#reading the newspaper; discord commentary

[scoundrelofwrath]

Oh yeah, this smug fucker is feeling great now.

[sullidotinfo]

More social, less media

It’s Thursday and apparently all the journalists, banned by the new boss of the Former Site, are heading over to Mastodon.  Good for them, and I wish them the best of luck!  But most of them I won’t follow, and I’ll probably mute them, even if they were a key part of my Twitter feed.

Why?

I’m not the first one to say it, but “social media” sucks.  It conflates two completely unrelated things - making friends, and reading and reacting to the news - in a way that inevitably leads to toxicity.   I know I’ve been part of that - the little endorphin hit you get from a really good dunk and a post doing numbers is great, I won’t lie - but over time it’s made not just Twitter but every other site that has tried to share news and commentary a trash pit.

Remember when Microsoft, fresh off the success of Windows 95, decided to merge the file system with the web browser?  Before Internet Explorer, there was Windows Explorer, which was (and remains) the way to find documents on your system.  But Gates and Ballmer wanted to make that the “default browser” for the web, and then added ActiveX, and billions of malware infections later, Google Chrome ate their lunch.  (Remember those spyware “toolbars”?  Yuck.)  Now you would not think of combining the browser with the file system!  But for several years in the 1990s, Microsoft insisted it was the right thing to do.

So also “social media.”  Social networks are awesome and I have met hundreds, perhaps thousands, of friends that way.  I still remember how nice it was to find long-lost friends on Facebook, and post “endorsements'' on Friendster, and create Circles on G+, not to mention the many communities I’ve joined and lifelong friends (maybe you!) I’ve made on Slashdot, Plastic, Livejournal, Multiply, Discord, Flickr, Tumblr, and Reddit.  And media are great too - I read a lot of newspapers and blogs, and I subscribe to many of them (even the ones that don’t charge a standard monthly rate), and it’s nice to hear from journalists, artists, and musicians first-hand.  

But combining them together just doesn’t work for me anymore.  When I want to chat with friends, or share cute dog and bird pix, or share a darth meme, or talk about what’s happening in San Francisco, I just don’t need to have that conversation (Discourse?) polluted with Brands sharing whatever they want to share, Breaking News of whatever TFG did, or even the most correct Housing Twitter hot take.  It’s just not fun and it doesn’t build connections. Instead it leads to stupid arguments, echo chambers, and all the other crap that turns something nice into “the hellsite.”

And - sorry, content creators - we don’t owe you an audience.  Or, rather, it’s better to be an audience or join a conversation in a nicer way.  Let us enjoy and interact with your media in a way that doesn’t lead to dunks and harassment and feeling like we pissed away the time we should have enjoyed when we were reading what you created.  Maybe this is via blogs, or RSS, or YouTube, or Patreon, or email newsletters, or some kind of pay-per-view site for news (Post?), or some other service - but social it ain’t, at least for me.

So that’s why my approach on mastodon is: more social, less media.  There are hundreds of ways to read news, commentary, and Hot Takes.  I’ll read the news and blogs I care about on the web (I still have that Inoreader account!), but here?  No thanks.  Here I’m here to connect with people and build community, in SF and the world.  I want to share stories and music and photos and make friends along the way.  Follow me and be part of it!

[catgirlsupremacist]

i think i can draw lines of correlation and or causation of moralising drama on the internet, especially tumblr to twitter to youtube commentary/drama channels pipeline. though i feel like its just the rise of social media celebrity, micro micro influencer, fandom cliqiness and newspapers therefore tabloid press being less read ergo the commentary/drama channel is born. that and forums imploding to large online spaces (though now it's discord drama). im just vomiting up my thoughts right now

You know what's the worst thing about this site is I found out who Shane Dawson and Logan Paul were though a call out post. I could of been living in so much ignorant bliss right now

[octopunkmedia]

how do you pass the time through these times we are in? do you have any recommendations on what to do? especially because you mentioned you have adhd and so do i and the under stimulation is really taking a tool on me.

Being in want of things to do is not my problem, dear anon. Rather, having too much to do and collapsing under the weight of it because my ADHD coping mechanisms are not strong enough, is my problem.

I stream 8 hours a week (4x). I have client work to edit. I have two Patreon posts a week to make, plus shoutouts, calls, and 100 postcards to pack and deliver. One of these is always a video, so I always have a Patreon video to edit.

I do merch fufillment for my Etsy store every week. I design new merch every week. I prep slides for OPWU. I make videos for YouTube every day (or crosspost streams from Twitch). I make posts for Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr. I help run our 800 member Discord. I keep up with the DE fanart tags and do other social media stuff. I try to remember to answer messages from family and IRL friends. I pay bills. I go to the post office, do laundry, unload the dishes. I work on the producer rewards for DE Producers - the Blu Ray, the Polaroid fufillment, the new cut of the film. This week I had to fill out a fifteen question interview for a local newspaper. I do tarot. I worked on mastering, rendering, and publishing our 28 track score for DE. I'll soon be remastering and doing visual effects for Seven Deadly Synths. I'm doing favors friends thrust upon me. I'm trying not to be a dumpster fire of a wife. I'm thinking about the 50 emotes I'll have to come up with if I make Twitch Partner. I do quarterly and yearly taxes. I read YouTube comments. I'm thinking about the film course I need to start designing lesson plans for. I'm thinking about the sequel to Livescream that I need to write a script for this year. I'm thinking about my next two film shoots that have been pushed back and whether I should start on pre production and location scouting. I need to put three movies on IMDB. I need to fix DE's edit. I need to schedule guests for upcoming streams. I need to submit DE to film festivals. I need to record a director's commentary. I need to watch all of my director friends' movies and read all my writer friends' books that they've made in order to be supportive. I need to answer the 143 unanswered messages in my askbox.

I need to make a doctor's appointment.

[pricechecktranslations]

So in a discord server for Evillious, a Korean fan has brought up that in the afterwords for a lot of novels, mothy mentions script changes that the story has gone through as he's written them (an example given was that in Wrath he mentioned wanting to write a novel for Capriccio Farce but decided the song was too old). Have you ever summarized the afterwords/author's comments before, and if not, could you? I think it'd be interesting... thank you for all your hard work!

I've done some info-sharing for the one in Master of the Heavenly Yard, though no summaries or translations. At the moment, I plan to translate all concept writing and author/illustrator commentary only after I'm done with the core story content (it is genuinely interesting and I want to get to it, but I only have so much time I can dedicate to this and need to prioritize). For similar reasons I'd also rather not summarize them right now either, sorry.

As for script changes, I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Just, situations where he had an idea and then changed his mind before the finished product? I don't mind quickly looking through the afterwards and sharing whatever story changes he brings up in them that I catch (and if there's something specific you want me to check that's fine too). What I've found is under the cut:

Venomania: He was originally planning for Rindo Blum to have a slightly more prominent role in the novel.

Conchita: Conchita was originally imagined as a monster that could fly in the air to eat meteorites headed towards Earth (this isn't really a story change, more like conception notes, but I found it amusing). He was also originally going to have a Miku servant in the original PV, but again this isn't really related to the novel.

Pierrot: He did a lot of revisions to this and the previous one, though he doesn't share most of them. Such as (and he's a little vague so I'm not totally sure I'm reading this right), he was originally going to have Eve's identity revealed in this novel alongside the Levia reveal. Rin Chan was also originally just a one-shot newspaper character, and even further back her name was supposed to be Rinchan Orenoyome (not entirely sure if he's joking on that).

Tailor: It's another conception note from before even the song, but Kayo was originally going to be a fisher, and her character item was going to be a pink harpoon. Mothy had also thought about making an Eastern version of Daughter of Evil (what Jahime is based on), a Western version, and a space opera version. There is also, naturally, a few things that differ between the novel and the song, but he doesn't focus on that for long.

Unless I've just skimmed past it by mistake, there are no other specific story changes that he mentions in the afterwards. I couldn't find what you were talking about regarding Capriccio Farce in the Wrath afterward, either (though it's possible he said it somewhere else).

[castrovulcant]

[Image description without the read more: series of screenshots of discord messages from Billy Batson with a gun

Image 1: Clark falls for Lois and is like ‘i have a sudden urge to make crop circles’

Image 2: Superman, having rocks thrown at him: that’s ok just get it out of your system

Image 3: its such good commentary and i feel a little bad bcos i just came in here to say do u think the kents get annoyed w clark for walking around on the ceiling

Image 4: Clark, floating out of bed: I feel a lot better now

Diana, pinning him down: NO

Image 5: someone: mentions having 3 aliens on the league

clark: wait who’s the third one

clark:

clark: oh

Image 6: dick: didn’t your parents also die?

clark: no??

clark: do you know something i don’t?? did something happen?

dick: you know when the… planet exploded?

clark, visibly relieved: oh THOSE parents

Image 7: Clark, using his X ray vision on baby Jon: huh

Lois: what what’s in there

Clark: don’t worry about it

Lois: well now I’m worried about it!!

Image 8: do you think superman ever slaps lex’s bald head at superspeed just like a drive by slap

lex knows it was him but he can’t prove it

puts wigs on lex at superspeed

he’s about to do a live tv interview and he’s wearing a clown wig suddenly

Image 9: Someone: oh so did you become a journalist to help you operate as a superhero?

Clark: no

Clark: I love newspapers

Image 10: someone: hey clark how was your weekend

clark, sweating: oh, you know, normal… just did normal human stuff… haha

Image 11: do you think clark has ever lasered off all his body hair like just for the hell of it

lois goes out of town for a couple of days and when she comes back he’s like haha lois check out how smooth i am

clark, looking at himself in the mirror one morning: hmm i wonder

clark, moments later, with no eyebrows: lois i have some regrets

Image 12: Clark: I have a list of all the people I’ve had sex with. It’s called my marriage license

Image 13: He’s like the anthropomorphic embodiment of a manila envelope

/end image description]

clark kent HCs from the batfam discord

transcription:

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[lazuliblade]

Continuing the mental preparation for the Olympics, I would like to ask you this: What are some good sites/resources for interviews with the skaters? Where can we learn more about them apart from Wikipedia? I find that for casual fans, it's tough to find out more than the basics about the skaters and it may be hard to form a bond with them if we don't know much about them. There's many skaters out there and it may sometimes be hard to see beyond the names and understand them as people.

Because there are dozens upon dozens of skaters, I can’t make a comprehensive list of resources for each and every one (as in: tumblr blogs, twitter pages, youtube interview uploaders, forums, fan sites, etc.), but I can guide people to some major general resources and explain how to find primary sources.Outside of Wikipedia, you can learn about skaters from:magazines, online newspapers, fluff news pieces surrounding a competition, informational notes by commentators during a skater’s program, DVD/Blu-ray documentaries of the skater, published books, documentary TV specials by local news stations, short documentaries or interviews filmed by sponsors (like P&G), online communities devoted to the specific skater, and forums. Many skaters have social media accounts, so you can follow them on their account to learn about their daily lives. Soyouwanttowatchfs very recently made a master list of the official social media accounts for all of the 2018 figure skating Olympians. This will help in getting to know them in the present moment. If you want to know their struggles and history, though, that’s when you need to go searching. To start, I would recommend searching “(skater name) interview” on YouTube and Dailymotion, and then see if the uploader has more for that skater. Golden Skate will interview various skaters on their channel, the USFSA (U.S. Figure Skating Association) has its channel, and Skate Canada PatinageCanada has its channel here. Additionally, some skaters have their own channels where they’ll talk about their day or upload behind-the-scenes videos (Shibutani siblings and Jason Brown come to mind). 

After that, the Golden Skate forums and Figure Skating Universe forums are probably your best bet when it comes to finding links and details about skaters. On Golden Skate there are fan fest threads which collect scraps of info about individual skaters/teams. Everything from recent sponsors, to the latest Instagram post, to news about an injury makes it into the fan fest threads. I caution that it can occasionally get ugly with fights breaking out between fans, but you really do pick up a range of info – including useful technical notes. Of course, forums aren’t primary resources, so learning about a skater’s backstory and thoughts requires a lot of reading through old pages to find links and tidbits. At the same time, skating forums are great as a collective of random information, and a lot of fans start here. 

As an aside, there should be various Discord groups that focus on figure skating and specific skaters, but I’m only in one server - and purely through a chance encounter - so I can’t say much in terms of joining servers. For those considering joining a server, I think it would be a good way to gain insight on community opinions, as well as keeping up with a skater’s recent events. You’ll find quite the number of tumblr blogs dedicated to specific skaters as well.

Going back to primary news sources, and direct ways of communication between figure skating officials and fans:

The magazine “International Figure Skating” covers various skaters - both high-level skaters commenting on previous success, and small-time skaters hoping to do well in their first big international competitions. Their website posts a variety of feature articles and news updates. If you’re a fan of Japanese skaters - especially more popular ones– then you’re in luck because the media pops up frequently enough with updates on their condition, and there’s a big fan community which follows and transmits news. Asahi Shimbun, NHK, sportsnavi, and Yomiuri Online (Yomiuri Shimbun) are the main news sources for skater updates. Japanese TV stations make hour-long TV specials and shorter news stories which cover a skater’s life or explain their current program. Sometimes they’ll bring the skaters themselves to answer questions. Dailymotion is your friend when it comes to finding these videos since they tend to be taken down from YouTube. For Yuzuru fans,  nonchan1023 is one of the more well-known Yuzu-centric media translators and has tons of stuff from early in his career up until 2015-16 season. It’s been a while since their last translation, though. Yuzu Fairy is a team that’s been translating recent interviews.Outside of popular Japanese skaters, fluff pieces by various English broadcasters can provide some insight into a skater’s thoughts and background. CBC, NBC, and The Icenetwork are the ones to look for in this case. British Eurosport are better known for their commentary rather than fluff, but they also provide interesting tidbits since the commentators have followed some skaters since they debuted in Juniors. You get fluff usually during GPF/Euros/4CC/Worlds and they consist of recaps of a skater’s history as told by the commentators, behind-the-scenes interviews before/after a skater’s program, or the commentators bringing people to their studio for brief comments and speculation. The key words to search for are “[skater’s name] [competition] + fluff”Some skaters have their own fan sites which collect translated interviews, so try looking up “[skater name] fan site” or “[skater name] forum.” You’ll find that some skaters from the mid 2000s to about early 2010′s had fan communities on LiveJournal that were much more active than individual websites.Established skaters sometimes have their own websites too - like Evgeni Plushenko, Stephane Lambiel, Johhny Weir, and Patrick Chan. These will have their competition history, probably some interview transcripts, their vision/mission, and their current show schedule.

I think that covers most of the common ways to learn about your favorite skaters. If there’s anyone in particular you want to learn about, and everything is in a foreign language you can’t understand, ask around on forums for blog recommendations or find someone on tumblr who reblogs stuff about your skater. There’s definitely a community of fan translators and it’s only a matter of asking (or snooping) around.

Part 1 of the collab fs ask series herePart 3 here

[microbot89]

Computer Mediated Communication Cont.

Going into this previous week, I dealt with my learning group in playing a massive multiplayer online role playing game. Because of the aspect, there was a great amount of communication with my learning team and the online community inside of the game. Esports are a huge market now, and it is slowly starting to be considered a real sport in some senses. Tang (2018), “esports teams operate in a highly task-based environment. While for casual players the main goal might be having fun, the competitive nature of most MOBA games renders the objective of winning an essential component and a priority of the overall gaming experience” (Team Cohesion in Task and Social Dimensions). Even more so, the communication between the payers is extremely crucial and for the most part is extremely successful in getting players to communicate with each other. Because of this, mobile tools such as Discord, Zoom, and Twitch have become an important part of the online community for conversations. Because of the Coronavirus, there has been a massive uprise in these platforms for online gaming and communication alike. Recently, a man named Sean Kelly lost opportunities to visit his son regularly because of flight restrictions. Being that he was working in San Diego and his son living in South Carolina they started to play Minecraft together and talked and video chatted on Discord (Kharif, 2020). The great thing about playing games and video chatting at the same time gives the aspect of being an active role in someone’s life, rather than just talking about life with other people (Kharif, 2020). An even better aspect is Twitch, where you play video games for others while they are able to contribute to the game as well as social commentary and social interaction. Now, outside of the video game world, there is still a huge amount of information that people are getting there hands on from computers, smart phones, and television in general. Personally, I consume most of my information by watching Youtube News channels, we do not use cable here at home, such as ABC News, NBC News, CNN, and Fox News alike. Consuming news online is a really easy thing to do with all the access to the internet, but it is always nice to listen to radio stations talking about news, it’s more personable in my opinion. Also by reading the newspaper so that you might be able to find out the information that is more pertained to your own community. Now, we have gained a lot of useful skills and applications to use in this current time to communicate with each other, however there is a loss of real human contact and interaction. My smartphone is the easiest way to consume news, going onto my google app to read up on stories that interest me, and find out new things in the world. Considering we live in a world where social interaction is not the safest thing right now, it will affect how everyone connects to each other in the future. Less physical interaction and more engagement over video calls is slowly becoming the new norm. Because of this there is a great demand for visual stimulation instead of talking over a phone text, video calling will become the new normal. 

References:

Kharif, O. (2020).  Gaming services like twitch, discord are booming. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/twitch-discord-and-other-gaming-services-see-coronavirus-boom

Tang, W. (2018).  Understanding Esports from the Perspective of Team Dynamics. https://thesportjournal.org/article/understanding-esports-from-the-perspective-of-team-dynamics/

[scoundrelofwrath]

One for the gal