use in a search engine to find an answer to a related problem.Google Ads Keyword Planner is a good tool that can help. (It’s free to use, but you’ll need to create an account.)

Consider your angle

Depending on your offer, figure out how much energy you should invest in instructional or tutorial content, which is often a natural lead-in to someone trying a product for themselves. For example, you could record a video of yourself using and getting the most out of a physical product, or showing off the benefits of a digital product, like software. Unboxing posts are popular, so if you receive the product in the mail, document your experience opening it up.

Set your distribution strategy

Once you’ve written your promotional content, share it on your website or social media platforms. If you have an email list, you can create an email marketing campaign. And be sure to have an affiliate marketing hub on your website with a Resources page where you share a quick list of all of the tools you use and love.

Try offering a bonus

Sometimes marketers promote their affiliate programs by offering bonuses to anyone who purchases the offer. For example, you could give a free ebook you wrote to any follower who makes a purchase. Promotions like this encourage customers to buy by sweetening the deal. They’re especially persuasive if the bonus you offer is something you normally sell, because then shoppers can see its actual dollar value added value right on your site.

You can find several examples of affiliate bonuses in action when business coach Marie Forleo opens her popular B-School for entrepreneurs each year. To encourage sign-ups through her affiliate link, Laura Belgray, Forleo’s own copywriter, offers a one-on-one copywriting session as a bonus. Marketing coach Amy Porterfield adds a bonus bundle, with an invitation to one of her live events, access to a private Facebook group, Q&A sessions, and a variety of downloads. Adding a bonus can be a good way to stand out if several other affiliates are promoting the same product.

Keep things legal and above board

Don’t forget to disclose to followers that your post contains affiliate links. For one thing, it’s required by the FTC. But explaining the reason for your affiliation also can help you connect with your audience. For example, the financial independence bloggers at Frugalwoods offer this disclosure: “Frugalwoods sometimes publishes affiliate endorsements and advertisements, which means that if you click on a link and buy something, Frugalwoods might receive a percentage of the sale, at no extra cost to you. We only write about, and promote, products that we believe in. We promise not to tell you about stuff that's dumb.”

If you need help figuring out what language to use in a disclaimer, it’s worth taking time to consult a lawyer.

Examples of businesses using affiliate marketing

Looking at some of the companies that participate in affiliate marketing will provide you with inspiration—as well as proof that this is a legit and lucrative revenue stream.

Wirecutter

Wirecutter, a site promoting gear and gadgets—from kitchen tools to travel gear—that was acquired by The New York Times in 2016, says it only makes recommendations after “vigorous reporting, interviewing, and testing by teams of veteran journalists, scientists, and researchers.”

BuzzFeed

BuzzFeed Reviews started out as a gift guide and expanded into reviews of various product categories. What makes the site unique is that it covers a variety of ordinary items, giving top picks at three different price points. BuzzFeed’s reviews are quite thorough, which provides lots of value to the reader. Here’s arecent post on toilet paper and another on women’s white t-shirts.

Ready to get started with affiliate marketing?

Earning money with affiliate marketing programs can be a rewarding way to add a new revenue stream without taking on too much risk. All it will cost you is your time. By investing the hours upfront, you can continue to reap the rewards.

[sonjachoko]

Let’s Not Take a Selfie

“ Let’s take a selfie” is a phrase I hear almost every day. The truth is, everyone does it;  celebrities, politicians and even myself. As I scroll through my Instagram feed I am dazzled by the perfectly retouched and edited faces of my friends, determined to feed their own vanity in the form of the other’s people admiration called “likes”.

Of course, having a healthy amount of self-love is always desirable, but what happens when it turns into a constant need for self- assurance and excessive self- display called narcissism?

Narcissism has been already recognized as a bad trait centuries ago with the Greek myth of Narcissus, a beautiful young man, who died due to his obsession with his own reflection. However, it seems that the world did not learn anything from this powerful legend as we are faced with a modern-day narcissism epidemic.

Many people seem to have stopped cherishing important values such as education and forming meaningful relationships and are now solely preoccupied with themselves and maintaining a fake and "ideal" image they project through their social media profiles.

 For the first time in our history, we have media influencers and celebrities who are able to profit without having any real talents except being blessed with likable appearances or the means to buy and display excessively expensive designer items online.

Therefore, the society started equating success with beauty, and the beauty with carefully retouched array of our self-portraits. Sure, the people started following this trend out of the need to feel more important and recognized. 

But what is it in this human need to base our self-worth on the opinion of others?

-A fragile ego and a lot of insecurities.

Social media has turned into a never-ending beauty competition in which nobody wins but many things are lost among which are our self-confidence and individuality due to the incessant need to conform.

New Yorker’s article “China’s Selfie Obsession” addresses this negative social phenomenon.  The citizens of the most populous country in the world have been becoming increasingly fixated on using Meitu’s beauty apps and buying smartphones especially designed to take particularly flattering selfies. They spend hours on editing their photos in order to achieve “the look” and some people go as far as going under the knife in order to surgically enhance their facial features in order to look better in selfies. This is exactly what happens when you let your own narcissistic nature take over and you lose a sense of self.  

It is okay to post a cute selfie from time to time, as long as you do not get too obsessed with your looks or with pleasing others.  After all, it is not the selfie's fault but entirely your own for letting your insecurities or narcissistic nature get the best of you.

Eventually, the beauty fades but the memories and bonds we form stay. Enjoy your life to the fullest and put that phone down.

We do not care about how your face looks like or what you had for breakfast this morning.

Sincerely,

Everyone decent in the world

[thesevillereport]

In Focus: Work From Home is Far From Over

First A Story, "Change is Tough"

“Just email me,” said the clerk to another clerk. “Bet,” the other clerk responded. “Why don’t you just walk over to his department and talk to him about the issue,” asked the clerk’s manager, “I don’t get you all and this email stuff, it’s just easier to talk face-to-face” the manager added.

That was a conversation had all over the world in the mid to late 90’s. How we communicated was changing during that time, it was becoming quicker, but there was an old guard, a population of people that didn’t want to adapt, they wanted to talk face-to-face, even when an email would suffice.

This change is happening again. There are people in the workforce who are exhausted by Zoom Meetings and Google Meets, and have bitched, moaned, and complained about the day when they can get back into the office. But there’s a population that is being shaped by the work-from-home and learn-from-home experiment. They not only embrace it, they love it. This population will usher in the permanent work-from-home and learn from home movement as their influence in the workplace grows.

Why is This Important to Investors

Over the past few weeks the world has received positive news from Pfizer (PFE) and Moderna (MRNA) regarding their COVID-19 vaccines, and with each of those reports the work-from-home stocks took a slight dip in price.

On November 6, 2020, a few days preceding the Pfizer announcement Zoom Video (ZM) closed at $500.11 per share. On November 9 the day of Pfizer's announcement Zoom gapped down and opened trading at $433.00 per share. The selling pressure pushed the stock down to as low as $402 per share on the day.

A similar situation occurred with Chegg (CHGG), a winner for investors in the learn-from-home space. Chegg closed trading on November 6 at $77.23 per share, the stock gapped down on the 9th of November to $71.51, dropping 7% on the Pfizer news.

Investors have been quick to move their money from the work-from-home and learn-from-home space on any good news of a possible vaccine, but I don't think this is a wise move for the long-term investor.

We're Getting Better at Being Apart

Social media changed things, it gets a bad rap, some of it it deserves, but a lot of it is on us. But moving away from the bad, social media added another layer of things to do with your computer, it made the computer a communication device for people who weren't computer scientists. Even before Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tok Tock, and SnapChat, there was AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) and Yahoo's instant messenger, and both helped connect non-computery people digitally.

In the days before every kid was able to own a smartphone, teenagers were using AIM and Yahoo Instant messenger to connect with their friends and peers. Instant messengers morphed into social media platforms, and smart phones allowed us to have access to those platforms at all times, Twitter is just AIM on acid. With every new advancement in digital communication, we get a little more comfortable with non face-to-face communication.

But Everybody is Dying to Get Back to Work

Yes, there are a lot of people complaining that it isn't the same, and that they miss the interaction, and they miss being in the office, and they miss being away from their spouse and kids for some time during the day. But investors should keep in mind that the reason we don't hear from the people who like working from home is because they're not complaining.

I've talked to people on both sides of the spectrum, those that feel less productive at home and others that feel even more productive working from home. Those that miss the camaraderie formed at the office, and those that are ecstatic about the money they've saved working from home, and hope to continue doing so.The main difference I've noticed between the two sides is that those who are over the work-from-home experiment have been more vocal about their desire to get back into the office, but the loudest voice doesn't necessarily speak for everyone.

I believe that we've grown more accustomed to the digital buffers we have in our life, than we care to admit to ourselves and others.

What Does the Money Say?

The money says that it's okay with people working from home. Earnings from America's best companies continue to be strong - even to my disbelief - and investors continue to bid up the stock prices of these companies that continue to show strong earnings in 2020. Companies have adapted and found ways to be productive and thrive in a work-from-home environment.

I read where a person in charge of securing business deals for a small biotech company went from spending three days to close a business deal or partnership deal down to five or six hours to close deals via Zoom. Gone are the two flights to the destination and back, gone are the hotel stays, gone are the expensed dinners. Now it's just him and his counterpart from the other company on a Zoom call with no distractions, talking to see if a deal makes sense and then doing the deal if it does make sense.

This new way of doing business equates to thousands of dollars saved for this small biotech firm. For an S&P 500 company that's millions of dollars a year being moved from the cost of revenue line down to the operating profits line on an income statement, and that's a big win for investors.

Also, for that person in charge of business deals for the biotech firm. Going from three days to close a deal down to five or six hours, gives him an additional two days to work on securing more deals.

Don't Be a YoYo

The markets and certain stocks have yo-yo’d off of news regarding a COVID-19 vaccine. Investors believe that once the vaccine is here, approved, and deemed safe and efficient people will ditch their couches and Netflix binge sessions for late nights out with friends and family. I share the belief that certain companies are going to explode with business when we beat COVID-19, but I’m not writing off Zoom, Slack, and other work-from-home and learn-from-home stocks, and neither should you. I'm not saying that everyone will permanently work from home forever, but I do see it being an option in many work places going forward, and an option many employees will exercise.

Working-from-home and learning-from-home has exposed some gaps in our infrastructure, and I expect the great minds of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and other places to plug those gaps in the coming years. I would suggest that investors not forget about work-from-home and learn-from-home stocks as we get closer to a vaccine, but instead start looking for the next generation of these companies.

[writingrants]

Don’t Let Social Media Control You

Gen Z, the generation that I am a part of, is known as the first generation to grow up with social media. Gen z is the lab rats of social media platforms. In reality, no one knows how it is going to change the way we function as humans in society in the long run. There are tons of articles filled with opinions on how children growing up with technology should be parented. Mental health is becoming an increasing concern for Gen Z with reported increase in depression and anxiety.  The research conducted about social media and mental health is done by the generation that didn't grow up with it. Therefore, the information is biased toward their own childhood experiences. This leaves researchers giving terrible parenting advice that is destroying relationships between parents and children causing further mental health problems.

Technology has risen and with it, mental health problems. Not just technology, but social media platforms are an addiction. It is the world's biggest most addictive drug, so addictive you couldn’t live your life without it. Social Media isn’t going anywhere, technology is never going to take a step back. The people that suggest that as a solution, are just the ones that don’t know how to send a text message. Instead of trying to stop what already happened, we need to figure out how to stop these negative effects from taking place. This includes real research that doesn’t just tell us it's bad but gives us realistic solutions. An article on the McLean Hospital website talks about a study on the effects of social media on undergraduates. The experiment took 143 people and put them in two groups. One group had limited social media time and the other continued usual use. “The limited group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression during those three weeks over the group that continued using social media. Both groups showed significant decreases in anxiety and fear of missing out compared to where they were at the study’s beginning”(McLean).  The author uses a confident tone about the experiment results and then at the end of the paragraph she says ‘But all of the people in the experiments had less anxiety’. Even though she thought she had proved the people that didn’t use social media had less anxiety she contradicted the whole thing at the end. It is extremely annoying because people will read that and don’t even notice that part and that's why it's written that way. On a hospital website one would expect more, but this really just goes to prove how little evidence there is about the effects of social media. How are we supposed to trust research of the effects of social media? Something like this is on a hospital website. A source that someone would turn too, or expect to be reliable. Articles like this are the reason that people don’t know what to do about their mental health problems. They tell us social media is bad, it causes mental health problems so stop using it. That is one of the many problems this generation is struggling with. The older generation blames everything on phones and social media and says just to stop using it. What they don’t realize is that we really can’t stop.

There are articles everywhere about how social media is actually hurting us socially and we are actually less connected but for Gen Z that's not true. It is how we connect and how we know how to connect. The research that is out there is all guesses based off of past generations data relation to now. You can google search anything and get a million results on one topic. There is so much information out there, how can you know what information is real? “There’s always been 'biased news' or propaganda, but what’s different now is that the internet is part of the equation and we can't trust the evidence of our own eyes. A website may look professional, but does that company really exist and have the images been Photoshopped?”(Nicky Cox). Parents of these Gen Z kids don’t know what information to trust and how to handle it. Every Time I get a buzz on my phone I have to check it. It's like an automatic response in my engraved muscle memory that just happens. This addiction is fueled by the fear of missing out or FOMO. In the time I may not be on snapchat, my friends that are on snapchat planned something without me. Now I don’t know that everyone is dressing cute at lunch in an hour and I won’t have time to get ready cause I didn’t check my phone in time. Believe it or not, this is a major looming anxiety that affects not only teens but everyone with technology. At all ages people are addicted to their phones. Everywhere you go people's heads are bent over a screen and saying its all Gen Z is completely biased. Why are people getting upset at their children for being on their phones at the table when they are doing the same exact thing.

When your mom takes away their kids  phone to ‘make sure they aren't not doing anything bad’ what is she really doing? Texting is a form of a private conversation, so what now parents need to know every conversation their kid has? Sure parents want to protect them from online predators, but by spying on them they are just damaging trust and overstepping boundaries. A kid that has a healthy trusting relationship with their parent is going to be able to tell their parent if someone is attacking them online. “I see parents who are just plain old spying on their kids. Parents should begin by trusting their children. To not even give your kid the benefit of the doubt is incredibly damaging to the relationship”(Rachel Ehmke). A kid that gets their phone taken away randomly is never going to come to their parents cause if they do, their phone gets taken away and they get punished. If your parents don’t trust you, then why would you trust them? Then they go to school and everyones talking about that funny video or crazy post and they are sitting there mad. Oh, your friends are hanging out tonight? Well guess what no one told you cause it was in the group chat you didn’t have access to. Even if someone tells you in person and you go then what now? You are sitting there while everyone sends TikToks to each other and posting on Instagram. Then it's time to go home but you don't know if your mom’s ever coming and you're sitting on the curb alone. What's stopping anyone from kidnapping you then? So now you are being punished because your parents didn’t educate you on online safety or you sent a message to your friend they didn’t like. Come on parents do better.

The research conducted about social media and mental health is done by the generation that didn't grow up with it. Therefore, the information is biased toward their own childhood experiences leaving researchers giving terrible parenting advice. This is destroying relationships between parents and children causing further mental health problems. Technology is here to stay and advance rapidly. In today's time without technology, no one would be able to get an education. Kids would have to go to school and end up killing their teacher in the process. Parents need to do better and stop neglecting to actually be good parents. A child's mental health is also a part of a parent's job so stop contributing to it.  

Annotated Bibliography

Ehmke, Rachel. “How Using Social Media Affects Teenagers.” Child Mind Institute, 16 June 2020, childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/. Rachel Ehmke, the author of this article, is the managing editor at the child mind institute. She explains how social media affects teens and describes how overall social culture is different as a teenager then it has been for past generations. She addresses parent concerns about online imposters and isn’t afraid of calling parents for unjust parenting. The article talks about how parents are failing to educate their children about online safety. This article also includes common sense solutions that are often overlooked by parents.

“'Like' It or Not, Social Media's Affecting Your Mental Health.” How Does Social Media Affect Your Mental Health | McLean Hospital, 26 Feb. 2020, www.mcleanhospital.org/news/it-or-not-social-medias-affecting-your-mental-health.      McLean Hospital, talks about how social media impacts the teen brain. This article is intended to educate parents about how technology affects the development of their children. With the knowledge that this is on a hospital website instantly you become more trusting of the information. However the sources factual evidence is not backed up by any real proof that its real. It often throws out random names when talking about facts like the reader knows who they are talking about. This makes the reader think what they are reading is true but in reality it is just something they are making up. This article is very biased and gives out terrible parent advice.

Kamenetz, Anya. “Parents, Sometimes You're The Problem When It Comes To Tech Use.” NPR, NPR, 21 July 2019, www.npr.org/2019/07/21/742168987/parents-sometimes-youre-the-problem-when-it-comes-to-tech-use.  Anya Kamenetz talks about how parents are hypocrites. They want to keep their kids from technology when they are even more addicted themselves. They also talk about how parents are unsure of what to do or how to parent with all the information and opinions online. Most importantly she says “Don’t use technology to stalk your children”. This is one of the main points in my argument and is important to stress this statement.  

Duncan, Apryl. “9 Ways Social Media Has Affected the Way We Parent.�� Verywell Family, 5 Aug. 2020, www.verywellfamily.com/social-media-changed-way-we-parent-4098583. This article by Apryl Duncan is about how parents are really the ones at fault. Oftentimes children's problems are blamed on being on the phone and aren’t taken seriously. Apryl talks about parents posting everything their child does on social media from the first day they are born. Parents are oversharing and creating a huge digital footprint for their child before they can even consent to it. This ruins self esteem making their kid always having to have a picture perfect moment to post online. They make their children fame hungry by comparing them to others online whose posts are getting more likes.

Darby Saxbe. “The Social Media Disconnect.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, 26 Feb. 2018, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/home-base/201802/the-social-media-disconnect. This article is by Annemarie Kelleghan, a graduate student in the USC Psychology Department's Clinical Science program. This article contains factual evidence using credible sources. Annemarie talks about how the statistics of how social media is making us less connected. It also talks about the long term effects of health caused by social media. The article also provides real solutions that you can apply to your life today.

[catalinacimpoesu]

Style hunting

Free the Monsterind

In my constant struggle of finding a unique drawing style, I faced many creative blockages that were crucial to my overall development. 

The whole experience was like a rollercoaster of emotions: encouraging myself to draw, choosing a subject, letting my mind free and start sketching, adding colours, trying not to be picky on brushes and experiment different types and different textures without following any patterns, having that boost of energy and enjoying the moment while listening to music, feeling the dopamine rush, being excited when I considered the drawing looked good enough and any other changes would decrease its quality, then opening my social media account, returning to the drawing application and see the monster staring at me (Janda, 2013). 

A long-phrase that sums up my past two years. 

Is the “monster” that follows many artists worldwide. But it is the same “monster” or we all have different ones? At this moment my mind would turn to 180 degrees and see the final form of my drawing as being “ugly” and immediately my reaction would be to close everything and do not show my creation to the online world.

I found myself wondering how the monster would look like and this was the image that popped into my mind the minute after, so I started sketching again. Not a ferocious beast, but a snob fluffy mauve creature being too spoiled to remain grateful for what he has. 

Mind monster (Cimpoesu, 2020)

Starting to ask myself what is happening in my mind whenever I finish a drawing, was a promiscuous start. Why was I so concerned about what the others might think about my work? And why all of a sudden I would just have transposed myself into somebody else’s body and start judging my art, forgetting all the feelings I have had when I was creating it? Was my art supposed to carry any hidden meanings to anyone that might have seen it?

Art is subjective and does not represent pure tangible knowledge. Moreover, its purpose is to suggest and be interpreted by anyone who sees it (Scrivener, 2002). Thinking twice, every piece of art can include a small amount of knowledge due to the power of imagination and analysis its creation process.

Scrivener’s vision was that art in any form cannot embody pure knowledge either in-the-making process nor in the final-created object. This statement is half true from my perspective, for one reason: art, in any shape, can pass intangible information through generations, only because people can imagine and empathise through their bodies and souls, without experiencing the same times as the person who created it, but placing themselves in the other’s shoes, as humans made from the same material.

To be more clear, it is normal that paintings, for example, will not express anything at first sight; the viewer cannot gain any skills while staring at a canvas, but through analysing it he can feel at some point, all the overlapping layers full of acrylics and rough brush strokes that resemble shadows and highlights. In my opinion, it just depends on whom the viewer is: an artist will probably connect with the painting and imagine every step concluding the creation of it, while at a mental levet he could even transpose himself into the creator’s position.

As I started to see the presence of the “monster” more often, I started to draw more frequently just to try to catch momentum to analyse the feeling in depth. The answer was simple: my mind would categorize any of my creations as being low-qualitative in comparison with the others I have seen before from a variety of artists. Focusing on the flaws I automatically assumed that in the future there will be people in the same position as me (age, gender, being a self-taught artist) but with higher-quality final products.

The way art should be experienced is generally seen as being a short period of curiosity, sometimes it can progress on a long-term as well, until the reflection instinct approaches, as Danto et. al. (2013) suggest. Art should be a representation of the time and the environment it was created in. Another factor should be included in the equation, such as the experience the creator had and the time he spent on that specific piece of work. 

The right of criticising

Formal analysis represents the theoretical structure of the human perspective and it aims to categorise every element found into a pattern such as proportion, variety and unity, along with the emotional baggage a drawing is trying to express. Combining the intellectual effect with the feelings that are created just by looking at a piece of art can be considered the key to a high-rated critical analysis. This approach can be replaced with a pure intuition of someone who had experience and had seen plenty of evidence to have the right to classify any work (Heydat and Sabzali, 2014).

This made me think if art is such a versatile subject, it should not be fitted into some patterns conceived by somebody’s opinions and perspectives. At the same time if art does not follow these rules then anything can be considered a masterpiece. What a massive paradox.

Coming back to my twisted mind experience, I was starting to think what makes any of my drawings better than the others and why over time only a few of them still remain beautiful and worth to talk about in despite of others. As an interesting fact, the drawings illustrating objects won all of my sympathy, in comparison to the portraits and the artworks containing any kind of faces, on which I currently have doubts about their worth.

Restlesnesss (Cimpoesu, 2019)

Breakfast in Poznan (Cimpoesu, 2019)

Traditional house (Cimpoesu, 2019)

The way I perceived humans dramatically changed during time. Self-criticism help me to analyse the weaknesses of my artworks and what is representative for my vision. In addition, one reason for not recognise my digital drawings as being qualitative was the presence of errors in the proportions of the faces, along with the lack of accuracy of the shadows and highlights placed on the subject making the whole picture to have a flat look at the first glance. Improvement can be recorded in this area just by studying the basic human anatomy features and the basic principles of drawing. At the same time, art movement such as Expressionism and Surrealism are focusing on particular styles of representing the human features in an unfamiliar way and they are recognised as meaningful and interesting points of view. 

Modern French girl (Cimpoesu, 2020)

False posing (Cimpoesu, 2020)

Eye contact (Cimpoesu, 2019)

Examining the artworks now, after a long time, makes me notice the above photos look similar when exposing some aspects and are illustrating a constant style because of the used techniques, colours and tools. Despite of using a birds-eye view and underlying their similarities, the images are still exemplifying my creativity. 

Personal brand identity

Many artists point out that their style was shaped after many attempts of different ways to approach a subject and browsing through working instruments, tools and perspectives and in the end there is no defined path to follow to reach the goal in a specific period. The final form of an artwork is influenced by numerous decisions and environmental aspects (Zhao, Cao and Lau, 2018) aiming to reach the receiver’s feelings, along with his admiration and interest. 

The personality created trough all the final decisions and the presented outcomes represents a graphic designer’s way of expression, seeking to reach people who possess similar views. Although aesthetic taste is subjective and in constant change phases, a few elements are still keeping their place on the sensitivity map and help building a strong brand image when seeing an artwork for the first time. 

Building your own creative style as a designer, leads to a constant communication with yourself and the others around. In the end, only by experimenting different scenarios a graphic designer can mould his preferences and fully express his thoughts through art, without having second thoughts about showing the final version. Due to art’s ideology and skills’s perfectionism timeframe, there is always going to be room for reconsideration leading to improvement. 

Considering that for each artist there will always be people sharing the same vision as him, the action of finding the personal artistic style should be a metaphorical rollercoaster itself, which in the end will bring to light each stage and its significant meaning throughout the whole process. Understanding to embrace failure and to forgive myself when I don't have the desired outcomes, helped me more than it was expected.

Art, drawings and design taught me that you don't need perfection (Airey, 2012). It is fine to post something you do not like anymore and to appreciate that you did it. You have to embrace any state you have and be curious about any project you make because it is yours. 

In conclusion, you have to learn to work with what you own and cherish your goal for your mind to be able to create anything that appears in your mind.

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Airey, D. (2012) Work for Money, Design for Love: Answers to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Starting and Running a Successful Design Business, 1st edn, San francisco: New Riders

Cimpoesu, C. M.  (2019) Breakfast in Poznan. [Instagram] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5Laew2nahx/ [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]

Cimpoesu, C. M. (2019) Eye contact. [Instagram] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B4uUYaBHinG/ [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]

Cimpoesu, C. M.(2020) False posing. [Instagram] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B-iWyaHDHim/  [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]

Cimpoesu, C. M. (2020) Mind Monster. Unpublished personal artwork.

Cimpoesu, C. M. (2020) Modern french girl. [Instagram] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B8MNRjwHcj-/ [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]

Cimpoesu, C. M. (2019) Restlessness [Instagram] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/BwxZJN_hbGf/ [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]

Cimpoesu, C. M. (2019) Traditional house. [Instagram] Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5Laew2nahx/ [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]

Danto, A. C., Horowitz, G., Huhn, T. and Ostrow, S. (2013) The Wake of Art, Criticism, Philosophy, and the Ends of Taste. Amsterdam: Routledge

Heydat M. and Sabzali, M.K. (2014) Conceptualizing Art Criticism and Art Education for effective Practice. Saarbrucken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing

Janda, M. (2013), Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don’t teach you in design school, but should, 1st edn, San Francisco: New Riders.

Scrivener, S. (2002) The art object does not embody a form of knowledge. Working Papers in Art and Design. [Online] vol. 2. Available from: http://www.herts.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/12311/WPIAAD_vol2_scrivener.pdf [Accessed: 12th November 2020]

Zhao, N., Cao, Y. & Lau, R. (2018) "What characterizes personalities of graphic designs?" ACM transactions on graphics. [Online] vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 1-15. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1145/3197517.3201355 [Accessed: 15th of November 2020]