#not to say there were NO good bloggers or metas over those 3 years just that they usually came in a package with stuff i didn't want to see

[eerna]

I read the TFOTA series at the beginning with low expectations and I surprised myself of how much I ended up loving it so much. I do have a few things did not liked about that I would want it to be different. But overall I think it was great.

My only complaint is that the fandom, and finding your blog among a few others felt like fresh air. I don’t know if it’s me but I feel like a great portion of the fandom lacks reading comprehension skills. I try not to interact much with the fandom because:

1- I’m in my late 20s and not going to argue with a bunch of people who are the target audience of the series.

2- Most of the conversations lacks nuance and are mostly focused on the romance aspects of the series.

I also love your fan art. You are very talented.

Hiiii, thank you so much, I'm so glad you enjoy my stuff~

I feel this so much, and it's why it took me 3 years to gain my first mutual in this fandom lololol. Instead of interacting with anyone in the wild, I made all my smart beautiful friends read the series and used my fanart to attract people interested in the same aspects of the books as me and thus created a private little fandom where we could discuss story nuances without being called abusers <3<3<3

[orionsangel86]

Hey All, 

So yeah I’ve been neglecting this blog big time since the season finale and I want to give an explanation. Which is more for my own benefit than anyone elses actually since sometimes writing things down can really help even if you don’t think anyone is gonna read it...

I’ve been running this blog for two and a half years now. Before this blog, I had never involved myself in online fandom or even internet communities in general. I just didn’t do that kind of thing because I didn’t even know about it. I have thoroughly enjoyed the majority of the time spent here. I have enjoyed building online friendships and getting to know this community - a community I have always seen as being honest and friendly and full of bloggers I respect and would hope also respect me. 

Because I am relatively new to online fandom, I guess I have also been extremely naive. When I first started this blog I didn’t do it because I wanted to validate my own opinion of this show, I didn’t do it because I wanted to be a big blogger with lots of followers and posts that gained a lot of notes either. None of that stuff has ever really bothered me too much, I’m not looking for fandom fame here, never have. At first I wasn’t really even seeking out friendships to bleed over into my real life - I was depressed and a bit of a hermit at the time so any idea of making friends outside of the online space just wasn’t on the agenda. My whole reason for joining fandom was because I had previously spent around a year lurking on certain meta writers blogs reading their stuff and thinking “wow” and “I want to interact with these people because this is all awesome”. I wanted to share my opinion and bounce ideas off of those bloggers who I respected and thought were funny and intelligent and kind people. I wanted to get to know them and discuss the show with them.

That was all I ever wanted. End of story. No fame, no massive following myself. No viral posts. Just communication with people I respected.

I got that. For a long time. I still have in a lot of ways. Along the line, I also somehow found myself meeting up with some of these people in real life, and getting closer to them, to the point that now some of them are people I consider my best friends. Others I may have only met for the first time recently, whose blogs I have followed since the beginning, and who I hope I will continue to meet and remain friends with for the foreseeable future - because they are awesome too.

I don’t regret those friendships for one second. But what I do regret is the mess caused by getting close to people who you also interact with in fandom. Because with fandom comes the wank, and when that wank then bleeds into your real life, it really fucks you up. 

So this is where I have been, not just for the past few weeks since I have been MIA, but in fact for around 3 months now. Mentally and emotionally exhausted because of drama that started in fandom that bled over into my real life, and has caused me more emotional upset and heartache than falling out with a former “best friend” a few years back ever did. It is actually shocking how much this former fandom drama has effected me, so much so, that even the people closest to me, who are aware of all the details, probably still don’t know just how much this has fucked with my head and caused me to regress into a shell. It’s really fucking bad and has been effecting my life in more ways than one. 

I don’t think people realise how much all this shit affects us. It was easier when I could separate it. Fandom in one box, real life in a different box. Use each one to escape the other. For the past 3 months there has been no fucking escape for me.

Why am I telling you all this? I guess because I feel like it could help others who are overwhelmed by fandom, by being in a community where it is possible for anyone to suddenly find themselves with a huge following and influence others. It's so fucking easy for that kind of thing to go to people's heads, and there are people in this community who will abuse that and use their status and power to abuse people and generally be shitty human beings because no matter what they do there will be others who will support them and think the sun shines out their ass.

Anyway. I'm not here to talk specifics. I did consider it, but I won't. Though some people in this fandom have really hurt me, I know they will never truly apologise for their actions, or even admit to being responsible. They don’t give a shit about me and in some cases barely know who I am. Doesn’t mean they didn’t hurt me and fuck up my life for a period of time. Others have sat at the side lines and watched as I slowly lost myself to all this shit and instead of being a friend and give me the support I desperately needed, have been complicit in the wank, and let themselves be influenced by the very assholes who started this crap.

Regardless, I wanted this post to be a lesson to those newer to fandom, perhaps there are people out there who have been in a position where they have been hurt by supposed "big name fans" and also get sick in their stomachs when people continue to sing their praises, and can't avoid those people no matter what they do since Tumblr doesn't give us the ability to truly avoid other bloggers even with block and blacklist available. That is my situation now. I cannot continue enjoying this community whilst I am constantly having to be reminded of what I have gone through over the past few months, and because of that, before I come back properly, I need to drastically curate my dash, utilise the unfollow, block and blacklist options, and I suppose carve myself out a new space. A fresh start perhaps. I am still so terribly disappointing in everything. I used to adore our corner of fandom, but it has become so fucking toxic if I don’t try to shelter myself from it I’ll never heal, and I don’t yet want to leave completely.

Nevertheless, I shall persist, because believe it or not, this show we all love still brings me joy, and I want to talk about it again, to my hearts content, with people I care about in this space. But I will be extra careful in future about those who try to connect with me. I have learned my lessons, and I am done. Shitty behaviour online won’t be taken lightly, and I won’t have any hesitation calling people out for it in future.

So here are some lessons I have learned and try to remind myself of every day when dealing with fandom:

If you have been hurt by something, no matter how small, your emotions are valid and you deserve a sincere apology.

People who are truly your friends will stand by you. Those who don't stand by you are not worth your time.

Emotional manipulation is cruel. Don't let people do it. Don't let anyone invalidate your pain by making a situation about them.

Especially when you are then forced into impossible choices.

Especially when your feelings are ignored and you are put in situations that make you extremely uncomfortable.

Just because someone has a big following and comes across sweet and nice online doesn't mean they are. We all have online personas. A lot of people are fake. Take them off their pedestals before you watch them fall off.

Don't believe nasty rumours about people, but understand that blindly singing people's praises is just as bad. No one is fucking perfect no matter how much people may try to portray perfection.

Learn the difference between someone who genuinely wants your friendship and people who want to use you for online validation and popularity. This is important.

Even the smartest people can be emotionally manipulated. it’s not a flaw. It’s a product of someone elses cruelty. It’s not an insult for someone to try to tell you this either. It just means they care about you. 

If you are ever made to feel like your feeling don’t matter, or that you should get over your feelings, get those who tell you that out of your life.  Your feelings matter. You matter. You matter a hell of a lot more than the people who would try to deny you.

Social Justice issues are important, but social justice cannot be an excuse for nasty behaviour. Be wary of those that use social justice as a front for treating people badly. 

Be fucking kind to each other. Treat people with respect, and you will have their respect in return.

Lastly, I want to say that I know I’m not perfect. I can sometimes be pretty fucking horrible, especially when I’m feeling hurt and emotionally vulnerable. I have written the above lessons for me and that last point? To be kind to each other? I need to remind myself of that. To be kind to people I don’t agree with, even if those people attack me. Even if those people have caused me severe emotional stress. Sometimes I fail at being kind. Sometimes I am gonna hurt people including myself. I am sorry for that. I truly am. I do try to recognise my own flaws here and try to be sincere in my message.  I have been so stressed and I just can’t deal anymore. I’m not a bad person, but I know that some of you will read this post and seriously disapprove of it. Perhaps you feel it wasn’t necessary for me to post such a public message. Or that I am just trying to cause unnecessary drama (I’m really not). Or that I want attention (I don’t). I expect people to unfollow me because of this, and I’m okay with that. You do what you have to do. 

From my perspective I HAD to get it all down. I had to pour it all out of me like drawing poison from a wound. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. It’s been eating me alive. It was the only way I could bring myself to get back onto here because this place used to be my passion. I want my passion back.

What I don’t want is anyone asking me to tell them specifics. I want to put everything behind me and start afresh now. I need to rid myself of that negativity and just focus on the good stuff, on the stuff I came here for to begin with. I’ve got a lot going on in my real life separate to fandom drama and I want this to be my escape from that once again, I need this to be a happy place once more and will do whatever necessary to find that happy place.

I’m sorry guys, I know this was super long and prob super confusing for some people to read. I guess just know that I’m gonna try to be back and much more positive and happy than I was before now that this shit is behind me. I’m gonna keep this blog a happy place, ignore and block any sources of wank and negativity, and only post fun stuff about the show going forward. (Aside from the standard show related wank that may crop up here every now and again thanks to Bucklemming) If you are still with me after this long emotional essay, I hope you’ll still be with me going forward, and god knows I could use some actual real friends right now. 

Thanks for reading.

:)

[inevitably-johnlocked]

Hey Lovely! I was wondering how you first became a part of the fandom? When did you start watching the show, at what point did you feel John and Sherlock might be(come) a thing, what made you start a blog on these two? I just want to know it all ^^ Hope you don't mind sharing a bit :) Thank you for everything you do for this fandom, love you lots!

Hi Lovely!

Oh gosh, what a nice question! I think I’ve talked about this in snippets in various posts, this post being the one talking the most about it, but never as a whole! Apologies if this turns into a long ramble, hah hah!

So I remember exactly when I got into the show SO CLEARLY. It was July of 2013, just a few months before S3 was to air in January 2014. I was over at my friends’ place, and they suggested the show to watch, since we always watch movies together whenever I visit. I remember asking, “Is that the show with Martin Freeman and that Khan actor from Star Trek 2?”. We finished Season one all in one go, and immediately fell in love with Ben and Martin’s portrayals and their chemistry. And then I had to head back home. I was ANGRY because OMG WHAT HAPPENS NEXT and my friends just laughed.

So as soon as I got home, I downloaded S1 and S2 and watched them ALL the way through. I needed more. So, because I already had a Tumblr and knew it was for fandoms, I decided to see what it had to offer. 

Oh boy what did I get into???

So I lurked for a bit, and then I discovered something called “meta”, back when the TRF theories were the prominent meta in the fandom. So while I was getting deep into meta, I started switching my fanart from Ninja Turtles to Sherlock, because I was warming up to Ben’s ethereal face and I wanted to draw it. And I wanted to be a Sherlock fanartist. I briefly shipped Sher1011ie for a week or so, until I rewatched the series again and it just didn’t jive like it did the first few watch-throughs. I was too invested in John and Sherlock’s friendship – I saw them as bestest friends ever, too devoted to each other.

Now, at this point, y’all need to remember this: I was naïve, have never been exposed at length nor ever heard of subtext, was and am not part of the LGBT community (I grew up in a different time and in a conservative city, so being “gay” just wasn’t a thing), had a very heteronormative view on my life, and I just had always just insisted that in all of my fandoms, when I liked two male characters together, it was because “bestest friends ever!!”. I didn’t know I was ace and I’d never read smut up until 3 years ago (yes hi hello I’m so old and so innocent LOL).

Okay, so I was just lurking for a bit, learning my way around fandom, reading meta and just generally dipping my toes quietly into the fandom.

Then came Season 3. 

As many of my followers know, a lot of my fondness for season 3 stems from this being the season that LITERALLY opened my eyes to EVERYTHING: subtext, Johnlock, my own sexuality, and my meta-writing career. 

So, season 3 aired and I decided to dip my toes into “reviewing” the episodes as my first “meta”. They were posted onto my multi-fandom blog here, here and here. I was so proud of them, because it reinvigorated my love for writing (I used to be a pretty prominent Sonic fan-fic author back in the 90′s… I never finished my stories because my interest in the fandom died before I finished them), despite how laughably bad they were, haha. I got a couple compliments on them, but nothing beyond that, especially since I sat down and wrote them for HOURS after each episode aired.

Sometime between TSo3 and HLV, I discovered loudest-subtext-in-television (aka LSiT) and deducingbbcsherlock completely by accident and I was FASCINATED. I ate up everything they wrote. The first time I watched TSo3, something was niggling at my brain but I couldn’t quite place it. It was one of LSiT’s meta that twigged at it. That’s when I learned about subtext, heteronormativity and the queer community. And suddenly, just like that, something in my brain clicked.

Oh. My god. This show is gay, and I actually SHIP these idiots like I did in the Mother Ship (ie. The X-Files Mulder / Scully). That’s why I was SO ANNOYED with Irene. Why Molly was slowly grating on me. Why Mary’s introduction kind of annoyed me but okay I guess I can deal with it. Why everything seemed really romantic but it just couldn’t be, could it? 

I rewatched the series. And it was gay. Y’all, those rainbow-coloured glasses were suddenly GLUED to my head, and I saw gay EVERYWHERE.

So, after HLV, I discovered The Johnlock Conspiracy and I was eating up all the meta about Johnlock I could. Around this time, I also was learning a lot about the LGBT community, its history and sexual fluidity from wsswatson. It was also around this time I discovered asexuality, and I started reading a lot about it. 

In February of 2014, I started this blog because I wanted a place to reblog Johnlock meta. This was the first post I made on this blog, and looking back at it now, I am DYING because wow I never imagined I was going to be this deep into the fandom the day I wrote that. I don’t even remember writing it, to be very honest. I just shake my head, HAH. I think I really started understanding Johnlock because of this post here. It’s still one of my favourites and is one of the ones I credit for helping me understand what I was watching was actually a romance, not a “crime show”. 

Anyway, after learning how to read subtext from mostly LSiT (they wrote a meta about how to read subtext and it was super informative) and other Johnlock bloggers, I wanted to try my hand at my own little Johnlock meta. It was more of an observational post, as my way of trying to interact with the fandom. I am a terribly nervous and shy person, so I never tagged anyone in anything. It was an overwhelming fandom, and it was terrifying to interact. A few bigger bloggers noticed me and were nice enough to comment on a couple of my posts, but I mostly stayed in my little corner, and interacted with my small little group of other smaller fans. I dabbled in both fanart and writing, just plopping my thoughts and art into the aether, hoping something would interest someone enough to start a discussion. 

I started getting braver, and I was “moderating” some of my favourite posts that weren’t mine, but had my additions to it. Mostly, the Phones and Hearts post. I didn’t want to impede, but it was one of my favourite posts, so I went and copied all of the comments in the notes and put them onto one post. I don’t honestly remember HOW I ended up moderating it, but I just did because I was FASCINATED with symbolism, and I was excited because I could finally read subtext and understand it. I still had a small following, and a few people I regularly interacted with on my blog.

So, during the hiatus between S3 and TAB, somewhere along the way I suddenly had a sexuality crisis, when I suddenly realized I wasn’t broken and there was absolutely nothing wrong with me, and damn it, there’s such thing as split attraction model and asexuality?? Mind was BLOWN. I was also slowly becoming obsessed with Mary’s character, and at the time I couldn’t understand why (inevitably, it was because of events happening in my own life and me trying to understand them), but I really enjoyed just psychoanalyzing her. It’s something I’ve ALWAYS loved doing – character studies; I’ve done it in EVERY fandom I’ve been in – and I was doing it for her, Sherlock and John’s characters. 

So yeah, nothing much really happened to me during the S3 hiatus, except my entire world view flipped on its head and I was completely Johnlocked beyond repair. I became known for some painful posts and some lovely revelations and writing a lot of character study posts on both John and Sherlock. I’m very proud of some of my earlier meta, just sad they never really got seen (some of my earliest meta can be seen on my Ao3).

Then came the announcement for TAB in 2015, and the start of my “Tumblr Career”. I put a lot of my energy into my fandom life. I was OBSESSED with TAB, and became known for it. I put my moderation skills to use and created the TAB Starter Pack, which started gaining me some followers because OMG some loser is taking the time out of their day to compile all the news about this new series! AWESOME. I remember, it was around this time I was excited because I got to 1895 followers and it was one of those milestones all Johnlockers like having, hahah. 

In October of 2015, I lost my job and was unemployed. Conveniently, this is also the time when the promo season for TAB started, because we now had a name and airdate. I devoted a LOT of my time, when I wasn’t job hunting, to working on this blog. I was just writing a lot, and obsessing about the upcoming episode.

Then the trailer aired.

And immediately after that trailer dropped on October 24, 2015, I made this post here, which, some would probably say, was the beginning of everything for me. As I was writing that post, with a cracking headache, something clicked in my head, and several hours later, I had written and posted the original Mind Palace Theories of TAB at 2AM-ish, and went to bed.

When I woke up, my post had suddenly gone viral and I couldn’t figure out why. Then it just kept expanding from there, and I made sure to include everything I could onto it, because WOW something I wrote was gaining traction, and interaction, and I just wanted us all to have a good time with it. And as the time for TAB drew closer, suddenly I was gaining followers, and more people interested in what I had to write. I welcomed everyone to continue to predict the outcome with me.

January 1st. Was a complete and total mind fuck. I was liveblogging the episode, and inadvertently created another viral post with my Mycroft’s Death post because FUCK ARE THEY KILLING MYCROFT OFF?? kind of freaked people out (sorry loves!), which gained me some more followers, and at the time, my top post was my December 31st reblog of my Mind Palace Theories post, so anyone who came to my blog, it would have been on the first page of it.

After the episode aired, suddenly, EVERYONE had questions for me, about EVERYTHING, but mostly to scream at me that I was a mind reader, LOL. No, I’m not, I was just a sad, unemployed twat with too much time on my hands and was avoiding job hunting. But good god, all DAY on Jan 1, I was replying to asks, gaining followers like crazy, and pretty much just stating my opinion on anything that someone wanted to know. 

I became known as the unofficial TAB blog, and the one to come to with questions about my interpretation of the episode. I was SO obsessed with TAB, studied every nuance and narrative structure I could. 2016 was “my heyday”, and it was fun. I found my niche, and meta-writing is what I became known for. And until I got a job in April of that year, I was a pretty solid presence in the fandom, if I understand some of what I’ve been told correctly. I still ran my blog as full-time as I could having a full-time job, and still do in some ways, but yeah, 2016 is when I produced a LOT of meta, mostly Mary meta because, as I said above, I was and am obsessed with her character arc. I was learning about myself a lot more by writing meta, and my “original” meta turned into “asks” meta, which was fine by me, because I do like a good prompt to get me going.

Somewhere in there I also somehow became the blog new bloggers came to, which I didn’t and don’t mind at all, because being new in a fandom is scary and I wanted to be a friendly face because I like meeting new people. 

Then we got an announcement for S4, and like TAB I also kept track of anything and everything S4-related, so once again I was sort of the “go-to” place for everything S4 because I compiled all the stuff from setlock bloggers and listed them all for easy-access. I kept track of everything promotional, and I reblogged some of my favourite pre-S4 meta here.

Essentially, I LOVE organizing things, and people liked that I LOVED doing it, so that’s sort of how I kept my following when I wasn’t posting as much new meta. I did make a few original meta before S4, and I made a 68 day video countdown to the series which is cringy AF and I’m not linking it (lol you can find it if you look hard enough). 

We all know what happened in S4. I took a bit of heat after S4 aired, because I got people’s hopes up. I was discouraged for a bit, but then I started receiving asks that weren’t really asks, but “I need advice” and “I need support”. 

And I started answering life questions, and realized people LIKED my responses, liked my little personal anecdotes in each of my replies, and felt comforted by it. So, after S4 aired, I became an eclectic mix of life advice, meta, fics, music and TJLC / tinhatting blog. I have a “no judgement” approach to my blogging, and I think that’s why I’m still gaining a steady dozen or so followers every couple weeks, rather than losing. The only time I took a big hit was the Tumblr Feedpocalypse, where they fucked up the algorithm and I’m not getting nearly as many hits on my posts as I used to, but that could also be because we lost so many people to S4, especially after Jan 1, 2018 when people were hoping for another episode.

I personally don’t think I’m popular, but I suppose I am by Tumblr standards. I dunno, I think we all have that “starry eyed” view of popular bloggers, and I just can’t picture myself as someone anyone would fawn over. I’m just me, and you can take it or leave it.

I think where I’m at now and what I’m known for is a good place to be, to be honest, despite how S4 turned out. I’m not certain, but I FEEL like I have a positive reputation here, but don’t quote me. I know I have people in this fandom who hate me, and quite frankly it saddens me that they feel they need to expel energy on me that way when they deserve to just be happy and forget about me. 

ANYWAY, sorry that got long and rambly, but it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for awhile, but I was waiting for the prompt to come because *shrugs* I dunno, self esteem thing, makes me think no one REALLY cares until someone actually asks, hah.

And if you made it all the way to the end here, Love ya Nonny, and thank you for asking and thank you for being a follower of my blog

[wesleybates]

11 Real Uncommon Ways to Increase Website Traffic to eCommerce

Getting more users to come to your website can be a challenge if you don’t know what to do. Maybe you have tried some of the common ways to increase your website traffic. Having an eCommerce store may even complicate the process.

Let’s take a look at some more uncommon ways to increase website traffic.

In order to get web traffic to your eCommerce website, several things need to be in place. You need to make sure your site is built properly and employs a solid site structure and layout.

It should also be responsive, mobile-friendly, and optimized for search engines. That being said, we all know the common ways at your disposal for driving traffic to a website.

Yes, you can post on social media and run advertisements everywhere. However, what if you wanted to employ some of the more uncommon ways to increase website traffic?

Believe it or not, some of these techniques will actually give you a pretty nice boost in if they are implemented correctly.

What is Website Traffic?

Simply put, website traffic is the number of people that are visiting your website over a specific amount of time. This can be measured daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Perhaps the best baseline of measurement is to track monthly visitors. Google Analytics is a great way to track this data.

The idea behind driving traffic to a website is that the more traffic a website gets, the more likely it is to increase conversions. Whether those conversions are sales, link clicks, ad clicks, or affiliate marketing, the concept is the same.

Website owners try all sorts of things to increase website traffic. Some of these techniques fall flat because they are not implemented correctly or because they were the wrong process to use.

Another big problem that website owners face is gaining traffic but not conversions. A good example of this is an eCommerce website that posts on social media and gains visitors, but does not increase sales.

You see, an increase in website traffic doesn’t matter if you are not able to increase website conversions and make money.

What is eCommerce?

The term eCommerce means that you are selling a product online. Over the years, online stores have become wildly popular because it makes it easy for people to shop for products from anywhere.

There are several ways to set up an online store. The process you take will be based on the type of CMS platform you are using. One of the most popular options is WooCommerce.

This is a hugely popular online store platform that plugs directly into your WordPress website and gives you the ability to sell physical and digital products online.

One of the biggest issues online storeowners run into is trying to both increase website traffic and increase conversions. As stated above, you can try some of the more common techniques available to drive traffic to a website.

However, there are also some more uncommon methods you can use to help drive traffic to your eCommerce website and help with conversions. Even better, is most of the methods below will help you do this for free.

Let’s take a look at 11 uncommon ways to increase website traffic to your eCommerce website.

1. Build a Resource Page

A resource page is always a good thing to have on a website. However, this is also a great way to increase website traffic. You can do this in a few different ways. Add resources to the page, add thank you blurbs to companies you admire and have done work with, or add your favorite products and services.

A resource page just isn’t a good move for SEO purposes, though. It also keeps your current website users and customers engaged because it is considered new content going up. This leads to repeat visitors and an increase in conversion rates.

2. Overhaul and Restructure Your Old Blog Posts

If you have a business website, eCommerce site, or both, it is always a good idea to have a blog section. Starting a blog on your website gives you an outlet to post fresh new ideas. These can be product or service related, news and updates, stories, and other articles you may want to publish.

Over time, your blog posts can become stale, outdated, and may need some content and statistical updates. Things like new screenshots, new images in general, and specific content revamps can really help increase traffic.

If you add other SEO specifics like keyword optimization and meta descriptions, your old blog posts have a chance to skyrocket.

3. Guest Blog on Other Websites

Another uncommon and often overlooked way to increase website traffic is to guest blog. Guest blogging on other websites has a bunch of benefits for you.

Not only does it get your name out to people who would have otherwise not seen it, but it also gives you the chance to get important links going back to your site from other solid industry websites.

It is a good idea to guest blog on sites that are at least somewhat like your own. You want to hit an audience that will have an interest in what you are selling on your site.

Never be afraid to approach other website owners either. The worst answer you will get is a simple “no.” At which point you have lost nothing. More often than not though you will get a resounding “yes” because it is basically free content for other sites.

Remember, this will give you a backlink to your website, which is excellent in regards to SEO purposes.

4. Optimize Your Site for LSI Keywords

In order to do this, you need to know what an LSI keyword is. Once you do, you can put this practice into place. You see, LSI keywords are words and phrases related to your target keyword.

And don’t get me wrong, it isn’t exactly easy to rank high for any keywords without putting in the work. However, using an LSI keyword strategy is a fantastic way to help your article rank higher and increase website traffic.

If you are still a little confused regarding this technique, then take a look at this example.

Say you are writing a post or building a page about social media. Obviously “social media” or something close to that will be your main keyword. The LSI keywords would be words like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

5. Start Doing Content Transformation

Content transformation is simple. Basically you take your current content and transform it into another type of format. There are several different formats to choose from. Take that content and transform it into an eBook, video, infographic, or podcast.

When you transform the content and repurpose, it gives your audience more ways to interact with it and gives them several different ways to view and use the material.

These days, video content is extremely popular. Oftentimes, transforming or converting your text to a video piece will help increase website traffic right away.

6. Properly Submit Website to Search Engines

A common mistake website owners make is not getting their site properly indexed and submitted on the big search engines. Yes, once your website is up you can perform all types of search engine and website optimizations.

However, getting your website properly submitted to the big search engines if often overlooked. You want to make sure you have a proper XML Sitemap on your website.

Using tools like Google Search Console and submitting to Yahoo and Bing the right way will increase your website traffic because it helps the search engines properly index and list your site.

This is the next step to take after the common website SEO moves have been made.

7. Require Users to Share for Bonus Content

You should always have social sharing buttons on your website. This is a fantastic way to increase website traffic because it allows site users to share your content across social networks.

In order to take this a step further, you can also require users to share content in order for them to get more bonus content. The bonus content needs to be something that your users will want.

Something like an informative eBook, or maybe a file they might want. Maybe a specific file or audio download or other relevant info that will make them share.

This means your content is being shared by your users, and others are seeing it and getting interested as well.

8. Start a Podcast

Three simple words, Podcasts are exploding! As a matter of fact, 36% of Americans listen to a podcast every month. This number continues to rise as well, as both creating a podcast and submitting it for listeners gets easier and easier.

Not a lot of people who do podcasts create them specifically to increase website traffic. However, in this case, it is a great idea because whenever you gain a listener you will also garner interest in your website and other content.

Going on podcasts that others have created is also a good option. You can be the guest and plug your own website and gain traffic that way as well.

9. Ad Swap With Another Website

One of the more uncommon ways you can increase website traffic is to do an ad swap with another website. Ad swapping is exactly what you think it is…a relevant website runs an ad for you that links back to where you want, and you do the exact same thing for said website.

No money switches hand, but it is a great way to market your site on other websites and help increase traffic back to you. You can actually do this with as many other relevant sites as you want.

The more ad swapping you do, the greater potential you have to increase website traffic.

The best thing about ad swapping is it won’t cost you anything. So you can get some good online marketing in place for no cost to you.

10. Promote Your Site Using the Blogger Outreach Method

Okay, before we dig into blogger outreach for a second, it is important to remember that yes, oftentimes this can come off as spam (initially) and may not be your first option to increase website traffic.

However, if handled correctly, this can be a very powerful and personal way to get more traffic flowing to your website.

Basically, blogger outreach is a way of putting your content, product, service, website, etc, in front of relevant bloggers and journalists by sending them personalized emails.

The main goal here is, of course, to get these people talking about what you have sent them. This, if done correctly, will lead to increased website traffic.

The main problem here is that sometimes these emails can come off as spammy for some. But, if you take the time to personalize them (even if you are using an email template), then these emails can be very powerful.

Create a solid one and hit the right people, and your website or product will get more eyes on it in no time at all.

11. Run a Contest or a Giveaway

Running a contest or a giveaway is a good way to not only drum up some interests because users have a chance at something for free, but it is a great way to interact with site users and gain increased traffic.

You will notice that most of your favorite brands and other websites have certain contests and giveaways.

There is a simple reason for this. They work. They build brand recognition and build website traffic over time. There are several great ways to run a contest or giveaway from your website.

Whichever way you choose to go with it, simply interacting and offering something of value to your website users increases their interest in most everything else you do as well.

Final Thoughts

There are multiple ways to increase website traffic, both quickly and over time. Many of the more popular ways to increase website traffic are used by everyone, and oftentimes, you have to pay for them to be relevant.

By trying out some new, more uncommon ideas, you give your eCommerce website a chance to increase traffic and gain popularity over time. Furthermore, these ideas will not only increase website traffic, but will also increase website conversion rates.

Go over and try some of the ideas above. See what works for you and what may not. I hope the ideas are helpful and that over time, you see a significant increase in website traffic and conversions.

At Advanced Digital Media Services, our team of Web Designing Arvada, CO has some of the best e-commerce website builders to make your website clean, organized, and visually appealing to the customer. Get in touch with us now to learn how we can improve your e-commerce website!

[webbygraphic001]

10 Popular Design Trends It’s Time to Let Die

If you’ve ever moved from one home to another, you know how difficult it can be to get rid of things you’ve owned for years. While digging through your closet, you find an old pair of pants you used to wear all the time despite the growing holes in the knees. But you tell yourself, “Maybe I’ll wear them around the house when it gets warmer” or “I bet the grunge look will come back in style”.

It’s easy to make these kinds of justifications in web design and development, too. You think:

“I’ve used the keyword meta tag for as long as I can remember. What can it hurt to keep doing so?”

Similar to how your clothes may become outdated or your appliances obsolete over time, the same thing happens with design and development trends. Rather than hold onto techniques that no longer serve you and only add more to your workload, it’s a much better idea to clear them out and make way for modern trends that’ll have a greater impact.

10 Popular Design Trends It’s Time to Let Die

When we talk about outdated web design trends, we’re not just talking about ones that have been obsolete for years. We’re also referring to trends and techniques that we know for a fact compromise the user experience and need to go away ASAP.

1. Cheesy Stock Photos

There’s nothing inherently bad about using stock photos. Many clients don’t have the budgets or wherewithal to create their own company photos and stock photos are a viable alternative.

That said, there was a time when “bad” (i.e. super cheesy and unrealistic) stock photos were all the rage. Even today, you’ll find websites that use these kinds of photos because there’s still an assumption that two people shaking hands in a well-lit conference room signals trust. (It doesn’t.)

Image via DepositPhotos.

2. Hero Sliders

Image slider technology was pretty great in its heyday. It allowed web designers to conserve space while displaying a number of promotional offers at once. In addition to sliders often slowing down page speeds, they also have a tendency to slow users down as they distract them from moving onto other parts of a website.

Verizon Wireless, for instance, has a great example of a strong but simple hero image design in 2019:

This is vastly different from the image slider it used back in 2013:

For the most part, we’ve learned to be more efficient with this space, though there are still some websites that can’t make up their minds about which offer to show above the fold… which only makes it more difficult for visitors to decide next steps. Take the initiative and do it for them with a single hero banner.

3. Autoplay

It’s not common to find websites with background audio, let alone autoplay audio, these days. That said, what you do occasionally find are websites that automatically play videos or ads with audio. Needless to say, this needs to stop. If your video (or audio) players don’t allow your visitors to take control of when they start, change that up now.

4. The 3-Click Rule

Over the years, web designers have looked for ways to decrease friction in the user experience. The three-click rule was meant to be one of the ways to do this. However, according to a recent report from the Nielsen Norman Group, there’s never been any data to back up this claim:

“In fact, a study by Joshua Porter has debunked it; the study showed that user dropoff does not increase when the task involves more than 3 clicks, nor does satisfaction decrease. Limiting interaction cost is indeed important, but the picture is more complicated than simply counting clicks and having a rule of thumb for the maximum number allowed.”

Rather than minimize for minimization’s sake, consider the complexity of the task or funnel you’re designing when determining quantity of steps.

5. (External) Links That Open in the Same Tab

There are a number of reasons to add links to your content: for navigational purposes, promotional purposes, and referential purposes. But when you add a hyperlink to your text, consider the following: Is it okay if the link directs visitors to a page in this same browser tab?

External links, for instance, should always open in a new browser tab. Your goal in designing a website is to get more visitors to convert. Letting an external link replace your website in the open tab will only decrease the chances of that happening. In some cases, internal links shouldn’t be opened in the same tab either. So, be sure to think about this the next time you add a link to your site.

6. Non-Traditional Scrolling

Although we’ve become accustomed to swipe gestures in mobile apps, horizontal and other non-traditional scrolling isn’t something that’s caught on with websites. While it’s definitely a design trend that helped many businesses set themselves apart from the pack a few years back, it’s just too gimmicky to use these days.

Robby Leonardi’s interactive resume website was one of the first I remember seeing and it was a brilliant way to capture attention — especially from those of us who grew up with Mario.

But today? Any sort of non-traditional scrolling is just impractical and unnecessary. Even Robby’s current website has broken up this side-scrolling design and turned it into a vertical-scrolling page:

If you want to keep visitors engaged with your website in this day and age, don’t make them figure out how to scroll through your website. 

7. Keyword Meta Tag

For years (we’re talking nearly a decade), the keyword meta tag has not been supported by popular search engines. Despite knowing that the meta tag is useless, some designers still take the time to add it in. But why bother if it’s an extra step that gets you nothing in return?

8. Bad Pop-ups

Although pop-ups have undergone an evolution over the years — from the super-annoying pop-up ads that appeared outside the browser to the ever-present privacy notices we now see thanks to GDPR. While there is certainly some value in using pop-ups on a website, there are just too many kinds of bad pop-ups that need to disappear.

“Bad” pop-ups are ones that:

Show up too early on a website (like the second someone enters it);

Appear too many times during a single or return visit;

Send users to Facebook Messenger to collect their lead magnet and then bombard them with messages there;

Contain two buttons. Users that accept the offer, get a friendly message. Those that don’t are served up aggressive or shame-inducing language;

Repeat an offer that’s already designed into the website as a promotional banner.

9. Slow-Loading Websites

Mobile websites are notoriously difficult to optimize for speed when compared to their desktop counterparts. Unlike in years past where you could’ve rationalized away speed optimizations for mobile, today, it needs to be a priority with Google’s mobile-first indexing. PWAs are one way to give your mobile site an instant speed boost.

On a related note, by designing a PWA instead of a mobile-responsive website, you’d be able to cater to users with poor or no wi-fi connectivity — a segment that’s often been overlooked in web design.

10. Flash

I cannot believe I’m having to include this last one in 2019, but it seems there are still websites using the Flash Player.

Adobe has already told us that it would be cutting support for Flash next year. Web browsers are starting to remove their support for Flash players as well. And good riddance. Flash has long had issues with security flaws and usability issues.

If you’re trying to hold out on this (or your clients are dragging their feet), keep in mind that this is what visitors will see on many browsers in 2020 and beyond:

Bottom line: If the creator of Flash is pulling support, you need to do the same for any of your websites that still use it.

Wrap-Up

It’s easy to get wrapped up in what the next big thing is in web design — AR tech, typography trends, color gradients, etc. But what about all of those trends and techniques that have become a habit over the years?

Rather than hold onto outdated design strategies that will only hinder your progress as a web designer and hold your clients’ websites back, start shedding these obsolete (or soon-to-be obsolete) practices now.

Source from Webdesigner Depot https://ift.tt/35F5F4K from Blogger https://ift.tt/34zbnVB

[lauraramargosian]

Wentworth: Season 7 nails episode one recap!

Wentworth: Season 7 nails episode one recap!

Wentworth: Season 7 nails episode one recap!

Warning: This is a recap of Wentworth’s season 7, episode one. Do not read ahead if you do not want to learn something you’d rather see on screen.

The 1st episode of Wentworth Season 7 begins by reminding you what happened in previous seasons, you know, drugs, scandal, murder, all that crazy stuff.

It begins, episode one introduces Rita (Leah Purcell) while being released from isolation. Then Vera Bennet (Kate Atkinson) is questioned about Marie Winter (Susie Poter) and her decided sentence.

Although, Vera doesn’t quite have the answer for Allie.

There’s also a new inmate but she’s looking a little too excited to get her hands on some drugs, which as you know is a problem.

What’s going to happen between that love triangle and the truth about Joanne?

Most importantly, we have Boomer and Kaz who want to help Liz fulfill her bucket list as long as she puts one together. As you know, Liz suffers from dementia.

The writers did a great job at keeping the viewer interested, although, this one could have been written a little better in retrospect of the last season.

I feel like you have enter any 1st episode of a new season with a boom, as well as those in between and last, I just wasn’t feeling the tension I felt when Frankie was around…

The surprise of Vera telling Will she is going to step back as governor causes a whole new load of questions.

At least the drama is still high, I’m hoping to see a visit from Frankie at some point, she was truly a character that drove the show in the right direction, it feels off without her in the scene.

We miss you on Wentworth Frankie!!!!

Although, we are glad that she got her “happy ending,” at least we think…

What’s going to happen to Wentworth after Vera steps down?

Have you seen the series?

Let us know what you think in the comments below. Be sure to stay up-to-date on the latest Wentworth news by giving our Facebook page a thumbs up!

Blessed be!

Wentworth – Season 7 Trailer

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

Laurara Monique is known by various celebrities as the youngest and kindest celebrity blogger. PCG has been described as a "celebrity safe zone."

Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

Where will the Empire go without Jamal Lyon? Check it out right here on positive celebrity gossip and entertainment news. #Empire #Fox #JamalLyon #lastseason #emotions #positive #celebritygossip #celebritynews

Where will the Empire go without Jamal Lyon?

Where will the Empire go without Jamal Lyon? Check it out right here on positive celebrity gossip and entertainment news.

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Positive Celebrity Gossip - Laurara Monique

The world today seems to take marriage for granted. Many people take hearts and split them in half without a flinch and honestly, it’s a sad fact. Further, there are 19,353,568 divorces over the course of an average first marriage that ends in divorce (8 years, if you make it past the 7-year itch). Today is a special day, just like every other day, people celebrate their love on Valentines day and Mothers day and anniversaries but what about the other days when it’s “just another day?” You don’t give up on marriage, it’s a promise, it’s a challenge and it’s not always perfect. In fact, it’s far from perfect, most importantly, if two people can realize that as a fact, there’s no way for failure unless it’s a purely toxic and abusive situation. My husband Brendan Kent Warkentin has spent every moment with me, the dark, the happy, the unknown and made it a lot less scary. I mean, he’s a celebrity all on his own. One with morals, values and infinite love. My man, he made me follow my dreams, whether that meant traveling, being apart for a short amount of time or allowing me to sleep a little more when my Crohn’s disease isn’t being nice. Writer's block happens often but today all I can think about is the man that my love is and he doesn’t just say “I love you babe,” he shows it with actions, many, many unforgettable actions. You know, they say that children end up growing up and marrying someone like the parent they were closest too, in this case, it’s my mom because God knows my dad wasn’t there to do shit for family. Brendan Kent, my heart will always be yours, no man, no person in this world will tear me from the fire that burns when you simply cuddle me to sleep, or give me a kiss before work and send me a message letting me know you got there safe. That shows how much you acknowledge how often I worry when you simply drive, something we all do every day. I love you more than words can describe. You are my King and as your Queen, I will forever show you off to the world. Shit, you proposed to me while I was sick as a dog in bed. If that isn’t through thick and thin, good and bad, I don’t know what relates but you kept your word, just as I will always keep mine. Never forget the promise I made you in the middle of the Luxor. You are my love, you mean more to me than anything this materialistic world could give me in life. I’m thankful you chased me, I’m thankful you love me, I’m thankful for every part of you, head to toe and especially your personality. I love you babe. I love you so damn much. Thank you for pushing me to follow those dreams, the success that comes it not just for me, it's for us. Te iubesc my love.

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[kitashiwrites]

I'm sorry my post was really aggressive. I still stand by my point that it ISN'T fair to dismiss Mor's romantic feelings (or lack thereof) towards Az, but how I acted was really awful. You don't have to post this publicly, but I hope you know I'm very sorry. My intention wasn't to try to start drama, but just receive an explanation over WHY you still ship Moriel. My way of going about it was TERRIBLE. I know sorry is just a word, but I'M SORRY.

2/2 I didn’t send you three asks. I only sent you one? Just to clear that up.3/3 I also didn’t send more than one ask. :/ 

Okay Anon. While I find it extremely hard to believe because of the timing (especially because for as long as I have been on here, I have RARELY gotten asks, let alone 3 in such quick succession that are so similar), as well as the fact that you clearly don’t stand behind your words because you felt the need to do this all on anon/have to make sure we know that you still think we are wrong, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt & accept your apology.In regards to your question, why I still ship Moriel, @sarahviehmann honestly said it best in her original answer to you: “ACOMAF was written in a way that intended for them to be shipped. So those people spent a year building up their fanon and meta and so forth, only to have the rug pulled out from under them.”

(For the sake of everyone, I’m putting this under a cut. It got way long.)

I hated ACOWAR. I’ve made no secret of that. I’ve also made no secret as to WHY. I’ve been writing fic for this series for over a year, & heavily focused on ACOMAF. I started when there were literally 7 fics posted to Ao3. Basically all of my free time at home & all of my breaks at work were spent either writing fic, discussing the series/meta with people here/talking my poor friends’ ears off over dinner, or planning fic for characters I wanted to explore in POV fics like Rhys, Tamlin, & Tarquin. Hell, I still have a 10 chapter Amarantha POV pre-ACOTAR through ACOTAR fic that’s over half written at 16k that I originally wanted to try as a surprise for my readers. I read ACOMAF enough times that I honestly would have said that I knew those characters as well as my own family, knew exactly what happened in which chapters, & got many comments here & on Ao3 from people who felt I’d captured the characters correctly, so I felt pretty good about what to expect going forward.

When ACOWAR spoilers came out, absolutely nothing made sense with what we knew or had been prior established canon. Most of all in regards to Mor, Rhys, Feyre, & Lucien, but I’m going to specifically focus on Mor, since she’s at the crux of the issue at hand. In Mor’s case, we took a woman who is described in ACOMAF as “a queen who owned her body, her life, her destiny, and never apologized for it” & says to Feyre, “I once lived in a place where the opinion of others mattered. It suffocated me, nearly broke me. So you’ll understand me, Feyre, when I say that I know what you feel, and I know what they tried to do to you, and that with enough courage, you can say to hell with a reputation. You do what you love, what you need”, & in ACOWAR made her a victim in circumstances that make absolutely no sense for the character we had known up until that date. Queen of the Hewn City? She wasn’t even treated with enough respect to be prepared to go into a meeting with her abusers, let alone shown that she is in charge. The first real female friend Feyre has ever had? Regulated to acting like a jealous girlfriend around Cassian whenever Nesta got too close. And speaking of Cassian, it was pointed out in another post (I’m sorry I don’t have the link right now) that the Cassian & Mor moments read like they were originally Az & Mor moments & were hastily changed when suddenly they weren’t supposed to be even friends. Nothing in this book read like it had been edited for continuity.

There are many bloggers who are far more qualified than I am to speak on Mor’s coming out scene, & while there was a divide, there were quite a few I know & follow who felt it was poorly written/bad rep, & I agree with their reasoning. Besides the fact that I don’t believe for one dang second that no one in the Inner Circle at a minimum would have picked up on something bothering Mor in 500 years or that she wouldn’t have at least told them even if she hid everything from Keir, there is the fact of Azriel. Azriel is in love with her, no disputing it. But it is mentioned by Rhys that Az has always thought himself unworthy of her, & Mor says that she could take her clothes off in front of him & he wouldn’t do anything. Does that sound like someone who is trying to avoid him because she isn’t interested, or someone who is creepily stalking her? In the Nessian short Wings & Embers, Cassian speaks on their relationship as well: “He wasn’t stupid. He knew she and Azriel were … whatever they were. Knew Azriel had been in love with Mor from the moment she’d strutted into the war-camp five centuries ago. And Cassian had been jealous—of Mor’s shy glances at Azriel in those first few weeks, and the fact that his dearest friend and brother … was looking at someone else.”

I’m not going to rehash Wings & Embers or ACOMAF for you. But as Sarah said, it was clearly written with them as a ship in mind, & this is from the POV of a character that has known them since the beginning, not just a few months like Feyre.

Why I still ship Moriel at this point? Because I ship it in any form. I love her & Az together period, even as friends. This ship was one of the ways @illyriantremors & I bonded originally, before we found out how much else we had in common & she became as good as a biological sister to me (I call her my Threadsister for a reason), because we shipped it back in the beginning before there was really any fic for it because it was overshadowed by Feysand, Nessian, & Elucien. Moriel was our Nessian; the unconfirmed side-ship with so much potential & evidence to back it up. When Sierra met SJM at San Diego Comic Con last summer, SJM dedicated Sierra’s copy of ACOMAF to Moriel. Why the af would an author do that if they planned to destroy a ship in the next book from the beginning?

We still love Moriel because it is hard to let go of something you’ve loved that much after you’ve been strung along & then had the rug pulled out from under you with no actual basis in ACOMAF to say “oh, it was there all along”; like when rereading ACOTAR through the ACOMAF filter, as I like to say to people, & seeing the clues that were left to the deeper story for Rhys. For me, those were not in ACOMAF upon reading it again after ACOWAR. I noticed you using my tags in your defense of yourself to Sarah regarding why I wanted to ignore ACOWAR &, by your interpretation, erase Mor’s sexuality. If you had read any of my blog at all after ACOWAR, you would have read that isn’t true, but I’ll spell it out for you: I want to ignore ACOWAR & what it did to my favorite characters’ personalities/their interactions with each other. I want to forget that Mor’s agency was taken away from her & that she was regulated to a plot twist. I want to forget that Az has been made out to be a creepy stalker. I want to forget Rhys treating Mor like she would be too emotional to deal with the negotiations with Kier & Eris & so he & Az didn’t tell her. I want to forget Feyre using Lucien to make Tamlin jealous in the Spring Court while she dismantled it from within & putting him in danger. And so much more.

I personally hate the book for multiple reasons, ranging everywhere from inconsistent characterization to grammar/editing issues. But I’m stuck with the facts it gave us, which is why writing fic is so hard to even consider anymore. It made everything about the series, not just Mor & Az, something I no longer can love with the intensity I once did, & the fandom diminishes that love more & more everyday with their bullying of people for not believing exactly the way they do, which is exactly what you contributed to when you sent those asks to myself & Sierra. And honestly, I couldn’t care less what you think of me. But if you had even looked at one of Sierra’s actual written posts/answers to asks—just one—you would have seen how quiet she’s been about her love for them as a ship & how determined she’s been to not to offend people while she’s been trying to come to terms with losing something that has been a lifesaver for her, to the point she has mostly stopped contributing to the fandom at all. She posted two Moriel drabbles during her birthday week because she was inspired by the Azriel candle I got her for her birthday, & as she said to you in her response to your original message, they were her way of saying farewell to Moriel. And guess what: even though it isn’t canon, people liked them.

I view Mor as bi, & if she’s given a healthy, happy female love interest in a future installment, then awesome. I want Moriel at least as close friends because I genuinely don’t think Az (at least the one from ACOMAF that actually made sense) would begrudge her if he knew the truth. Would he be sad? Sure, but I think he would support her nonetheless, just as the rest of the Inner Circle would. But I have absolutely no faith that SJM will give Mor anything good because she can milk the drama and turmoil she’s created, & I have no desire to see the characters & ships (across the board) I have loved so much destroyed any further.

I think @my-name-is-fireheart put it perfectly in her chime in on Sarah’s post: “Also, we should keep in mind that Mor expresses sexual attraction to men, she just prefers women. How she feels about men romantically is also blurred, though it’s slightly more clear. She says she doesn’t think she loves Az romantically but she doesn’t want to try it just to see.” SJM didn’t even know how to break her own ship apart properly to fit what you suggested, which is a good chunk of why we are even having this discussion right now.

I know Moriel is no longer canon. Cazigan (Cassian/Azriel/Mor) isn’t canon either, but I still love that. I have enjoyed their interactions with each other more than anything else since they were introduced in ACOMAF. The entire Inner Circle made me so happy for their closeness & how much of a family they were. I feel for a plot twist & a couple extra Benjamin Franklins, SJM destroyed everything that made one of my favorite characters in the entire series who she was (a strong, independent woman who didn’t let her circumstances break her & showed Feyre how not to let hers break her) & made her a poor caricature of herself, & made Az something he never has been before either because SJM hastily had to make her new & poorly executed addition work.

I shouldn’t be surprised though. This is the woman who attempted to retcon Eris of all characters into a decent person. And also took away any modicum of being able to read Tamlin as the multifaceted antagonist he had been & just turned him into a completely hateful ass with no loyalty to anyone to further drive home how perfect Rhys is supposed to be (which he definitely is not in ACOWAR, & I say that as someone who loved the morally grey character of Rhys).

TL;DR I ship Mor with Az in any form, even as friends, Mor being bi is not an issue, & I have lost all respect for SJM as an author after ACOWAR for giving us a poorly written/poorly edited product after the anticipation/hype this book had. Make of that what you will; I don’t care. I’m out of effs to give, & your ask & the other Az one I received, no matter who it was from or what your intentions were, pretty much tipped the scale in favor of me wanting to step back even further & have nothing to do with this fandom ever again.

I would ask that next time you think you have a problem with someone (because I doubt Sierra & I will be the last people you do this to), please think about how it comes across & think about your target. Your original ask was terribly hateful, & there is no amount of apology that can take that hurt away. And you would be amazed how far a little kindness & grace when asking a question instead of an accusatory message can go.

This explanation is more than you probably bargained for when you started this yesterday, but that’s the last I’ll say on any of this.

[orionsangel86]

Hey tumblr people, friends, SPN family,

You may have realised that my blog has become the virtual version of tumbleweed rolling through a desert in recent weeks/months. I noticed on checking my blog recently that I have had an influx of new followers which I think is predominantly thanks to a shout out from Shirley (@destieldrabblesdaily) which I am infinitely grateful for because I consider her one of the best blogs in the SPN fandom. It is for that reason among others that I feel pretty damn bad about not being around recently to share in your speculation, meta and general love for the show.

I haven’t said much since the finale, or even about the finale. I never wrote an episode review for any of the last 3 episodes of season 12. (still haven’t seen 12x21 and don’t plan to) I guess I just want to explain why.

In the past few months SPN has been losing its grip on me, I guess I always thought this would happen one day as it always has in the past with other things that I have falling in love and obsession with until I just… well… get over it. Usually its when a show finishes or movie franchise ends though, rather than whilst it’s still going on. I haven’t felt that itchy desire to constantly check my dash, or write meta or obsess over speculation for the show lately at all. I tried re-watching season 12 and I just couldn’t maintain my concentration. I instead started watching other shows – American Gods is fantastic – and getting out a bit more as well. Tumblr kinda sucked me into this pit where my social life pretty much dried up and became non-existent. Though in all fairness, tumblr also got me through a pretty nasty stint of depression.

I keep hoping that this will be temporary, that perhaps when season 13 comes to our screens that I’ll jump right back in, but I’m not so sure. I guess I’ll watch it, but I don’t know how much I’ll participate in fandom in the future. I want to, I still have that desire to get involved but I don’t have the energy or desire to write meta about the actual show right now. I guess I kinda feel like everything is already being said by the other fantastic meta writers on tumblr and my opinion isn’t really needed.

The thing is, I am tired of SPN. I am tired of the game they are playing with us. I say this, knowing full well that they are dangling destiel in front of us like a carrot dangled in front of a donkey, so close but still so far. Eventually we will get our carrot – of this I am almost certain – but they sure as hell will continue to put us through a bunch of utter crap before we get there.

This is what I am fed up with. I did start re-watching season 12 and I just can’t fathom some things that drove me crazy. Like why when we were first introduced to the British men of letters, it was two strong women who ruled the screen, but by the end, it was another two generic white men to add to our already generic white guy cast. They could have written it in so many different ways to how they did.

Billy’s death pissed me off, so did Alesha’s and Tasha’s. By the time they took Eileen from us I was fuming. Then when they went and wrote off Rowena with an off screen death only told to us in description form I had given up.

On top of this they continued to write scenes of non-con, scenes of violence against POC and women that could easily be avoided whilst maintaining suspense and drama, a dodgy plot point centering around a women fighting her right to choose against the white men trying to take that choice away from her, and on top of it all, fucking Lucifer still being a big part of the show when his character should have died at the end of season 11. His entire story this season was so boring I wanted to skip most of his scenes. I hated HATED his character.

I’m sorry to be negative. The show did some wonderful things this year that I am so happy about. Dean’s story arc was wonderful. His confrontation with Mary in 12x22 had me in tears and I screamed FINALLY out loud as he opened up and admitted things that he has kept inside for his whole life. Dean held this whole season together he really did. The emotional plot was wonderful, it’s what kept me around until the finale because I could see Dabb’s plan for the characters emotional development so clearly in the subtext and later text. Well, until 12x19 for Cas because after 12x19 I don’t understand a fucking thing Cas did and I bloody hope he really has been mind wammied by Jack all this time because otherwise it doesn’t make a lick of sense for his character development.

Ultimately, what season 12 did that was GREAT was threefold:

It built up Dean’s emotional development to its climax where he has finally let Sam ‘go’ and admit the years of abuse he suffered under John, as well as admitting that he was a parent to Sam rather than a brother. Dean’s entire story throughout the whole series has been building to this point and it was WONDERFUL to see.

It built up Sam’s story in the same way, in that he was able to finally break free from under Dean’s wing and accept his own responsibility and place in the world as a whole – as a leader and hero – rather than something tainted and wrong. Season 12 signalled the end of Winchester toxic co-dependency and I was HERE FOR THAT.

It gave us destiel. Now, I say this with certainty guys, although I know it is still contested. Consider it my parting gift to you. Destiel is real and we are going there. Season 12 basically gave it to us because it did things that it cannot now backtrack on. I have never been more certain. Even AFTER 8x17, after Dean’s confession, after “He’s in love… with humanity” and “it was all about saving one human” even after 11x19 and our Hunting Husbands, I still had a whole bunch of doubt on the topic. Now though? I don’t see how it is possible to watch 12x10, 12x12, 12x19 and now, the end of 12x23 without being like “hang on a freaking second – what the hell actually is going on with these guys?” Destiel is gonna happen. This is my speculation for you. Cas will be brought back but he will be brought back wrong and probably under Jack’s control and will walk away from Dean – still crying at his feet – all cold and emotionless as if Dean was nothing to him. Dean will then stop at nothing to get him back. I predict that will happen around the mid-season finale and it will be a big moment for destiel. Another 8x17 but more intense perhaps? Another ‘crypt scene’ but this time with a love confession from both sides? Guys I see it. I can’t not see it now. The one thing season 12 did was take away my doubts. Destiel is real and it is happening and I am pretty sure we will get there by end of season 13.

The problem is, this is no longer enough for me. Even if Season 13 starts with Cas coming back to life in some spectacular beauty and the beast moment which ends in a kiss and a cut to their wedding day… its still not enough anymore. I can’t watch this series just for a ship. I can’t keep going for the fucking carrot dangling in front of me when my hoofs are bleeding and raw and my back is breaking from the weight of all the shit I’ve been forced to carry. The carrot isn’t worth it.

I used to adore this show. Not for destiel, but for the stories, the mythology, the characters and their colourful world of Supernatural things. Now, the characters are slowly reaching peak development and I am getting fed up of watching them get beat down. I want them to have their peace, their happy ending. The stories are no longer fresh and exciting. They are Lucifer and his ridiculous Nephilim baby/not baby.

I am also so fed up of Cas’s story not making sense, of him being controlled or brainwashed or forced to do things he hates. Of his absence when it makes no sense (like when Claire is involved and not a word is spoken about him) or of writers writing him so off key that he comes across idiotic. (thanks Bucklemming). I can’t keep watching the writers butcher this character I adore with all my heart.  

I am so so happy for Wayward Sisters and I will support it with all my might. If only because these writers need to UNDERSTAND that they cannot keep killing off the female characters on this show like they mean nothing. Its just heartbreaking to think that we will never get Charlie, Eileen, Rowena, Billy, Alesha or any of the other female characters who have been wrongly killed off in Supernatural join the female cast of this spin off. I’m excited for Wayward Sisters more than I am for Supernatural right now, because Supernatural is just a massive disappointment for me.

I am sorry I feel this way, its been eating at me for a while. I think it’s the reason I have taken this break. I just can’t put all my time and energy into something that feels toxic to me. I live in fanfic at the moment because it is the characters I adore without the awful truth of canon – even if occasionally canon does still give us those fanfic moments – it’s the other moments that are the issue.

*sigh*

I’m sorry. Part of me desperately wants to hold on with all my might, to come back and throw myself into speculation and meta and all the stuff you guys are so awesome at, but another part of me is so so bitter its preventing me from feeling any joy from it.

Maybe when season 13 comes on I’ll forget this post and just start this blog up again. I certainly miss talking to the bloggers on here I consider my friends, I just feel that without contributing to anything I have no purpose on Tumblr, and I don’t want my negativity to affect anyone else. So in the meantime, this is goodbye. I may still visit and reblog stuff occasionally, but I won’t be writing anything for a while. A long while probably.

It’s been fun Tumblr, but from now on consider this an extended hiatus. Perhaps I’ll see you in the Autumn… perhaps this fleeting romance is over for good. I won’t know until I know. As for Supernatural, I have said my bit. Expect Destiel along with a side of bitter disappointment. Wayward Sisters will be amazing though. So long as they don’t let Bob Singer or Bucklemming anywhere near it that is.

[the100isracist]

@commanderoswald

1. It was consensual. You forgot the word STATUTORY to demonise him without context, and this argument is useless because we don’t know the legal age on the ark. It contains many nationalities, not just American, and the legal age is 16 in most countries.

So Lincoln, Maya and Raven are rapist pedophiles too, right? Since they slept with people below 18? Can you just stop encouraging this shit from your anons? SO many young girls follow you ad everyone is calling Bellamy a rapist now based on nothing. You just decided the legal age on the ark was 18 and ran with it. Maybe think about why it’s gross to call a brown man a pedophile and rapist when a. You don’t know the laws and b. 3 other characters slept with minors too. Why are you insisting on presenting him as some creepy sleazy predator? 

You condemning him for murder and abuse is so gross and your double standards are so obvious it’s sick. You should really read this meta by Southeast and South Asians and actually try to understand you’re not in the right when it comes to racism Asians face just because you’re a POC, and you can’t just keep saying they’re ignorant and wrong about their own history and culture and the prejudice they face.

Why is this anon calling a QWOC who ship Clexa “blarke” and “becky”? Something you’ve consistently done to QWOC Braven shippers who defend Bellamy? Like, why pretend like only white Bellarke shippers care about Bellamy, when Filipino women have called you out on your aggressive and obsessive racism towards Asians multiple time?

For example, defending the bindi to Desi fans? You just ignored them the minute they confronted you. Right now you just called religious appropriation “baseless bindi discourse”. 

You’ve ignored every Desi blogger who has tried to tell you it is a bindi. You’re trying your hardest to convince the hordes of young girls following you that racism is okay when done in the name of hot white girls. Are you Hindu? Then how are you in a position to speak over Hindus and claim their knowledge of their religion and culture is baseless? Like, you constantly say your hatred of Bellamy is ignored because you’re a WOC and we always get screwed over for men, but Desi and FIlipino WOC are fucking idiots?

Bellamy fans get defensive because you’re being racist and most of us asre people of colour. You can keep pretending like every Bellamy fan is a white girl names Becky but almost everyone who defends him on here is Southeast or South Asian. How about next time you read what we have to say on racism instead of mocking us for being defensive? When you’re literally WRONGFULLY calling our rep a rapist genocidal xenophobe because you’re bigots who have convinced yourselves none of this is motivated by racism and you’re fighting the good fight by ignoring literally everything they say and then calling them “becky” and telling them to “grow the fuck up.”

2. You want a textbook white saviour to kill another POC? After 2 more were killed last week? Despite the terrifyingly high body count? Do you ever acknowledge how Clarke and Lexa are white supremacists and have extremely racist characters? Have you demonised them for their “abuse”? Have you ever acknowledge their privilege? Or how ABUSIVE the white women are?

3. You have no problem calling Bellamy xenophobic for fighting back a white woman but Clarke saying grounders are savages or wanting to leave them while Bellamy wanted to help them, is nothing? And genocidal…. like, every single character on the 100 has committed genocide including Clarke. Bellamy taking part in a massacre, by POC, was retaliation to the army of a white woman who had been trying to exterminate them, is xenophobic of him. Think about what you’re saying here. A white girl in bindi and brownface gets zero flack for trying to wipe out a group with as many if not more POC than the grounders for months, and fighting back makes the black and brown arkers genocidal?

4. Bob has spoken about the racism he’s faced and how much playing Bellamy means to him/how important it is multiple times. Can you stop rewriting the facts to prove your obsession with his race right? Asians have asked you to stop many times, and pointed out how bad your logic is, and yet you act like a kid playing him for 2 minutes determines his race rather than the man playing him for 4 seasons/the audience is going to go by 1 flashback rather than seasons of the brown man they see. Would you say Izzy Lightwood is white, or Lavender Brown is black then? (that’s the race of the actors who play them as children) Or is that just another one of your double standards?

5. You are LYING, Bellamy never once said he killed those grounders because he was mad Clarke was not there, he killed them because they were a threat to the survival of this people. Here’s how you’re making it up- by ignoring canon:

6. Are you serious?

He is protective of Octavia because since was like 6 his mother told him she’s his responsibility and he had to put her above all else. They grew up knowing she would be killed for existing and he had to protect her. His mother was killed by the government in front of him for giving birth to her. Like, do you actually not understand how these traumatised people who grew up in a hostile atmosphere work? Or is it just convenient to ignore the reasons and call him an abusive brother?

Why isnt Clarke a xenophobic prick, or Lexa? She explicitly said all grounders are savages like… your double standards are scary. You straight up ignore the shit hot white girls do and call for the death of a Southeast Asian man because your refuse to understand their role in the war or his motives.

How is saying “This is who I've always been, and I let you and Octavia and can convince me that we could trust these people when they have shown over and over again who they are, and I won’t let anyone else die for that mistake.” not owning up? How is it passing the blame on? Did you even watch past 3x07? Or remember seasons 1 and 2? How dies he not cooperate with or care about anyone when he went on a suicide mission for CL, freed child slaves, fought with Clarke because he wanted grounders in the bunker, etc?

Bellamy does not get away with things. (season 1, season 2, season 3). You’re literally endorsing reverse racism here. The fandom hates him, there are posts with 10k notes lying about him and calling him abusive for things he never did.  

None of what you say is “right there”, it’s all lies or double standards. You’ve been proudly advocating for racism for over a year now. You keep claiming Bellamy fans have no proof or arguments, or just unnecessarily call everything racism, even though that is not true and many have tried to talk to you. You can’t use that excuse anymore since I just linked you to multiple posts that have all the “proof” you need.

If a BC shipper was this obsessed with proving Lexa a demon you would label them a creepy lesbophobe, but here you are, claiming that people who are calling out your LIES are wrong and blinded by his race. You’re being racist, and then telling Asian POC who ask you to stop that they’re idiots and if they call out your double standards they’re “letting him get away with shit because of his race”. That’s circular logic that ensures you have a free pass to be racist all you want and POC have no right to ask you to stop since you think you are always right and they are wrong about THEIR PEOPLE AND THE RACISM THEY FACE.

But I’m pretty sure just like you ignore every single Asian who calls you out, you’ll ignore this, so you can continue pretending that we’re horny straight white girls with nothing to back up our defence of him and just think he’s hot. Because you think you have the right to decide for other people’s rep, you think you have the right to tell Filipino people that the first male lead they’ve ever had is a white man, is the devil incarnate for reasons your faves are guilty of too.

Just leave Asians alone. I don’t know what we ever did to you but please stop actively hurting us. And stop thinking your voice matters more than ours when it comes to our representation, culture, and racism we face. Why is it so hard for you to accept you don’t know better than actual Asians, acknowledge you might be wrong, stop being so condescending and obsessive and viciously hateful, and actually start listening to us?

[contemporarysex-blog]

Epistemics for Changemakers

If you want to change the world, you need to know about the world. Specifically, you need to know:

which things you can likely change and which ones you probably can't;

which changes are likely to have the greatest effect (and the fewest unwelcome side effects); and

which of these changes you personally can effect, and in what way (e.g. through direct action, working with a movement, convincing people, donating, symbolic action, ...).

In other words, you need to look at the world, and the mechanisms that are at work in it, with an eye for the gaps: for the places where you can put a lever, push, and then keep watching to see if what you intended is actually happening.

Sound easy? Let's take a look at some failure modes:

FAILURE MODE 1: Wishful Thinking

Say you want to fight obesity. You're good at writing and debating, so you have this idea that you just have to explain to people, in a way that they can understand, that they need to eat right and exercise. (I wish I was making this up.) So you write Tweets, blog posts, essays, maybe eventually even a book. Some people come to you with success stories, saying that you inspired them to slim down, and you feel really good. 

Then some scientist does a randomly controlled trial (by having one group of people read your book and a control group read, say, "How To Win Friends And Influence People") and it turns out that the peope in the control group lost just as much weight as those that read your book. She concludes that your assumptions about what causes obesity are fundamentally flawed and points to research suggesting that much of the BMI variation within a population may be explained by genetics.

Of course you don't buy that biodeterminist bullshit. All this means is that we need more explanations, even better explanations, start raising awareness earlier, etc. You become an advocate for fitness and nutrition classes in school, you help develop workshops and holiday camps, you collaborate with an awesome illustrator on a picture book aimed at three-year-olds that becomes an instant bestseller. Once again, you feel good. Whatever nagging doubt that insidious study managed to raise in you is rinsed away by the new wave of success.

But you're still wrong. You should have held on to that doubt. Not rolled over and accepted all the conclusions that the study's author drew from her data (for that, see the next failure mode), but you should have made an effort to find out if your basic assumption (here: that obesity is caused by a lack of information and motivation, and will go away if you supply those two) is sound enough for you to point all of your efforts in that direction. Especially if you are building your life and career about a project that's supposed to make the world a better place -- especially if you're a change maker, that is -- you need to listen to that odd noise coming from the engine; you need to actively look for indications that what you're doing might not work as intended, rather than shy away from them.

So the first rule is: Want to know the truth. If you want to change things, you need to know how things actually stand and how they work. Not necessarily in excessive detail (see below), but well enough so that you can be reasonably certain that you aren't operating off fundamentally flawed assumptions.

FAILURE MODE 2: Stopping Too Soon.

So you've seen people being burned by contact with Science, and you're determined to do better. This time around, when your anti-obesity program falls flat under scrutiny, you stop, take a step back, breathe deeply, and admit you were wrong. This is a scientist with a PhD from Oxbridge; you are just an upjumped blogger. If she says that people become obese because of genetics, then who are you to argue? So instead of denying the science (motivated reasoning!) you embrace it, pivot, and go focus on something else instead. If obesity is genetic and thus unchangeable (well, for now, and your talents don't really go the way of CRISPR &co), then all you're doing with your books and tweets is fighting windmills and -- even worse -- giving people false hope.

Wrong again. If you really think obesity is a problem, if fighting obesity is really valuable to you (see the next point about values), you don't just stop like that. You're halfway up a mountain, you really want to get to the top, and then ahead of you there's this sheer wall of ice. what do you do?

You don't turn back. First you see if the ice is solid, or if maybe a hit from your icepick could shatter it. In terms of science, that means you look if the results reproduce, if there are other explanations for the observation (confounders and selection effects are the biggies; if you're not sure what that means, take a statistics class or ask me later), or if the data is good at all. Ideally, you won't have to do all of that work yourself -- statistics is hard, especially in fields such as sociology and health where correlations tend to be frustratingly mushy -- because that's what scientists from the field are doing all the time anyway. Look for replies, rebuttals, reviews, other studies that cite this one, meta-analyses, the works. Find a recent textbook about the subject to see if whatever your critics were throwing at you is an accepted mainstream position or a fringe development. (I'm not saying the mainstream is always wrong, but it deserves more up-front credence -- stronger priors, if that tells you anything -- than whatever new radical notion just came along.)

But what if the ice holds? You still don't give up. So maybe a large part of who becomes obese is explained by genetics; but what about the rest? Are there any places in the mechanism (yes, we're moving beyond the ice metaphor now) that leads from "genetic propensity" to "actual obesity" that you can influence in any way? If so, what are they? If explaining doesn't work, maybe focus on willpower instead? If neither explaining nor willpower training work, try changing what food is available, changing financial incentives (e.g. through taxes), attack the supply side (e.g. corn syrup subsidies)... look for places where you might get leverage, and find out where you personally can have the greatest impact. Find out where you can dig your fingers in and pull.

The second rule, then, is: Keep looking for the movable parts. More often than not, those who tell you that something can't be changed have a vested interest in things staying the way they are; and in nearly all cases, they're probably wrong. (Warning signs for less-than-good faith in that regard include someone claiming that your field of expertise is worthless because their discipline has all the answers, or saying that you can't possibly have an opinion unless you know all of the literature on the matter.) Most things that have to do with humans can be influenced by humans, at least in small but valuable ways; we just need to figure out where to place the lever.

FAILURE MODE 3: Confusing Facts And Values

Science, when done right, tells us about the way things are. It does not, and cannot, tell us what things should be like.

This may be the most important point in this post, and it's the one that most people who point to science in policy debates get wrong. "Look here," they say, "science tells us things just are like that, so who are you want them to be any different?" Sometimes this still comes in the classic form of "everything else would be unnatural", though this seems to be on its way out; I guess "naturalistic fallacy" is becoming enough of a household term that people realize they might not get away with this.

Still, if you're talking about how people should or should not behave, about measures to reach a certain goal, in short, about ethics or policy, and someone comes along and says "but FACTS! and SCIENCE!" -- then it's very likely that you're dealing with one of those vested interests I mentioned earlier: someone who profits from the status quo and feels threatened by efforts to change it.

Facts are important. They tell us what we are dealing with, if we're able to grasp them and arrange them without distorting them too much. The better we are at reading the data, at creating and testing hypotheses about how things work, the more of a chance we have to really change things. But what direction we want to change them in; whether we approve of an aspect of the status quo or not; in short: where we want to go from here -- that's up to us. Once the facts are established, policy is not a matter of science but of ethics; and that is a whole other debate.

If someone tells you that some people can't help being obese because it's in their genes, that's fine; look into it, and if you find it's true and relevant, incorporate that information into your strategy. (As per Failure Mode 2, of course it's not the whole story.) But if that same person then makes the leap to saying "so you should stop trying to fight obesity", they are going beyond the reach of science into ethics, where the genetics argument just does not hold any more. Yes, you can argue that we shouldn't fight obesity but rather make sure that obese people are accepted, not made fun of, and not used as examples in epistemics blog posts. There is a fair point to be made for that, but it is an ethical point and does not depend on whether obesity is genetic or not. I for one would argue that we can fight obesity and not discriminate against obese people at the same time, just as we try to cure paraplegia and make sure that paraplegics can safely navigate public spaces at the same time. But that, again, is not a question of fact or science; it's a question of ethics.

This, then, is our third rule: Let no one persuade you that is equals ought. In any argument, try to figure out what your own terminal goals are, what values you are not ready to compromise; and if someone attacks you on that with scientism, ask them about their own values. Speaking from my own experience, the most aggressive "fact"-wielders either get very uncomfortable and bow out of the conversation at that point, or they quickly reveal themselves as assholes. In that case, you should still look into whatever "facts" they threw at you; but you'll be justified in not expecting much of use behind them.

So let's be curious. Let's listen to people who have information that might be relevant to our endeavors. Let's experiment with different approaches and invite data-based criticism on which of them work and which don't. (Yes, I mean "invite", not just "welcome".) Let's be on the lookout for alternative explanations of the same things, alternate mechanisms and models that might have more predictive power, that might be more accurate, but most of all more useful, because they tell us where to push, pull, or turn the dial. But most of all, let's stay true to our values and goals, and persevere in trying to reach them, across this hard-to-navigate cliff face we call reality.

[isearchgoood]

SEO Negotiation: How to Ace the Business Side of SEO — Best of Whiteboard Friday

Posted by BritneyMuller

SEO has become more important than ever, but it isn't all meta tags and content. A huge part of the success you'll see is tied up in the inevitable business negotiations. In this helpful Whiteboard Friday from August of 2018, our resident expert Britney Muller walks us through a bevy of smart tips and considerations that will strengthen your SEO negotiation skills, whether you're a seasoned pro or a newbie to the practice.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hey, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. So today we are going over all things SEO negotiation, so starting to get into some of the business side of SEO. As most of you know, negotiation is all about leverage.

It's what you have to offer and what the other side is looking to gain and leveraging that throughout the process. So something that you can go in and confidently talk about as SEOs is the fact that SEO has around 20X more opportunity than both mobile and desktop PPC combined.

This is a really, really big deal. It's something that you can showcase. These are the stats to back it up. We will also link to the research to this down below. Good to kind of have that in your back pocket. Aside from this, you will obviously have your audit. So potential client, you're looking to get this deal.

Get the most out of the SEO audit

☑ Highlight the opportunities, not the screw-ups

You're going to do an audit, and something that I have always suggested is that instead of highlighting the things that the potential client is doing wrong, or screwed up, is to really highlight those opportunities. Start to get them excited about what it is that their site is capable of and that you could help them with. I think that sheds a really positive light and moves you in the right direction.

☑ Explain their competitive advantage

I think this is really interesting in many spaces where you can sort of say, "Okay, your competitors are here, and you're currently here and this is why,"and to show them proof. That makes them feel as though you have a strong understanding of the landscape and can sort of help them get there.

☑ Emphasize quick wins

I almost didn't put this in here because I think quick wins is sort of a sketchy term. Essentially, you really do want to showcase what it is you can do quickly, but you want to...

☑ Under-promise, over-deliver

You don't want to lose trust or credibility with a potential client by overpromising something that you can't deliver. Get off to the right start. Under-promise, over-deliver.

Smart negotiation tactics

☑ Do your research

Know everything you can about this clientPerhaps what deals they've done in the past, what agencies they've worked with. You can get all sorts of knowledge about that before going into negotiation that will really help you.

☑ Prioritize your terms

So all too often, people go into a negotiation thinking me, me, me, me, when really you also need to be thinking about, "Well, what am I willing to lose?What can I give up to reach a point that we can both agree on?" Really important to think about as you go in.

☑ Flinch!

This is a very old, funny negotiation tactic where when the other side counters, you flinch. You do this like flinch, and you go, "Oh, is that the best you can do?" It's super silly. It might be used against you, in which case you can just say, "Nice flinch." But it does tend to help you get better deals.

So take that with a grain of salt. But I look forward to your feedback down below. It's so funny.

☑ Use the words "fair" and "comfortable"

The words "fair" and "comfortable" do really well in negotiations. These words are inarguable. You can't argue with fair. "I want to do what is comfortable for us both. I want us both to reach terms that are fair."

You want to use these terms to put the other side at ease and to also help bridge that gap where you can come out with a win-win situation.

☑ Never be the key decision maker

I see this all too often when people go off on their own, and instantly on their business cards and in their head and email they're the CEO.

They are this. You don't have to be that, and you sort of lose leverage when you are. When I owned my agency for six years, I enjoyed not being CEO. I liked having a board of directors that I could reach out to during a negotiation and not being the sole decision maker. Even if you feel that you are the sole decision maker, I know that there are people that care about you and that are looking out for your business that you could contact as sort of a business mentor, and you could use that in negotiation. You can use that to help you. Something to think about.

Tips for negotiation newbies

So for the newbies, a lot of you are probably like, "I can never go on my own. I can never do these things." I'm from northern Minnesota. I have been super awkward about discussing money my whole life for any sort of business deal. If I could do it, I promise any one of you watching this can do it.

☑ Power pose!

I'm not kidding, promise. Some tips that I learned, when I had my agency, was to power pose before negotiations. So there's a great TED talk on this that we can link to down below. I do this before most of my big speaking gigs, thanks to Mike Ramsey who told me to do this at SMX Advanced 3 years ago.

Go ahead and power pose. Feel good. Feel confident. Amp yourself up.

☑ Walk the walk

You've got to when it comes to some of these things and to just feel comfortable in that space.

☑ Good > perfect

Know that good is better than perfect. A lot of us are perfectionists, and we just have to execute good. Trying to be perfect will kill us all.

☑ Screw imposter syndrome

Many of the speakers that I go on different conference circuits with all struggle with this. It's totally normal, but it's good to acknowledge that it's so silly. So to try to take that silly voice out of your head and start to feel good about the things that you are able to offer.

Take inspiration where you can find it

I highly suggest you check out Brian Tracy's old-school negotiation podcasts. He has some old videos. They're so good. But he talks about leverage all the time and has two really great examples that I love so much. One being jade merchants. So these jade merchants that would take out pieces of jade and they would watch people's reactions piece by piece that they brought out.

So they knew what piece interested this person the most, and that would be the higher price. It was brilliant. Then the time constraints is he has an example of people doing business deals in China. When they landed, the Chinese would greet them and say, "Oh, can I see your return flight ticket? I just want to know when you're leaving."

They would not make a deal until that last second. The more you know about some of these leverage tactics, the more you can be aware of them if they were to be used against you or if you were to leverage something like that. Super interesting stuff.

Take the time to get to know their business

☑ Tie in ROI

Lastly, just really take the time to get to know someone's business. It just shows that you care, and you're able to prioritize what it is that you can deliver based on where they make the most money off of the products or services that they offer. That helps you tie in the ROI of the things that you can accomplish.

☑ Know the order of products/services that make them the most money

One real quick example was my previous company. We worked with plastic surgeons, and we really worked hard to understand that funnel of how people decide to get any sort of elective procedure. It came down to two things.

It was before and after photos and price. So we knew that we could optimize for those two things and do very well in their space. So showing that you care, going the extra mile, sort of tying all of these things together, I really hope this helps. I look forward to the feedback down below. I know this was a little bit different Whiteboard Friday, but I thought it would be a fun topic to cover.

So thank you so much for joining me on this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I will see you all soon. Bye.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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[geneshaven]

Fantasy World vs Real World

I wanted to talk about a couple of things today that intruded into my life over the weekend. One concerns the fantasy world of Arrow. The other is about the real world (my dog was injured.)

So first, Arrow. Like many of you, I am excited for the handful of episodes left this season. And also like most of you, I’ve been waiting for the payoff I hope is coming, a reward for all the patience and diligence we’ve had to endure while the show runners weaved their tale this season.

I’ve read that some are thinking the show is getting good again. Personally, I’ve felt the show has always been good, even when it was bad. Sure, it had some bumps in the road along the way, but I’ve been tuning in for over five years now, and despite those bumps, I’ve been holding on, not letting them shake me loose. Since the show started, I’ve gone through some upheaval and tragedy and loss in my personal life, and having a place to channel some of that, a place to go where I can maybe find some hope and acceptance---it brings me some small comforts. I do this not only by watching the show, but also through writing fanfiction and metas and following all the other wonderful bloggers out there that are so talented and inspiring.

I have always been a protective person. This was ingrained in me by caring for my wife for so many years and also by working in law enforcement. I was taught how to laugh and love and dream about beauty and joy and grace. So when I read some of the things our esteemed Executive Producer and Creator of Arrow, MG had to say about the fans of his show, (Olicity to be more exact) that protectiveness in me came alive. It almost feels as if I have to defend my love of the show.

Two things MG mentioned just recently, (and I’m paraphrasing) 1.) Olicity fans will eventually accept the swill being dished out and fall in line with what they’re given, and 2.) All the blather about poor ratings is the fault of the fans, the actors, global warming, the price of gold on the open market---add any reason you like.  As I’ve read and agree with, the low ratings and bad acting  and whatever---it can be laid at the feet of MG and his stable of writers, and perhaps even the powers that be at CW.

It’s a cold, hard slap in the face to all of us. Arrow was not created in a vacuum. It was and is written for the fans, for us; the ones who bring in those ratings, good or bad. It is written to invest ourselves, and sometimes lose ourselves in the story being told, in the characters that play it out. It tugs at our heart strings. It makes us laugh and cry. It makes us angry, afraid, compassionate and fulfilled. It becomes our story.

I didn’t ask for or expect this show to creep in to my life the way it has. I simply tuned in and was introduced to this damaged, driven, angry and lonely man who returned from hell, trying to find some purpose in his life. I connected with him in a way I sometimes can’t with real people. I wanted to watch each week to see Oliver (and later Diggle and Felicity) overcome adversity and tragedy and find their way back home.

But here’s the thing, and which brings me back to MG and his comments. He is the one who created and developed the show. He shaped the characters and breathed life into them. He gave us the hope for love and redemption, for justice and a happily ever after. He started this journey and took us on the ride. We trusted in him and believed he would not steer us wrong.

Which is why I am having problems with Marc’s current attitude and views. I’m sorry, but I can’t feeling that as a fan, I’ve become a piece of shit clinging to the bottom of his shoe and he is trying to scrape me off, as if somehow I’ve offended him. Again, I didn’t create Oliver, Diggle, Felicity, Thea or Lance. I assume when Marc did, he wanted me to care about them, to root for them, to fall in love with them---not to feel guilty because I do.

I can only shake my head at the absurdity of it all. Do we want Oliver to be victorious? Do we want him to be a hero? Do we want his flaws and imperfections? Do we want him to be happy and in love? Do we want Olicity?

Does Marc?

Of course, he could be holding his cards close to the vest. All this could just be his way of creating more drama and angst and doubt. After all, he is a TV show writer on the CW. If this is true---well done Mr. G. I hope it pays off and we all have huge smiles splashed on our faces at the end of the season.

Still, some of the things he said about us fans were a little uncalled for and not deserving. We are loyal, dedicated fans who believe what MG gave us at the start of this journey. We want to feel like we’ve made the right decision to follow the show, not like someone waiting for a taxi after a meaningless one night stand. The money is on the night stand, Marc. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

**

As I mentioned at the start of this post, one of my dogs was injured over the weekend, something that turned off the fantasy world and put me front and center in the real one.

Briefly:

I was starting to come awake early Saturday morning, around 3:00am when I heard a thump on the floor at the foot of my bed. This was followed by a squeal and a cry that pierced my heart. My 8 year old Corgi, Civi had jumped off the bed, like he does every morning to get a drink of water and go potty. The room was dark, and I’m guessing Civi maybe misjudged his landing. Apparently, he ended up falling on his head. When I got to him, he was lying on his side, panting and dazed. I immediately thought---a broken neck or some sort of spinal damage.

I am not yet ready to go through another tragedy of loving someone that gives me so much joy and love. There is an emergency vet hospital about twenty minutes from my house. I was scared to move Civi because I didn’t want to cause him more pain or damage. But I didn’t want to leave him on the floor unattended and suffering either. I grabbed a blanket and wrapped him in it and both of us got in my car and drove to the doggy hospital.

After some X-rays (I didn’t have the $3000.00 dollars for the MRI the vet wanted) the diagnosis was a sprained back. The doctor gave me pain meds and muscle relaxers to take home and told me to keep Civi quiet and non-mobile for a couple of days. All this cost $800.00, but I didn’t flinch pulling out my credit card. Civi is family, like one of my children. The cost of making sure he was cared for was one I would pay any amount, (except for the $3000.00 MRI apparently.) It could have been more expensive---I could have lost him.

 Anyway, there are bumps and bruises we all have to go through in our real lives. Just like the ones we sometimes get in the fantasy world. But what is real and what is fantasy? ---there is no realistic comparison between the two. When Arrow is over, I can turn off the TV and hope things get better next week. When a loved one out there in the real world gets hurt or even dies, next week becomes a lifetime.

So here’s hoping we get the happy ending we all want in the fantasy world.  And here’s hoping we all get it in the real world as well.

@hope-for-olicity @almondblossomme @louiseblue1 @tdgal1 @swordandarrow @ibelievenu @it-was-a-red-heeler @geemarie @dmichellewrites @miriam1779

[shutdownld50-blog]

ABOUT LD50'S REACTIONARY TURN

The LD50 gallery in Dalston, London last year ran this series of talks featuring 6 high profile far right reactionary speakers:

#9 Sunday – 7th August 2016– 12pm NICK LAND on Techno-Commercial NRx

#8 Saturday – 6th August 2016 – 6pm MARK CITADEL [as virtual avatar] 'Christianity, Progressivism, and the Occidental Soul' watch here

#7 Saturday – 6th August 2016 – 6pm BRETT STEVENS [as virtual avatar] ‘The Black Pill’ watch here

#6 Sunday – 31st July 2016– 6pm PETER BRIMELOW on Imigration, Ethnicity and Economics listen here

#5 Sunday – 24th July 2016 – 6pm IBEN THRANHOLM on The Sanctuary of Traditionalism in Russia and the West listen here

#4 Saturday – 28th May 2016 – 6pm Dr PETER SAUNDERS ‘Epigenetics and Evolution Theory’ screening: The Monk and the Honeybee (1989) listen here #3 Saturday – 21st May 2016 – 6pm Dr FLORIAN PLATTNER ‘Can we enhance memory?’ screening: TransHumanism ( h+) / Genetic Modification of Life (2010) listen here

#2 Wednesday – 18th May 2016 – 6pm ‘Autoimmunity’ (hosted by Goldsmiths university) watch here

#1 Saturday – 7th May 2016 – 6pm Dr SILVIA CAMPORESI ‘CRISPR Genome Editing Technologies: Which possible futures?’ screening: Gattaca (1997) listen here

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.ld50gallery.com%2Ftalks%2F

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

The talks programme mixes straight up fascists and reactionaries with other innocuous seeming figures with no known right wing affiliation or convictions.

Peter Brimelow is hardcore fascist: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/peter-brimelow

As is Brett Stevens: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2011/07/26/american-blogger-praises-oslo-shooter

Mark Citadel seems to be part of the 'Return of Kings' manosphere blog, so is clearly another reactionary voice. (‘Return Of Kings is a blog for heterosexual, masculine men. [...] men should be masculine and women should be feminine.’ – to quote their own philosophically self-undermining self-description.)

Iben Thranholm is a proponent of racist, anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, homophobic and misogynist politics. She routinely discourses on the need to resurrect strong ‘european' gender binaries and ‘strong men’ to ‘protect women’ from 'male immigrants' who she presents as a violent sexual threat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaOLgy3YKtA

Nick Land: One can split hairs by saying that Nick Land isn't a white supremacist and is just into eugenic selection for intelligence so we can survive the coming AI singularity. However, a close reading of his recent writing reveals he just doesn't like immigrants and black people. He likes Asians because they are deemed to be smart and polite, and he likes Japanese because they've resisted immigration. Racism is an aura around all his other pronouncements.

The first three named speakers in the talks series – Peter Saunders, Silvia Camporesi, and Florian Plattner – are all reputable scholars. The topic of epigenetics (Saunders’ subject) is a hot button one for the new biological racists, because it shortens timelines over which evolutionary change can potentially happen, meaning that changes in historical time can have significant effects on human populations. This is usually used to argue that evolution within NW European populations has led to the wonders of the Enlightenment and enhanced IQ, while everyone else are just cousin-marrying knuckle draggers who are resistant to democracy because they haven't selected for non kin altruistic behaviour. The fact that HBD (human biodiversity) proponents use and sometimes misuse epigenetics doesn't mean anyone talking about it is necessarily fascist.

Considering the rest of the line up, however, it seems these figures fulfilled a kind of legitimating function for LD50’s project. Openly reactionary speakers could enjoy credibility by association with reputable academics. However innocent, they became tools in what appears to be a conscious and extended attempt to promote extremely reactionary ideas by introducing them, uncritically and indeed enthusiastically, to an art world and art educational context.

The live streams still available on the gallery’s blog testify to LD50’s gushing reception of and advocacy for racist, white supremacist, misogynist and homophobic views. If we can learn one thing from the above, it is the need to stop assuming everything programmed by small or large galleries is at worst ‘exploratory’, ironic or even critical – either an intellectual provocation or contribution to ‘discussion’. This programme appears to have been part of a wider far right push to infiltrate academic institutions, and to normalise and promote extremely reactionary ideas.

THE ART OF ENTRYISM

As well as the talks programme, LD50 also mounted a gallery show, 'Amerika'. Dedicated to the so called alt-right, and featuring wall to wall Pepe memes, kek, 'neoreactionary' esoterica, and misogyny, the same structure of plausible deniability allowed some at least to view the show as a kind of enquiry into a cultural phenomenon rather tha a direct act of political infiltration. Any illusions about the disinterested or critical ambitions of the gallery have been dispelled by the recent public revelation of the gallery's politics. A brief review of the gallery's blog reveals a show brimming with sympathy for affluent white male mass murderers of of women and muslims, but nothing that would pass for actual critique – let alone the visceral disgust this material evokes in those who side not with abstractions ('free speech') but human victims of violent oppression.

A similar standard of fascist entryism is seen in artwork still displayed on the gallery's website: a pseudo-critique of consumerism by replication (look, Taylor Swift!) exuding a will to distinction and superiority, at the same time functions to run fascist ideas (text by Hitler) and symbols (the Afrikaner white supremacist flag) past the un/knowing art consumer:

https://www.ld50gallery.com/exhibitions/

Some further background and analysis from the Horrible Gif blog's piece on the LD50 debacle:

'LD50, a small project space in dalston junction, had some exhibitions of questionable taste and arrangement in recent months. The alt-right exhibit it staged using scavenged parts of the aesthetic and philosophical matter online wasn’t immediately partisan on the surface. It could have been bad satire, it could have been one of those things many adult-child digital artists do where they incorporate the very thing they critique. Obviously the depraved chasm which 4chan and allotments of reddit are located in is morbidly fascinating, to someone who feels they’re on an important media archaeology tip even moreso. Despite the Hitler quotes coupled with anime motifs and other bizarre conflations of alt-right imagery, the show itself didn’t offer a concrete position. This is a commonplace exhibition model that allows “racy” subject matter to be presented with critical immunity, because the art moves to within a viewers praxis. More often this is used with cultural appropriation, where a white artist will extract reference points and framing devices from culture they do not belong to and situate the art itself on the intersection of their gaze, etc etc. So the art is about the white gaze on other culture, that way it removes itself from, at best, being accused of ignoring postcolonial theory or, at worst, just being mildly racist. Very meta though, and you can extract 2000 words from meta quite easily. With the benefit of hindsight plus a screenshot of a private fb conversation, it became obvious the curiosity with the alt-right wasn’t coolly detached in the LD50 show. Given the social media output of LD50 runs along moaning lines about the apolitical nature of net artists and glib rejoinders to political/social occurances, strangely they might have found the blazing political net art they were looking for… just the bad kind of politics. HEY, bad is a construct in art that is irrelevant after postmodernism and pop art, so who is to say it is bad? It’s just neo-reactionary. Sounds like the working title of a group of Final Fantasy rebels. These dodgy politics weren’t always so clear, even in that classic uncertain/ironic way, so it’s possible it was a slippery slope slodden down.

As said in the beginning of this longform rant, the social media microdramas of the art cottage industry aren’t very interesting in themselves beyond the sorry online appearances of calculated hostility and contrived artjoke acumen. But with artist Sophie Jung posting in a public way a ‘call-out’ to a curator of a gallery holding quite dodgy fascist views, the fallout is more interesting than the usual bruised/inflated egos or comment flame wars. The gallery itself has responded by “archiving” the post and all the comments on the main page, as doxing (a strategy of online shaming perfected by the alt-right) bait to sentient pepe memes and twitter eggs. It’s an obfuscatory and aloof reaction, one that shows particular acumen to online psychological skirmishing. Take away the veneer of irony and you see only a few slimy individuals toying with repugnant ideas that most good artists would give no merit, even as illusory discourse.

Is it right to call out someone by posting private convos? Well, check the gallery events and talks - they were pretty public (albeit small and within purposely obfuscating platforms) call outs to those neon genesis authoritarians. A lighter discourse than “is it ok to punch a nazi?” but no less annoying. Of course the answer is yes. Do you argue the inverse that the alt-right should be given platforms? Do you agree with the BBC giving airtime to UKIP but not the Green Party, who have existed for longer/have more members/more elected MPs/have actually run a fucking area of the country? Logic has associations, and while you can spin them away, we fucking see you. The alt-right would legislate for the structural, hidden bureaucratic violence against non-white/foreign people but it is not OK to punch them? They’d happily punch you. It can be so easy if it doesn’t affect you, or to think it wouldn’t, to think that exposing their bullshit is better. Hindenburg thought Hitler wouldn’t be as evil when he finally was given power, the tories seemed to think appeasing the UKIP types was the best way to keep themselves in power. Fuck m9, punch tories AND nazis if you can get away with it. Yeah, if you can back it up, calling people out on something as basic as nazi sympathies is OK. Why did it take so long to be called out on? The alt-right are super zeitgeisty right now and net art dorks are into that because it can be processed into smug “political” diatribe and gestural academica. Things within the art gallery mechanica are afforded un-anchored critical protection at least until the management are revealed to think the muslim ban is fine.'

http://horriblegif.com/post/157189463814/level-drama-50

[justabelfastgirl]

This is a repost from Northern Irish Girl Online which is no longer active.

Hello, you beautiful, sexy, people,

Thanks again to the AMAZING ROSS, I felt that should be in capitals because it’s like a superhero name. He tagged me in this and I loved his responses so I’m excited to get started with this one.

1. I can text in Swedish/Danish (kind of)

Have you ever seen The Bridge? It’s a Swedish/Danish show based on two detectives. It’s probably one of the hubby and I’s favourite shows to watch together next to Parks & Rec, Brooklyn 99 (NINE-NINE! Fans of the show will get this and I better see it in the comments!) and The Vikings (Ragnar can father my children whenever he wants, thanks).

We got so engrossed in it that we started texting each other in Swedish and Danish one day, lol. We know a few words just from watching the show so much and the rest was down to Google Translate. It’s on the bucket list to visit both Sweden and Denmark one day and the infamous bridge the show is named after. I can’t recommend it enough.

I don’t mind watching a programme with subtitles as you honestly get so engrossed in what is going on that you don’t even realise they aren’t speaking the same as your native tongue.

Author Top Tip: It’s also a brilliant way to learn a new language.

2. Farts

My farts, or as we say in Northern Ireland if we want to be polite, poofs, are so loud that they can wake people from their sleep. My biological mother used to tell me that if I was sitting on the floor (which I tended to do a lot, I found a hard floor more comfortable than a chair, I still do… I don’t know why), and I farted that she could feel it vibrate in her feet.

I suffer from Irritable Bowel Syndrome and was first diagnosed at 17 whilst studying for my A-Levels. I’ve lived with it for a very long time so I know what can upset my stomach and what might set me off. I have to be so careful with my stress levels as that’s my biggest trigger. I do plan to do a post on it as I’ve noticed the pain has increased as the years have gone on, so I’m currently researching more on the subject before I post my own blog post on it.

3. I’m weirdly obsessed with certain cultures and historical eras.

I’m weirdly obsessed with Native American culture, I have been for as long as I can remember. I think it first started when I was a kid and saw Pochantos which, fun fact, is my favourite Disney film. For those unsure of what I mean by Native American culture or haven’t seen Pochantos (um… why are you reading this? Go watch it!) I mean Indians. Not people from India, see below picture.

I mean… he’s not wrong.

Historical Eras I’m obsessed with are Ancient Egypt, especially the Gods & Goddesses. Which is strange because I have little to no interest other “modern-day” Gods. However, I would definitely follow the Ancient Egypt Gods until the end of the earth. Weird, right? My favourite was, of course, Anubis, not because he was the God of the Afterlife, but because duh, he was a Jackal’s head.

Photo Credit: Sunima

The Tudors

Again, this is strange (you’ll see why on my next one), but Henry VIII era had me totally absorbed in History class and I remember asking my Nanny that I wanted books on The Tudors for Easter that year instead of an egg (yeah, I was that geek). I really don’t know why as we all know that Henry was a wee wanker when it came to women. He was just greedy all around with food, money and women.

Big Henry VIII – The Original Manwhore Fuckboy

4. I don’t like The Queen and hate the hype around The Royals

Before you start, my mum (my step-mum) pretty much verbally smacked me for saying this. My mum loves The Queen, as does my dad. My granda… he was on the fence from my chats with him. I honestly feel the older I get, the more I remember my talks with my hero, the more I realise he has basically formed my opinion’s on a lot of things. The only time I’ve watched anything Royal related was Harry & Meghan’s wedding because Harry is an actual ledge (and I have a bit of a thing for him, I’m not gonna lie) and I was already a fan of Meghan from her role in Suits. Also, has anyone seen the bad lip reading at Harry & Meghan’s wedding?

If not, I swear on my life it’s funnier than the Star Wars ones. If you haven’t seen those or the NFL ones either… I, I just dunno what to say to you. Who even are you? I’m such a good egg (only because I mentioned it I had to go watch it again or I’d make you go find it yourselves) that I have provided the video for you below. Prince Wills isn’t so bad, especially after I watched this. For the record, I personally think Hagrid (Rubeus Hagrid for the diehard #HP fans) was the right answer. I mean, no one is as cool as Hagrid.

PW: “I hope you understand we’re puppets” 

PH: “You said we had free will.”

PW: “No, I didn’t.”

Wills telling Harry the real truth. May 2018

Why do I not like Big Lizzy? Several reasons, the main one being CHARLES,  idol-worshipping of someone who from where I sit hasn’t really done much and that’s with research, I wish we could vote. I’d totally vote for Harry to take the crown at least the charities he, Wills and their wives get involved in are ones that will really make a difference. People may say she isn’t control of a lot of things as she has left it to the governments in the United Kingdom Let me ask you this then, who does the Wicked Witch of Downing Street, I mean… Teresa May, report to? Uh-huh.

Big Lizzy is also the boss of the HM Forces, yet I don’t think she even cares how much those lads and ladies are actually paid. I ranted about this on Twitter recently when Andrew Trimble, Ulster Rugby player (I think?), said he wasn’t paid enough to “go to battle” every day. Andrew Trimble earns hundreds of thousands of pounds from playing rugby, sponsorships, appearances and so on. When I educated him on how much a Marine is paid before he passes out he shut up immediately and stopped responding to me. I looked for the Tweet for ages and then got fed up, it’s on my Twitter somewhere, good luck finding it!

Now, he’s not the only one. You look at footballers, celebrities and so on, they earn millions. Soldier’s will never make that amount of money, but they fight for our freedom. Anyone else see something wrong with this?

I grew up with military family members, not only that, but I lived on the Shore Road which was smack bang in the middle of North Belfast. Every single day, I would go outside and wait for the PSNI and RIR (Royal Irish Regiment), British Army, possibly the Royal Marine Commandos (RM aka, LADSSS) to drive past my house so I could wave at them and tell them that they were amazing. I was 11 when The Good Friday Agreement came into force, I was a child that grew up in the Troubles. My after school TV had a few kids shows, and a lot of Northern Irish news whilst my dad lived with me. The older I got the less kid/teenage TV the more I watched the news.

5. I’m still on the hunt for three books I read as a teenager over 20 years ago

Photo Credit: Jaredd Craig

You will never know how painful that sentence was to write, 20 years ago!! I still think I’m fucking 20 then I get slapped in the face with the fish of reality and it hurts me to my soul. Anyways, I read three books that to this day I remember like it was yesterday. The thing about it is they weren’t life-changing books at all, all of them were fiction. I’ve tried searching for them by the titles I remember them by, but to no avail. I asked my library, but they changed their system 10 years ago so there is nothing from prior to that, anymore. I have even gone on websites and described the books in detail, but nothing and it’s my biggest pet hate, ever.

My hubby said it just shows when I’m determined to do something I never give up on it. He should know, I was determined to do him 14 years ago, 14 years on and almost 9 years of marriage and it’s still happening, lol!

6. I’m quite smart and have a freakish memory

And Omigod totally modest! Not tooting my own trumpet, but you don’t study Psychology if you haven’t got some brains.

I can’t remember what I did yesterday, but I could probably tell you the worst serial killers ever known, the horror films that have certain aspects of them that are inspired from real historical events (and they aren’t the ones you think), be able to figure out what films Will Ferrell quotes come from (thanks mostly to my husband who is a big fan of Will Ferrell, as am I), what a book I read 20 years ago was about and what I thought of it, song lyrics, full songs, history and shit.

I could also probably tell you something that happened in my childhood in great detail, but if you asked me what I did in work last week, I’d just shrug and be like…. “talking to people and shit”.

7. I’m a massive tomboy and I once got my finger trapped in a grating (drain cover) looking for a tennis ball whilst plotting to murder IT with a tennis racket.

“Eddie discovered one of his childhood’s great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.”  – Stephen King, IT.

Okay, let me explain. I, as I mentioned in a previous post, grew up around lads. I was the eldest granddaughter on my dad’s side and second eldest on my mum’s side. This meant the people I looked up to were all lads, I used to fight with my other female cousin all the time. Which is funny because when we got older we were as close as sisters. It was because I was such a “lad”. I love football, wrestling, playing rugby, kickboxing, getting dirty, gaming and other stereotypical “laddy” things.

I’ve more male friends than I do female, but my three best friends are all female. I’m on good terms with every single one of my exes, bar one. Whilst in the majority of the relationships, I broke it off, I did it in a way that wasn’t dickish and tried to cause the least amount of pain to anyone and everyone involved.

My two best friends, Barrie and Bryan (they’re brothers and we’re still in touch today), we were going through our wanting to be a tennis player phase. This was in between our Power Rangers, Ninja Turtles and Marvel Superhero’s phase. Barrie and I were slamming some serious ball against the wall in my back garden with our tennis rackets.

I can’t remember which one of us it was, but I’m going to blame Barrie because he’s not going to read this to defend himself, but the ball ended up disappearing down the drain. Being the intelligent childer we were, we followed what we thought was the right pipe system, out through the cul-de-sac out of my back to the drain just across the road from Barrie’s house.

We thought this would be the drain it would appear in. I had seen IT by this point, Barrie had not. I wouldn’t call Barrie a pussy, because he actually fights for a living now and would no doubt kick my ass for it, but let’s just say he was a sensitive wee sausage when we were young. 

I was determined to find IT and beat him to death with my tennis racket so my thought process, being the kid I was, was that if we lifted the lid he’d either hear it and come to us or already be there. I was determined to protect Barrie at all costs, despite him being a few months older, he and Bryan were like brothers to me and everyone who knows me knows, I’d put anyone who hurts my family in the ground.

Barrie was in charge of holding the grating lid open and I was in charge of retrieving the ball when it came past (and also unbeknownst to Barrie killing IT). I can’t remember whether it was a car, someone yelling at us to get out of the drain (quite possibly this one) or, Barrie just being a fucking eejit and not paying attention, but he dropped the grating lid on my right fingertips.

I don’t know who cried more me or him. I think him, we ran back to my house, my fingers pissing blood and both of us covered in it looking like we’d just sacrificed ourselves to Satan. For some reason, I remember there being quite a few of my dad’s family in the house that day visiting, but it could be my warped memory of my childhood.

Both sets of parents were there that day, course mother dearest went absolutely nuts yelling at me, I, again, protected Barrie despite him clearly giving himself away by crying (because he felt so guilty he had hurt me and that I was bleeding so much, told you he was a sensitive wee sausage). Saying it was my fault and my idea, the truth did come out in the end. My four fingernails were hanging off, the worst being my middle finger.

I don’t remember an A&E visit, but I remember one of my bigger cousins saying I was hardcore as I was only crying because I’d gotten blood on me and was still deadly fearful of my mother beating me back then. He told me my fingers tips were clearly broken as they’d been crushed in the grating. 

My dad ended up having to pull the middle fingernail off as it was just hanging there, at least I think it was my dad, it could have been my ma, I don’t remember I thankfully blocked out the actual experience, the rest of them broke off. To this day, my fingernails and fingers are off to one side. See pics for proof, below.

8. I love to learn, a lot!

I’ve said this previously, but for those new here, I used studying as an escape, same with reading, from what I suffered as a kid. I would get lost in history books, books from the library, for hours on end.

I read abnormally fast, often finishing a standard 330-word book in half a day if I am up early, or a day depending on what I’m doing. I bring a book with me everywhere I go, just in case.

Holiday’s are funny as there is usually at least 6 books and a Kindle in my hand luggage, increasing to 8 to 12 books by the time I get on the plane. My hubby just rolls his eyes, now but knows they’ll get read.

To put my learning into perspective I thought the best thing to do would be to create a table which is split into self-taught and qualified/things I hold certificates in. It’s a bit mental to look at, but 100% my proudest achievement after being mentally healthy following a 2 year battle with my PTSD.

Self Taught Academia Criminal Psychology Psychology and soon to be Forensic Psychology Photography Dental nursing Photo Editing History (Irish & UK) Blogging, Writing English & English Lit Criminology Criminology Human Resources Human Resources Counselling Counselling (including CBT, Life Coaching, Career Coaching) Rearing dogs from pups to adults Autism (including all areas of the spectrum) Norse Methodology Health & Social Care Wiccanism Business Administration History of Music & Music Genres Psychology Parapsychology Makeup Artistry, Beautician & Nail Technician Computer programming (hacking, website creation) Viral Marketing Cooking Art & Design Swedish/Danish (written, only) BASIC French (Oral & Written) Basic Italian – Basic/Intermediate at the moment Sewing, crochet Maltese – Intermediate First Aid (Child, Adult & Pet) Book Publishing  (with coaching from my sis Christina) Business Auditing UK, NI and Irish Law Sign Language Level 1 UK, NI and Irish Employment Law UK, NI and Irish Employment Law Child Psychology & Counselling (mentoring from NSPCC) Woodworking, carpentry, building smaller homemade objects Mental Health Conditions & Disorders Accounting Different religions and cultures Sociology

This isn’t me showing off, just as an FYI. This, to me, is a list of things I have used as PTSD survival techniques. I’ve posted twice about what happened to me when I was younger.

I also challenge you all to make a list of things you have taught yourself when I say self-taught, I mean not going to a school, college, university online or off at any time. It doesn’t matter if you were taught it by a family member or something like that, it’s anything you’ve taught yourself to do without the help of professionals.

I would be deadly interested to see everyone else’s lists, and probably want them to teach me stuff I don’t know, lol.

9. I’m obsessed with little Asians and want to adopt all the little Asians, but my husband won’t let me.

I don’t know okay? I really don’t know when it started or how it started. My dad (who is not racist, I promise) always calls me cheeky face or, I swear he isn’t racist, he just isn’t very original with nicknames, I’m sorry if this offends, oval eyes. I’ve a round-shaped “pea” head as my dad and husband like to remind me of on a somewhat weekly basis, they’re wee shites like the Chinese people (known for having rounder faces).

I have oval-shaped eyes (doesn’t everyone you say, actually no, no they don’t) which are angled upwards, like a person of Chinese descent. I have my granddaddy’s eyes as you honestly couldn’t tell whether he was squinting or his eyes were wide open. Mine is slightly more open than his, but when I’m tired you can see why my dad has dubbed me what he has.

When we pass anyone of Phillipene, Chinese, Thai or Japanese descent husband calls them my people because I absolutely love them and I really do have myself convinced that, as well, as being Italian/Maltese/Northern Irish/English I have either Native American (hence my fascination with them) or another Asian descent in my heritage. I’d love to do that 123 and Me test, but I don’t have a spare $50. If you’d like to donate that to me then lemme know, lol. what? You don’t ask you don’t get! 

My cousin is married to a beautiful (inside and out) woman named Christina who is from the Philippines and they have two gorgeous wee kids. I keep “jokingly” telling my family I’m gonna kidnap them one day and adopt them,.

There have been times my friends and my other half have literally had to pull me away from the kids as I just think they’re so cute and I just want to talk to their parents and play with them. That’s really weird, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have told people this… 🤷‍

10. I can rap, well.

Don’t believe me? Ask my three best friends and my husband. My husband couldn’t believe it the first time my friend Sarah B and I rapped every single lyric to Tupac’s – Hit Em’ Up. It was our song, but it’s the same for any other TuPac, Dr Dre, Xzibit, Ludacris, N.W.A, Eminem, 50 Cent, D12, and many, many more songs in my rap repertoire.

I’m going to challenge some different peeps this time, some of my lovely followers. So…. I challenge the following people to do this and tag me so I can read them:

@MsCreativeKerr – Kerry-Ann

@HappyMentality – Ri

@the_rolling_20s ‏ – Ruth

@comfortinganx ‏- Deanna

@larylarxx – Lauren

Don’t forget to tag me so I can read yours! For everyone else, please follow these gorgeous girls.

10 Unusual Facts About Me (A Re Post) @LaureltonStudio #TheClqRT #bloggingtribe @TheBloggersPost @wetweetblogs @sincerelyessie @UKBloggers1 #bloggingbeesrt @BloggingBabesRT #BloggerLoveShare @LovingBlogs This is a repost from Northern Irish Girl Online which is no longer active. Hello, you beautiful, sexy, people,

[andrewysanders]

I’m Nine Years Old – Old Age

As party week comes to its conclusion, we look at the final year – 2018 – and acknowledge that Life of an Architect is now an old man. 

Life of an Architect – Year Nine (2018)

Year nine in most ways was just like year’s seven and eight. One thing that non-blog writing people (otherwise known as “regular” people) can’t truly understand is the constant need for something interesting to write about in a serial manner. In short, for the last two years, I have a few fairly large projects that I’ve been working on but I don’t have a lot to show for it. The thing that feeds me, and in turn feeds this website, is having things that I think are worth sharing with others. This typically means projects of mine are under construction and I can talk about sorts of construction techniques, details that were developed as I show the executed product, amusing anecdotes from job site visits, my love/hate relationship with the software Procore … in other words, tons of what I think would be interesting posts.

The two commercial projects that I should be able to focus on in 2019 basically sat in building department purgatory all of 2018 – and while complaining about the building department is fun, nobody really cares. Another project that I will most likely be spending time on in 2019 is a massive renovation and addition to a Robert A.M. Stern house here in Dallas – and that project will be full of potential blog posts.

Other than that, there is the podcast – which quite honestly might be the lifeline to keeping Life of an Architect interesting and worth reading.

My favorite blog post of 2018 is:

Life of an Architect – The Inevitable has Arrived Since I have become bored with blogging, it is time to turn my attention towards something that will allow me to recapture that creative spark – and it’s just what the world needed … another podcast

That’s right – my favorite post is when I broke up with my website and confessed that I was stepping out with a podcast. Trying to figure out how to podcast was almost as much of the attraction as anything else, but I am happy to say that I much prefer talking over sitting in front of the computer and typing for hours on end. Interestingly, I received a few messages from people who were actually really irritated that I was not going to be blogging as much. Little did they know that finding this outlet might be just the thing I needed so that I would still continue to blog at all.

After four days and 8 previous images of site metrics, I think we can all take a moment and relish in the fact that this is the last image you are going to see for awhile where site traffic is concerned.

So here it is … living proof that the website has been slowly killed by constant attacks. While there has been a steady erosion of traffic once the hacking began, this was the year when there were about 3 precipitous drop-offs that occurred. After a high of  8.2 million page views in 2016, things have hit rock bottom, at least rock bottom for me. Whenever I complain about how bad my traffic has become my blogger friends are still quick to point out that they would kill for what I am currently getting – but there’s no comfort in that. What I see is an erosion of 8 years of ridiculously hard work and sacrifice being wiped out by people hitting me with constant DDoS attacks.

The good news is that as of this writing, it seems as if the latest round of precautions and systems seem to be working and the traffic appears to be returning. While I might not want to admit it, that would certainly help my motivation to continue putting in the effort of writing blog posts.

2018 – Year Nine Page Views – 2,547,200 Year Nine Countries/ Territories – 237 2018 – Year Six Top Five Cities – New York, London, Dallas, Sydney, Boston

The Popular Post

2018 saw my lowest post count since I started – a bucolic total of 46 articles were written. Since I didn’t have any work that was under construction, a recurring theme for my entries is that they were technical in their nature. I also started the podcast in June and the practice of writing a blog post one week, and the world’s most extensive podcast show notes the next was born.

Here is the most viewed post from 2018:

Just Draw it Up (96,370 year nine page views) Calling an architect to draw up plans can be the wrong first step in certain circumstances. If all you need is someone to take your plans and turn them into serviceable documents, who should you call?

This was one of those “Don’t blog when you’re angry” sort of posts (is that a saying? I bet it is). I wrote this post after having a long chat on the phone with someone who was just looking for some help, and they wanted it from me. Normally I am on board with that – if I can help someone I will typically try to do just that. The issue with this particular call, and the one or two just like it I receive each month, is that the people calling don’t care who I am or what I do, they’ve already solved all their problems and some building department has told them that they need to hire an architect to prepare drawings, so all they want from me, is for someone to “just draw it up.”

As I sit in my chair writing this post, reflecting back on the narratives for 2018, there are really super positive things that come to mind.

I have three amazing projects that will be built this year

I have amazing clients that I truly like and feel blessed to collaborate with them on their project.

I am really enjoying the podcast and while it has experienced some challenges, it’s still early, it’s getting better with each recording, and a lot of people are listening to it. If you haven’t checked it out yet – give it a chance and go here

2018 was probably the best year I’ve ever had as a professional and 2019 is shaping up for a repeat performance

I have nothing to complain about and I realize that I am blessed in so many ways that even when things aren’t going right, they aren’t going left. All we can ask for is a chance to work with people we like, projects that enrich us and look for outlets that feed our souls. If we are lucky we might get one or two of those things, to hope for all three … well, let’s just say that I know just how lucky I am.

So that’s it – 5 consecutive days that tell the tale of the Rise and Fall of the website Life of an Architect. What does the future hold for me?

Cheers,

This is the last in a series of 5 articles. If you want to know the whole story, I think it’s best if you start at the beginning.

The Birth Year covers the first year of the site (2010) The Early Years is a closer look at years two and three (2011 and 2012) The Teenage Years is a look at years four and five (2013 and 2014) Middle Age is a look at years six, seven, and eight (2015 – 2017)

from Home https://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/im-nine-years-old-old-age/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[jaigeddes]

I’m Nine Years Old – Old Age

As party week comes to its conclusion, we look at the final year – 2018 – and acknowledge that Life of an Architect is now an old man. 

Life of an Architect – Year Nine (2018)

Year nine in most ways was just like year’s seven and eight. One thing that non-blog writing people (otherwise known as “regular” people) can’t truly understand is the constant need for something interesting to write about in a serial manner. In short, for the last two years, I have a few fairly large projects that I’ve been working on but I don’t have a lot to show for it. The thing that feeds me, and in turn feeds this website, is having things that I think are worth sharing with others. This typically means projects of mine are under construction and I can talk about sorts of construction techniques, details that were developed as I show the executed product, amusing anecdotes from job site visits, my love/hate relationship with the software Procore … in other words, tons of what I think would be interesting posts.

The two commercial projects that I should be able to focus on in 2019 basically sat in building department purgatory all of 2018 – and while complaining about the building department is fun, nobody really cares. Another project that I will most likely be spending time on in 2019 is a massive renovation and addition to a Robert A.M. Stern house here in Dallas – and that project will be full of potential blog posts.

Other than that, there is the podcast – which quite honestly might be the lifeline to keeping Life of an Architect interesting and worth reading.

My favorite blog post of 2018 is:

Life of an Architect – The Inevitable has Arrived Since I have become bored with blogging, it is time to turn my attention towards something that will allow me to recapture that creative spark – and it’s just what the world needed … another podcast

That’s right – my favorite post is when I broke up with my website and confessed that I was stepping out with a podcast. Trying to figure out how to podcast was almost as much of the attraction as anything else, but I am happy to say that I much prefer talking over sitting in front of the computer and typing for hours on end. Interestingly, I received a few messages from people who were actually really irritated that I was not going to be blogging as much. Little did they know that finding this outlet might be just the thing I needed so that I would still continue to blog at all.

After four days and 8 previous images of site metrics, I think we can all take a moment and relish in the fact that this is the last image you are going to see for awhile where site traffic is concerned.

So here it is … living proof that the website has been slowly killed by constant attacks. While there has been a steady erosion of traffic once the hacking began, this was the year when there were about 3 precipitous drop-offs that occurred. After a high of  8.2 million page views in 2016, things have hit rock bottom, at least rock bottom for me. Whenever I complain about how bad my traffic has become my blogger friends are still quick to point out that they would kill for what I am currently getting – but there’s no comfort in that. What I see is an erosion of 8 years of ridiculously hard work and sacrifice being wiped out by people hitting me with constant DDoS attacks.

The good news is that as of this writing, it seems as if the latest round of precautions and systems seem to be working and the traffic appears to be returning. While I might not want to admit it, that would certainly help my motivation to continue putting in the effort of writing blog posts.

2018 – Year Nine Page Views – 2,547,200 Year Nine Countries/ Territories – 237 2018 – Year Six Top Five Cities – New York, London, Dallas, Sydney, Boston

The Popular Post

2018 saw my lowest post count since I started – a bucolic total of 46 articles were written. Since I didn’t have any work that was under construction, a recurring theme for my entries is that they were technical in their nature. I also started the podcast in June and the practice of writing a blog post one week, and the world’s most extensive podcast show notes the next was born.

Here is the most viewed post from 2018:

Just Draw it Up (96,370 year nine page views) Calling an architect to draw up plans can be the wrong first step in certain circumstances. If all you need is someone to take your plans and turn them into serviceable documents, who should you call?

This was one of those “Don’t blog when you’re angry” sort of posts (is that a saying? I bet it is). I wrote this post after having a long chat on the phone with someone who was just looking for some help, and they wanted it from me. Normally I am on board with that – if I can help someone I will typically try to do just that. The issue with this particular call, and the one or two just like it I receive each month, is that the people calling don’t care who I am or what I do, they’ve already solved all their problems and some building department has told them that they need to hire an architect to prepare drawings, so all they want from me, is for someone to “just draw it up.”

As I sit in my chair writing this post, reflecting back on the narratives for 2018, there are really super positive things that come to mind.

I have three amazing projects that will be built this year

I have amazing clients that I truly like and feel blessed to collaborate with them on their project.

I am really enjoying the podcast and while it has experienced some challenges, it’s still early, it’s getting better with each recording, and a lot of people are listening to it. If you haven’t checked it out yet – give it a chance and go here

2018 was probably the best year I’ve ever had as a professional and 2019 is shaping up for a repeat performance

I have nothing to complain about and I realize that I am blessed in so many ways that even when things aren’t going right, they aren’t going left. All we can ask for is a chance to work with people we like, projects that enrich us and look for outlets that feed our souls. If we are lucky we might get one or two of those things, to hope for all three … well, let’s just say that I know just how lucky I am.

So that’s it – 5 consecutive days that tell the tale of the Rise and Fall of the website Life of an Architect. What does the future hold for me?

Cheers,

This is the last in a series of 5 articles. If you want to know the whole story, I think it’s best if you start at the beginning.

The Birth Year covers the first year of the site (2010) The Early Years is a closer look at years two and three (2011 and 2012) The Teenage Years is a look at years four and five (2013 and 2014) Middle Age is a look at years six, seven, and eight (2015 – 2017)