#reddit tells me a digital copy does not exist

[each-uisge-enthusiast]

fighting for my life to locate a pdf of the prose lancelot bc i so desperately need to confirm this quote i found that, to paraphrase (dramatically), describes lancelot as having giant tits.

[shyly-yours]

not too obvious

notes: was inspired by a reddit snapshot. it’s really quite adorable.

---

“Quick, let me hold your hand!”

“Sora, I’m eating lunch--”

“I only have five minutes to feel everybody’s hand before I have to make my next delivery!”

Lea put down his chopsticks inside the Cheeto’s bag he was holding. He wasn’t five anymore and did not appreciate cheesy powder clinging to his clean hands. “First, gross. Second, do I even--hey!”

Sora took Lea’s free hand and interlaced their fingers in a firm hold for several seconds. The hungry man learned the best tactic to any Sora brand shenanigans was to let it play out, and then bail when it looked like government enforcement got involved. “I would say you should buy me dinner first, but I kind of think Riku would have a problem with his boyfriend of four years taking out his ex-lover on a date.”

“No, this isn’t right either,” Sora mumbled and then sighed while letting Lea go. “I’ve held at least a hundred hands today and none of them are right!”

Shaking out his released digits, Lea set down his Cheeto’s, leaned forward on the table they were currently occupying, placed his elbows on the surface, and put his head onto his folded hands. “Well, if we’re doing hand counts now--instead of bodies--I can positively say you’ve actually one upped me for once. I’m so proud of you.”

“I’ve done Kairi, Ventus, Roxas, Terra, and Xehanort--”

“Maybe, check, check, check, and what the fuck.”

“--and none of them feel right.” Sora ruffled his spikes as he sighed. “Why are you the only one here? I was hoping to feel Isa’s hand before he left for band practice. Did he leave already?!”

“It’s a holiday, dumbass. How did you even get in here? The shop isn’t open--waaait, did you make copies of the key I gave you years back?”

“There’s no time for questions, Lea! It’s imperative you tell me where Isa is!!”

“I’m not telling you where my other half is if you’re just going to molest him like you did me.”

“What?! I did NOT--”

“Sora? What are you doing here?” Namine’s sweet voice asked from the break room doorway. “Doesn’t Riku have a show tonight? You’re usually with him when he does.”

“Let me hold your hand!”

----

There was a talent show at a convention Sora took Riku to that one time. They were dressed as popular video game characters that Riku had no clue about, but he would do just about anything for Sora (well, okay, he would do anything for Sora), and they received positive comments everywhere they went. Therefore, it was easy for Sora to persuade Riku into a duet to “give the people what they want”. It was a wonderful memory Riku cherished very much. 

He has to remind himself that Sora didn’t orchestrate Riku being discovered by an attending talent agency representative. Riku thought it was a joke at first--he was a good singer, but he didn’t think it would necessitate things like recording contracts or publicity interviews. He wasn’t so far gone into stardom that he needed a bodyguard to protect him from invading paparazzi. He was in that sweet spot of having gained enough notoriety to be recognized once or twice while buying toilet paper with his cute boyfriend at the local supermarket. 

It’s just... most of the good things to happen in Riku’s life are usually associated with Sora. It took him a while to recognize self sabotage and learning to take time-outs when haunting thoughts resurfaced before old habits reverted him back to a person Riku didn’t like. Sora met him at this stage in his life--a chapter where Riku looked at gift horses in the mouth and manipulated the situation into a disaster before anybody else could ruin it. Despite fading into a toxic shell, Sora remained his friend, eventually a best friend, and coaxed Riku back “into the light” where Sora knew he belonged. Such a genuine person deserved somebody who didn’t occasionally hiccup, right?

“So when are you planning on asking him?”

Riku and Kairi sat side-by-side on the edge of the amphitheater stage. “You don’t think it’s too soon to ask him to marry me?”

Kairi shoved Riku’s shoulder with hers and said in a disbelieving tone, “Are you seriously asking my opinion about whether or not you should ask Sora, our impulsive and reckless and dearly beloved Sora who you have been dating and living with for a while now--”

“Only because I was getting evicted!”

“--who, might I also add, has been deeply in love with you since the day you two first met--”

“You just said he’s impulsive and reckless. I don’t know if I’ve been complimented or insulted.”

“--and whether or not you should marry him?”

Kairi stared.

“...the jury’s still out?”

And then smacked Riku upside the head.

----

What’s fascinating about the world of Sora is that he inherently knows when the time is right. His mother always told him to follow his heart when it came to the facts of life and making tough choices. Leaving Destiny Islands behind was an internal struggle, but a necessary change as Sora felt the universe calling him elsewhere. He made new friends, reunited with other adventuring islanders, and eventually landed in the energetic hubbub of Radiant Garden.

This is where he met Riku, one of the adventuring islanders Sora was surprised existed (although now he knows better than think he was the first to venture away from Destiny Islands). It wasn’t obvious then, but Sora’s heart knew Riku would always be a part of his life. Now to find the correct hand measurement for the ring he wanted to buy to further cement Riku’s permanency in his world.

“I’m really exhausted trying to find Cinderella’s shoe--”

“We made a list of code words, Sora, and you’re still sticking to this one?!”

“--and I’m not going to give up until I find the right hand, but Aqua I’m really starting to freak out here. LOOK OUT I’M COMING THROUGH!”

Sora threw his cellphone into the bicycle basket in order to put both of his hands onto the handlebars for better swerve control. Exclamations and shocked shouts were hollered in his direction both from walking pedestrians and his mobile. Sora was never meant to multitask at any capacity no matter his stubbornness to improve his lack of skill. Riku said Sora must have been born under a new moon to have been inhibited with so much chaos. 

“SORA! What’s happening?!”

Out of harms way and coming up to his final destination, Sora plucked his cell out of the basket and resumed his conversation. “Sorry, Aqua! Yen Sid’s Bao buns have been really popular today and he called me in to help with deliveries before Riku’s concert tonight!”

Aqua sighed in disapproval. “I really wish you wouldn’t talk and drive, Sora.”

“It hasn’t been that bad today! I only crashed once and it was smooth sailing up until just a minute ago.”

“So let’s reset the accident calendar to ‘zero days since last incident’, shall we?”

“Can we focus on what’s really important right now?”

“Oh! You mean you don’t want to discuss the state of your health and well-being? Because I have a mountain of evidence that says there should have been an intervention weeks ago.”

It was Sora’s turn to sigh. “Okay, I hear you Aqua! I need to take better care of myself! No need to mother hen me into an early grave.”

“I love you, Sora, but how does that even make sense?”

“Listen,” Sora grabbed the last take-out bag, walked up to the townhouse front door, and knocked. “I haven’t found a hand that resembles Riku’s and if I don’t get the ring size for the jeweler soon, tonight will be ruined. Well, not ruined-ruined because Riku is perfect and wonderful and his show is going to be GREAT but, like, I want to be married to him already, Aqua!”

The last part of Sora’s tirade came out whiny and the person who answered his knock heard every single syllable. “Um...”

“Oh! Hello, my name’s Sora and I’m your delivery service today! Oh behalf of Heavenly Buns we thank you for your order!”

“I thought you were joking when you said that was the name of Yen Sid’s restaurant,” Aqua mumbled to herself.

The patron smiled at Sora’s enthusiasm. “Awesome! I paid over the app already, but, um, give me a sec to get get you a tip.”

Already on the edge of despair from time’s harsh reality, Sora glanced at his wristwatch (anniversary gift) and said, “It’s totally okay! Your thanks is enough!”

“No, no, no, I have my wallet nearby. I used to work as a pizza delivery guy and I know how hard this job can be,” the customer said. He grabbed his food and left to find the aforementioned wallet leaving Sora to awkwardly stand on his doorstep.

“It’s nice to know there’s still decent people around,” his phone crackled. 

Biting his lip nervously, Sora sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, I’m really anxious about getting his ring in time and, well...”

“I’m listening.”

“...him saying yes.”

Sora couldn’t see her, but Aqua has been his confident throughout this excursion and he knew she was softly smiling. “Sora... do you want me to list all of the reasons why he is going to say yes to you like Kairi? Or do you want me to sprout endless quips like Lea until you finally get it knocked into your brain?”

“Um, how about some mother henning like Aqua?” It was Sora’s worst kept secret that he gravitated towards his friends that had strong maternal qualities when he had an episode. It was his quiet way of remembering his mother who passed two years earlier.

Sora heard a change of background noise and the click of a door shutting. He imagined Aqua stepped outside of her house as she tended to do that to better focus on serious conversations. “I may not have known you two from the beginning of your relationship, but I rarely see a person look at you the way Riku does every time you’re both in the same room together, Sora. You might not notice, but Riku is always making sure you’re comfortable first before he takes care of his own needs. He’s a dependable young man that cherishes the heart you have given him and he will always protect it from harm. It actually makes me jealous you found somebody that compatible in midst of your uncontrollable life.”

Rubbing at his eyes, Sora released a surprised laugh. Shakily, he said, “Riku worked hard to become the person he is now. He just needed somebody to believe in him to start creating the future he has now. I mean, he’s going to the next biggest pop star, Aqua! I can’t let him be tied down with me when his career hasn’t even started yet!”

“You’re doing it again, Sora.”

“...doing what?”

“Not believing in you. He won’t say no because he suddenly has a new life ahead of him. He’ll only say no if this isn’t something you want. Which, by the way ding-dong, are you already forgetting how passionate you were about wanting to be ‘married to him already’?”

“But what if he doesn’t want this?!”

“Then you will come to my place and we will hash it out over some moscato while Kairi and Lea wreak hell upon his person until he see’s sense again.”

“I don’t want him forced into marrying me, Aqua! That’s got to be illegal in several countries if not all of them!”

A throat cleared behind Sora. “Uh,” it was the customer back with the promised munny. “That sounds like a really interesting conversation you got going on there, buddy.”

Sora turned red in embarrassment. “Well, uh...” in for a penny, in for a pound. “Just, y’know, having an internal crisis about whether or not my almost famous boyfriend wants to settle down with,” Sora paused and gestured to himself, “this.”

Caught in the moment with this exchange of words, Sora barely heard Aqua on his phone, “I know you just didn’t call yourself a ‘this’. That is the equivalent of ‘it’ and you are worth so much more than that.”

The client clearly had no idea what to do. “Oh, well, um, good luck with that?” He shoved his fistful of munny at Sora. “And here! Thank you again for the delivery!”

Sora looked at the patron’s outstretched hand and froze.

“...Are you... are you okay?”

“Can I hold your hand?”

“...What?”

“Your hand! Can I hold it just for a quick second, please? I promise this isn’t for something weird--well, it’s a weird request, yes I know, because you don’t know me--well, you kind of do because I told you my name, but I don’t know yours! What’s your name? WAIT, that’s not important right now!  Please help me propose to my boyfriend who I love very much?!” Sora looked at the guy with the biggest puppy dog eyes he could muster. Considering the emotional rollercoaster he has been through recently it didn’t take much effort on his part.

The guy’s eyes widened as he considered calling for help. “Look, can you please just take the munny and go? My buns are getting cold.”

“I’ll pay for your dinner if you just hold my hand for a few seconds, sir, and I promise you’ll never see or hear from me again! Unless you wanna be friends!!”

“...Okay, I guess?”

Relieved, Sora set his phone down onto the townhouse banister and reached for his wallet to pull out munny. Elsewhere, Aqua facepalmed in exasperation. Sora was a sweet kid, truly, but his eccentric approach to life is why Lea purchased the accident calendar to go next to the tally marks of how many new friends Sora makes in a week. Sometimes their group makes bets.

Aqua smiled when she heard Sora’s shout of excitement on the other end of the line (and casually overlooked the distressed sound from the ex-pizza man).

----

note: part one of two...?

[notwhelmedyet]

More than Meets the Eye, beginner’s guide / resources

This guide is long. Use the headings to find the information you need & if you’ve got resources this post lacks send them along!

Has anyone pitched the comic More than Meets the Eye to you yet? It’s a very gay action-adventure comedic drama with robots and you would probably love it (especially if you’re lgbt and/or have good taste). Here’s a few posts/articles that will tell you why you’d love it:

This article review/retrospective was what got me to read MTMTE. (warning - it has a bunch of spoilers, that didn’t bother me but might bother you)

My semi-jokey MTMTE sales pitch

@zzxid’s salespitch with dancing rats

This full entire page of radical space socialist philosophy

15 Reasons Why MTMTE/the sequel is The Best Transformers Comic (warning - has spoilers, though some will prob go over your head as a new reader)

Kiss me, Chromedome - retrospective article by The Guardian, contains some spoilers

How/Where to Read

Okay, maybe you’re convinced. Now you want to know how/where to read MTMTE. Got you covered:

Detailed guide by @gaymilesedgeworth: How to start reading Transformers Comics

My very short answer: just read MTMTE in trade paperback form. That way all the issues are in order and you get all the extra stuff (there are prose stories after a couple issues that are very important so don’t skip them!) They’re available that way as both physical and digital books.

Here’s some ways to get access, legally (US centric, sorry):

If your local library has Hoopla (digital library subscription service), you may have access to some of the MTMTE trades that way. They’d be here; but check if you library has Hoopla first.

Your local library very well might have physical copies, so check their website!

If not and you’re very patient you can often request inter-library loans (your library borrows the books from another library) or request your library purchase materials.

You can buy digital trades via either IDW or Comixology. Comixology also includes the first 5 volumes in their comics subscription service. I’ve seen the series go on sale on both of these sites at least 4 times in the past 6 months, so keep an eye out! (Sometimes IDW participates in humble bundles, which are great, but those sales are far more infrequent)

You can also buy them in trade form from wherever you can buy books/comics. US links: Amazon, B&N, Comic Store Locators

Character Guides

So you’ve picked up this comic and oh boy there are a lot of robots. You’re a little intimidated. Maybe you’re having a hard time telling them apart.

If you have the paperback, there’s a guide to the characters on the back cover/the last page of the digital volume. See a copy here.

It’s okay if you keep reading not knowing who these robots are. For real. You’ll get the hang of it. Don’t worry if it takes you awhile and you’re confused. Everyone’s a little lost the first time through.

Some helpful posts in case you’re struggling:

Here’s a guide that matches appearance -> name, and one that matches name -> background info (both spoiler free for issues 1-22)

A visual guide by @squireofgeekdom​ and @kscinewt​: here

Another helpful visual character guide by @bluering8: here

If you’re confused and need help, please ask! I’m willing to answer questions, I know @gaymilesedgeworth has volunteered to answer new reader questions. (Willing to help out new readers? Lemme know and I’ll make this a list)

Lore & Background Info

Okay, so maybe now you’ve gotten into it. You want more information, you want to know all the background lore, you want to dig deep. Awesome! Got you covered!

The holy grail of Transformers information, TFwiki. A slightly snarky, overly-minutely-detailed wiki for the digital age.

They’ve also got a tumblr if you’ve got questions.

And Chris McFeely, one of the main editors, runs a Youtube series called The Basics where he explains characters/concepts across continuities

The podcast Sound.wav has episodes talking about every issue of MTMTE in great detail.

The writer of More than Meets the Eye, James Roberts, answers fan questions on his twitter. I’ve archived a lot of those questions at @jrtweetsindex​.

More than Meets the Eye has a soundtrack, because of course it does. People have made playlists collecting it on spotify and youtube.

Further Reading

I finished MTMTE, what’s next?

If you want the direct sequel to MTMTE, go straight to Lost Light, the sequel series. It’s still ongoing and (as of right now) 12 issues have been released. There are spoilers for it EVERYWHERE on Tumblr, fair warning.

There are also a bunch of other series within the IDW comics universe, depending on what you’re interested in.

@zandergb has a chronological listing of all the IDW comics

TFwiki summarizes the IDW comics line

alt chronological guide

another guide/reading order.

You don’t have to read all the books! If you want to just read Lost Light/MTMTE, you can do just that.

There’s also a bunch of animated series, which don’t exist in the same continuity as the IDW comics. Some of them are well liked.

@ponett has a guide that’ll help you decide which you’d enjoy

And here’s a brief guide by TFWiki

There’s also the Michael Bay movies which are awful and so is he. Not gonna recommend watching them, but if you wanted to learn about film theory by listening to Lindsay Ellis dissect them, there’s a youtube series for that.

Fan Stuff

Okay...but what about fan content and fanfic and art and community events?

First thing to know: Transformers content is posted on tumblr under the tag Maccadam. (more detailed explanation why) A lot of mtmte content is also under ‘mtmte’, so look there too. I only use Maccadam if I think a post deserves to be seen by a lot of people but opinions vary.

Second thing to know - the sequel to MTMTE, Lost Light is still being published and you will see ALL SORTS OF SPOILERS for it on Tumblr. To mitigate the damage, try blocking “LL Spoilers” “Lost Light Spoilers” and “Wednesday Spoilers”. You cannot avoid it all, so if you don’t want anything spoiled, get caught up on both MTMTE and Lost Light before browsing around Tumblr.

Fanfiction:

Warning! A lot of Transformers fanfiction is smut. Please take a moment to integrate this fact into your understanding of the universe. If you can handle that, go ahead to AO3.

If you’re curious about all the terminology used in those fics, here’s a guide to it (not every writer uses every word, but this will get you started)

If you’re not into the idea of robots having sex, here’s a link to AO3 with my personal best-effort safe-search (no guarantees, relies upon people tagging properly)

And here’s a blog dedicated to recommending good sfw transformers fanfiction

If you want to know more about Transformers fanfic, I did a whole statistical survey of it, cause I’m a dork.

Here’s an old-school Transformers-only fanfic archive (I don’t see a category for IDW comics but maybe you can find somehing)

Fanart&Fanfic Events/Zines/Gift Exchanges/Collaborative Projects:

As many active projects as I could find - I’ll try to keep this one updated

Fan Artists:

(same warning as the fanfic - there’s a goodly amount of transformers pornographic art, be aware of that and block ‘nsfw’ if necessary)

There are a ton of active fanartists who draw IDW Transformers art. If you search a bit under ‘Maccadam’ you’ll find them.

@iaconlibrary reblogs a great deal of fanart & is a great place to start browsing

Roleplay:

If you’re into roleplaying on tumblr @teletrans-comm-unit runs a master list of active rp blogs

Transformers: Lost and Found is a long-running independent game set on the Lost Light

TF:Galaxy appears to be a forum-based tf roleplay game

My Favorite Jokes:

The best amazon review

Emotional labor (nsfw-ish warning)

Bros with Vows

Hands

Conventions:

There are Transformers-specific conventions, which is pretty cool! I know nothing about them but tfwiki has some info: Official and Unofficial conventions.

Regrettable Opinions:

hey this is just a quick guide of things not to do so you don’t hurt other people in the community

Do not compare Megatron to Hitler. The comparison is both vapid and offensive, as Jewish members of this community have pointed out time and again.

Don’t say transphobic/homophobic/racist/antisemitic/sexist things. You’re better than that!

Don’t attack the creators of the books/harass them on social media/make bizarre unfounded accusations of them acting in bad faith

we’re really lucky that JRo and the other creators interact with us & answer questions and don’t you dare screw that up, I’m trusting you.

on a less serious but useful etiquette note: don’t tag creators into negative reviews of their work/people complaining about their work. It’s rude to the creator & the reviewer.

That was a short list but remember to also treat other people with respect & that it’s okay to disengage with content/people that upset you.

Fandom:

There’s a guide on Fanlore, but it’s freakishly outdated and doesn’t even mention the comics. If you’re a informed tf fan maybe you should update it. 😉

Tumblr!

MTMTE is a pretty small community on Tumblr, but there are a few cool folks. Remember, ‘maccadam’ and ‘mtmte’ are your tags of choice

Various websites!

Since the transformers fandom is super old, there are a bunch of dedicated websites with traditional forums to chat on. (most of these are news sites that also contain forums) idk anything about them but maybe forums are your thing:

TFW2005 - big site with a large community but be warned there appear to be more than a few alarmingly bigoted people on that site

TFormers

Cybertron.CA

Allspark.com

Seibertron

I’m gonna throw the IDW TF reddit on this list rather than make a new section

Discord!

there’s at least two active discords at the moment. I know nothing about them or discord, but maybe one of them would be to your liking:

#1 - run by @zzxid

#2 - run by ??

The community is, like all fan communities, is a mix of good and bad, awkward and friendly, opinionated and goofy, self-serious and offensive. You won’t like or agree with everyone and there are some folks you should probably block.

Just find some people who share your general outlook & are interacting with the books in the same way you want to 💕

-Lynn. I have no qualifications to write this guide, I am not an authority of anything. I just really want you to love these books. Last updated on Dec 24, 2017, click through to check for any updates.

image descriptions below cut:

[image 1: Panel from MTMTE of Rewdind and Chromedome kneeling and holding hands while Chromedome says “Rewind, my love, it’s not for me to say.”]

[image 2: Fortress Maximus covered in small brightly colored robots shaped like various animals saying “Don’t worry, my friend, all taken care of.]

[image 3: Swerve holding a cartoonish drawing of Prowl and pointing at it, saying “No! Prowl with the head spikes and the cruel mouth and the - cross all the time! Epically, preemptively, existentially cross! And cold! Supercilious and cold! Imagine Ultra Magnus without the warmth and people skills. How can you not know who Prowl is?”]

[image 4: Trailgate in holomatter form, holding the first issue of More than Meets the Eye and saying: “Besides, I didn’t say I didn’t like it - I just don’t understand all the words. And it presumes a degree of familiarity with the Autobot/Decepticon war that I still don’t have...I suppose there’s always the wiki. Or tumblr...”

Cyclonus from off panel: “I told you to stay off Tumblr.”

Tailgate: “You’re right: spoilers. I want to enjoy it issue by issue - it only goes up to 43.”]

[image 5: Drift smiling a big fake smile and saying: “Anyway - let’s move on.”]

[image 6: A panel of Cyclonus gazing out the window in his dark and empty bedroom with a panel of narration: “Of course we’re not the only ones. This ship is a refuge for the emotionally inarticulate.”]

[theinternetcultureproject]

A thesis on memes by reddit user cosmic daddy_ (WARNING: Long Post is Long)

...

Remember Longcat? I remember Longcat. Screw whatever we're supposed to be talking about, I want to talk about Longcat. Memes were simpler back then, in 2006. They stood for something. And that something was nothing. Memes just were. “Longcat is long.” An undeniably true, self-reflexive statement. Water is wet, fire is hot, Longcat is long. Memes were floating signifiers without signifieds, meaningful in their meaninglessness. Nobody made memes, they just arose through spontaneous generation; Athena being birthed, fully formed, from her own skull.

You could talk about them around the proverbial water cooler, taking comfort in their absurdity: “Hey, Johnston, have you seen the picture of that cat? They call it Longcat because it’s long!”

“Ha ha, sounds like good fun, Stevenson! That reminds me, I need to show you this webpage I found the other day; it contains numerous animated dancing hamsters. It’s called — you’ll never believe this — hamsterdance!” And then Johnston and Stevenson went on to have a wonderful friendship based on the comfortable banality of self-evident digitized animals.

But then 2007 came, and along with it came I Can Has, and everything was forever ruined. It was hubris, people. We did it to ourselves. The minute we added written language beyond the reflexive, it all went to hell. Suddenly memes had an excess of information to be parsed. It wasn’t just a picture of a cat, perhaps with a simple description appended to it; now the cat spoke to us via a written caption on the picture itself. It referred to an item of food that existed in our world but not in the world of the meme, rupturing the boundary between the two. The cat wanted something. Which forced us to recognize that what it wanted was us, was our attention. WE are the cheezburger, and we always were. But by the time we realized this, it was too late. We were slaves to the very memes that we had created. We toiled to earn the privilege of being distracted by them. They fiddled while Rome burned, and we threw ourselves into the fire so that we might listen to the music. The memes had us. Or, rather, they could has us.

And it just got worse from there. Soon the cats had invisible bicycles and played keyboards. They gained complex identities, and so we hollowed out our own identities to accommodate them. We prayed to return to the simple days when we would admire a cat for its exceptional length alone, the days when the cat itself was the meme and not merely a vehicle for the complex memetic text. And the fact that this text was so sparse, informal, and broken ironically made it even more demanding. The intentional grammatical and syntactical flaws drew attention to themselves, making the meme even more about the captioning words and less about the pictures. Words, words, words. Wurds werds wordz. Stumbling through a crooked, dead-end hallway of a mangled clause describing a simple feline sentiment was a torture that we inflicted on ourselves daily. Let’s not forget where the word “caption” itself comes from: capio, Latin for both “I understand” and “I capture.” We thought that by captioning the memes, we were understanding them. Instead, our captions allowed them to capture us. The memes that had once been a cure for our cultural ills were now the illness itself.

It goes right back to the Phaedrus, really. Think about it. Back in the innocent days of 2006, we naïvely thought that the grapheme had subjugated the phoneme, that the belief in the primacy of the spoken word was an ancient and backwards folly on par with burning witches or practicing phrenology or thinking that Smash Mouth was good. Freakin' Smash Mouth. But we were wrong. About the phoneme, I mean. Theuth came to us again, this time in the guise of a grinning grey cat. The cat hungered, and so did Theuth. He offered us an updated choice, and we greedily took it, oblivious to the consequences. To borrow the parlance of an ex-contemporary meme, he baked us a pharmakon, and we eated it.

Pharmakon, φάρμακον, the Greek word that means both “poison” and “cure,” but, because of the limitations of the English language, can only be translated one way or the other depending on the context and the translator’s whims. No possible translation can capture the full implications of a Greek text including this word. In the Phaedrus, writing is the pharmakon that the trickster god Theuth offers, the toxin and remedy in one. With writing, man will no longer forget; but he will also no longer think. A double-edged (s)word, if you will. But the new iteration of the pharmakon is the meme. Specifically, the post-I-Can-Has memescape of 2007 onward. And it was the language that did it, you see. The addition of written language twisted the remedy into a poison, flipped the pharmakon on its invisible axis.

In retrospect, it was in front of our eyes all along. Meme. The noxious word was given to us by who else but those wily ancient Greeks themselves. μίμημα, or mīmēma. Defined as an imitation, a copy. The exact thing Plato warned us against in the Republic. Remember? The simulacrum that is two steps removed from the perfection of the original by the process of — note the root of the word — mimesis. The Platonic ideal of an object is the source: the father, the sun, the ghostly whole. The corporeal manifestation of the object is one step removed from perfection. The image of the object (be it in letters or in pigments) is two steps removed. The author is inferior to the craftsman is inferior to God.

But we’ll go farther than Plato. Longcat, a photograph, is a textbook example of a second-degree mimesis. (We might promote it to the third degree since the image on the internet is a digital copy of the original photograph of the physical cat which is itself a copy of Platonic ideal of a cat - a Godcat, if you will - but this line of thought doesn’t change anything in the argument.) The text-supplemented meme, on the other hand, the captioned cat, is at an infinite remove from the Godcat, the ultimate mimesis, copying the copy of itself eternally, the written language and the image echoing off each other, until it finally loops back around to the truth by virtue of being so far from it. It becomes its own truth, the fidelity of the eternal copy. It becomes a God.

Writing itself is the archetypical pharmakon and the archetypical copy, if you’ll come back with me to the Phaedrus (if we ever really left it). Speech is the real deal, Socrates says, with a smug little wink to his (written) dialogic buddy. Speech is alive, it can defend itself, it can adapt and change. Writing is its bastard son, the mimic, the dead, rigid simulacrum. Writing is a copy, a mīmēma, of truth in speech. To return to our analogous issue: the image of the cheezburger cat, the copy of the picture-copy-copy, is so much closer to the original Platonic ideal than the written language that accompanies it. (“Pharmakon” can also mean “paint.” Think about it, man. Just think about it.) The image is still fake, but it’s the caption on the cat that is the downfall of the republic, the real fakeness, which is both realer and faker than whatever original it is that it represents.

Men and gods abhor the lie, Plato says in sections 382 a and b of the Republic:

“οὐκ οἶσθα, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τό γε ὡς ἀληθῶς ψεῦδος, εἰ οἷόν τε τοῦτο εἰπεῖν, πάντες θεοί τε καὶ ἄνθρωποι μισοῦσιν; πῶς, ἔφη, λέγεις; οὕτως, ἦν δ᾽ ἐγώ, ὅτι τῷ κυριωτάτῳ που ἑαυτῶν ψεύδεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰ κυριώτατα οὐδεὶς ἑκὼν ἐθέλει, ἀλλὰ πάντων μάλιστα φοβεῖται ἐκεῖ αὐτὸ κεκτῆσθαι.

[‘Don’t you know,’ said I, ‘that the veritable lie, if the expression is permissible, is a thing that all gods and men abhor?’

‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘This,’ said I, ‘that falsehood in the most vital part of themselves, and about their most vital concerns, is something that no one willingly accepts, but it is there above all that everyone fears it.’]”

Man’s worst fear is that he will hold existential falsehood within himself. And the verbal lies that he tells are a copy of this feared dishonesty in the soul. Plato goes on to elaborate: “the falsehood in words is a copy of the affection in the soul, an after-rising image of it and not an altogether unmixed falsehood.” A copy of man’s false internal copy of truth. And what word does Plato use for “copy” in this sentence? That’s effing right, μίμημα. Mīmēma. Mimesis. Meme. The new meme is a lie, manifested in (written) words, that reflects the lack of truth, the emptiness, within the very soul of a human. The meme is now not only an inferior copy, it is a deceptive copy.

But just wait, it gets better. Plato continues in the very next section of the Republic, 382 c. Sometimes, he says, the lie, the meme, is appropriate, even moral. It is not abhorrent to lie to your enemy, or to your friend in order to keep him from harm. “Does it [the lie] not then become useful to avert the evil—as a medicine?” You get one freaking guess for what Greek word is being translated as “medicine” in this passage. Ding ding goddang ding, you got it, φάρμακον, pharmakon. The μίμημα is a φάρμακον, the lie is a medicine/poison, the meme is a pharmakon.

But I’m sure that by now you’ve realized the (intentional) mistake in my argument that brought us to this point. I said earlier that the addition of written language to the meme flipped the pharmakon on its axis. But the pharmakon didn’t flip, it doesn’t have an axis. It was always both remedy and poison. The fact that this isn’t obvious to us from the very beginning of the discussion is the fault of, you guessed it, language. The initial lie (writing) clouds our vision and keeps us from realizing how false the second-order lie (the meme) is.

The very structure of the lying meme mirrors the structure of the written word that defines and corrupts it. Once you try to identify an “outside” in order to reveal the lie, the whole framework turns itself inside-out so that you can never escape it. The cat wants the cheezburger that exists outside the meme, but only through the meme do we become aware of the presumed existence of the cheezburger — we can’t point out the absurdity of the world of the meme without also indicting our own world. We can’t talk about language without language, we can’t meme without mimesis. Memes didn’t change between ‘06 and ‘07, it was us who changed. Or rather, our understanding of what we had always been changed. The lie became truth, the remedy became the poison, the outside became the inside. Which is to say that the truth became lie, the pharmakon was always the remedy and the poison, and the inside retreated further inside. It all came full circle. Because here’s the secret. Language ruined the meme, yes. But language itself had already been ruined. By that initial poisonous, lying copy. Writing.

The First Meme.

Language didn’t attack the meme in 2007 out of spite. It attacked it to get revenge.

Longcat is long. Language is language. Pharmakon is pharmakon. The phoneme topples the grapheme, witches ride through the night, our skulls hide secret messages on their surfaces, Smash Mouth is good after all. Hey now, you’re an all-star. Get your game on.

Go play.

[michaelandy101-blog]

What Is Content material Writing? Plus 12 Tricks to Take Your Content material to the Subsequent Degree

New Post has been published on https://tiptopreview.com/what-is-content-writing-plus-12-tips-to-take-your-content-to-the-next-level/

What Is Content material Writing? Plus 12 Tricks to Take Your Content material to the Subsequent Degree

Once you search for “content writers” on LinkedIn, you are certain to return throughout an extremely various vary of pros.

As an example, you will see some content material writers create social media copy for small companies, whereas others write press supplies for insurance coverage manufacturers.

You will additionally discover that some content material writers write long-form editorial content material for glamorous magazines, whereas the extra entrepreneurial-type write scripts for their very own branded content material, like podcast or video.

So, what is going on on right here … Are a few of them mendacity?

In reality, they’re all telling the reality. Content material writing can take varied kinds, however in essence, it comes all the way down to creating content material for digital codecs — and (not less than in our case) for marketing functions.

Right here, we’ll discover what content material writing is (trace, trace … I am presently doing it), in addition to tricks to take your personal content material to the following stage. Plus, we’ll discover examples of unimaginable, high-quality content material writing.

However, to begin — What’s content material writing, anyway?

What’s content material writing?

Content material writing is the method of writing, modifying, and publishing content material in a digital format.

That content material can embrace weblog posts, video or podcast scripts, ebooks or whitepapers, press releases, product class descriptions, touchdown web page or social media copy … and extra.

Merely put, content material writers are the storytellers for his or her model. They convey significant, useful, and insightful messages to encourage and transfer an viewers to take motion — that motion being a last sale.

These days, content material creation is a essential part of most companies marketing methods — in actual fact, as of 2020, 70% of marketers now actively invest in content marketing.

This implies the function of content material author is extra in-demand than ever earlier than. Nonetheless, the function varies relying on each business and enterprise wants.

As an example, some companies may make investments closely in a social media technique, whereas different corporations choose creating content material within the format of weblog posts or e-books.

No matter format, a content material author is essential for creating high-quality content material that represents and strengthens a model’s voice, whereas attracting, participating, and delighting the precise viewers.

When completed proper, content material writing has the ability to transform readers into prospects, and prospects into paying prospects. So it is undeniably essential for your small business’ bottom-line that you simply’re capable of constantly create useful, participating content material.

However that is simpler mentioned than completed. To assist take your content material to the following stage, let’s dive into a few of my favourite content material writing suggestions (these have personally helped me, as nicely).

12 Content material Writing Ideas

1. Write distinctive and unique content material, and go above-and-beyond what you discover online.

Each time I begin a brand new weblog submit, like this one, I begin with loads of online analysis — however that is not the place it ends.

After Googling related subjects, together with “content writing tips”, I start creating an overview utilizing among the data I discover online.

Nonetheless, your piece won’t ever rank in case you simply copy-and-paste the identical data that already exists online — and, even when it does, when your readers catch on (and they’re going to), they’re going to lose belief in your model as an authority throughout the business.

As soon as I end my tough define (which is able to embrace about 60% of the knowledge I discovered by online analysis), I fill within the remaining 40% with distinctive, unique insights. If I learn about a subject personally (as is the case with “content writing”, since I am a content material author myself), I am going to fill within the define with unique anecdotes, suggestions, or private examples.

Nonetheless, if I do not know a lot concerning the subject at-hand, that does not imply I merely use what’s already online. As an alternative, I am going to attain out to inside HubSpotters who’re specialists on the subject or use different unique internal-company assets, or I am going to conduct exterior outreach by way of my social networks to discover a respected supply prepared to offer suggestions, quotes, or unique examples to beef up my piece.

Moreover, I am going to search for content material concerning the subject throughout a variety of sources — together with YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, in addition to podcasts — to make sure when readers’ come throughout my content material, it is each complete and distinctive.

If they will discover the identical data elsewhere on Google, why ought to they keep in your web page? As a great content material author, it is your job to take your content material to the following stage, all the time.

2. Write a great hook to seize your reader’s consideration.

Generally, it is easy to write down a great hook — significantly if the subject is intriguing or thrilling to you, as the author.

However what about extra boring, mundane subjects, like Rel=nofollow?

In sure circumstances, writing a great hook requires pulling again and looking out on the larger image. As an example, whereas rel=nofollow is not essentially the most fascinating subject (for my part), what is attention-grabbing to me is Website positioning, and the way Website positioning can straight influence an organization’s capacity to succeed in new audiences — plus, how Google has wanted to alter rules in recent times resulting from a rise in illegitimate websites.

Which implies, after I began writing three Causes Why Website positioning’s Are Upset About Google’s Rel=nofollow Announcement, I used that angle to encourage my hook, and painted an image: Myself as a Wikipedia editor, writing about zebras, and getting paid $500 to hyperlink to a faux information web site.

(Now you are , aren’t you?)

My Artistic Writing background helps on this case, and I am prepared to guess your personal ardour for writing will assist you create thrilling hooks, as nicely.

Oftentimes, the introduction and hook is your greatest alternative to make use of your writing expertise to actually encourage, transfer, shock, and delight your readers from the get-go. Benefit from that house by considering: What would make me and my mates need to hold studying?

three. Website positioning-optimize your content material for search engines.

Your writing could be completely beautiful, but when it is not Website positioning-optimized, nobody will ever learn it.

As a content material author, it is vital you develop into acquainted with Website positioning with regards to writing.

Being an Website positioning-savvy author may also help you guarantee your content material ranks on whichever platforms you are publishing, together with YouTube, Google, and even social websites like Instagram.

Plus, you need to use Website positioning to make sure you’re writing about the most well-liked subjects associated to your services or products, and protecting the precise sub-topics if you’re writing a few given subject.

As an example, “content writing tips” is a key phrase phrase I discovered when conducting key phrase analysis on the subject of “content writing” as a complete — it is not essentially a sub-topic I might’ve thought-about protecting on this weblog submit had I not completed the analysis to acknowledge HubSpot readers are searching for out that data.

Finally, studying key Website positioning ways will assist you develop into a author whose extra attuned together with your readers’ challenges, and make sure you create content material that extra precisely solutions these challenges.

four. Think about how one can entice an viewers throughout all kinds of platforms.

Whereas Website positioning is essential for making certain your content material ranks on search engines like Google, it is not the one alternative for distribution.

To succeed in a wider viewers, it is useful to discover ways to write content material that performs nicely on varied platforms corresponding to Instagram, LinkedIn, or e mail.

Plus, you is perhaps a content material author whose sole job is to write e-newsletter content material or social media copy, relying on your small business’ wants.

To make sure your content material reaches and conjures up audiences whatever the platform they like, it is vital you constantly devour content material by way of e mail and social to choose up writing suggestions particular for these sources.

5. Incorporate multimedia parts to interrupt up the textual content.

Each time potential, attempt to incorporate movies, photographs, graphs, or different multimedia content material to interrupt up the textual content and make it simpler to your readers’ to devour — significantly if it is long-form content material, like pillar pages or whitepapers.

Think about, as an example, the weblog submit I wrote: “The right way to Develop a Content material Technique: A Begin-to-End Information“.

That weblog submit is lengthy, with over three,000 phrases. To interrupt it up, I embedded movies and different multimedia parts (like blockquotes), to maintain the reader engaged all through.

That is additionally a great alternative to extend site visitors to your organization’s varied marketing supplies. As an example, if in case you have a brand new firm podcast, strive embedding episodes in related weblog posts to drive listeners to the podcast whereas offering extra worth to your readers — a win, win.

6. Segue into acceptable and related calls-to-action.

As a content material author, your job is not simply to create good content material (that is what novelists are for). It is also to finally convert these readers, listeners, or viewers into prospects and prospects.

As such, it is vital you discover ways to appropriately embrace related CTAs all through your content material, significantly if these CTAs may also help your readers study extra concerning the subject at-hand.

Think about, as an example, the related CTAs embedded within the physique textual content of HubSpot’s YouTube video, “How to Understand Facebook Video Insights (Guide)“:

These in-text CTAs direct YouTube viewers to discover different HubSpot choices, together with HubSpot Academy social media programs. The CTAs aren’t jarring or off-putting — as an alternative, the content material author did a great job making certain the CTAs have been related and actually useful for the viewer.

Once you’re creating your personal content material, it is essential you make sure you’re constantly directing your viewers to numerous enterprise choices to transform these viewers into prospects and, finally, customers.

7. Edit, edit, edit.

Each time I end a primary draft of a weblog submit, I take a number of hours off after which return to it on the finish of the day. With a recent perspective, I can edit for small grammatical errors or repair structural points.

Good content material writing is unattainable with out good content material modifying.

We’re all human and can proceed to make errors in our writing: That is okay, so long as you bear in mind to return and edit for these errors, later.

Moreover, small grammatical errors can finally make-or-break a readers’ belief in your model as a complete. In the event that they discover you’ve got forgotten durations or misspelled phrases, they may make the judgment that your content material is not as authoritative and clear as different content material on the net, and search for future data elsewhere.

eight. Jam-pack worth into each sentence.

Once I labored with an editor a number of years in the past, she constantly informed me: “If your sentence isn’t telling the reader anything new, delete it.”

This was a troublesome capsule to swallow. That meant a few of my most lovely, transferring sentences wanted to be deleted. But it surely’s a good level: In content material creation, that you must transfer rapidly onto your subsequent level, otherwise you’ll lose your reader completely.

Most of your readers are busy folks with loads of distractions, together with different companies’ social posts, weblog articles, or YouTube movies. Make it simple for them by making your level — after which transferring on.

9. Mess around with attention-grabbing angles.

Good content material writers constantly take a look at out new, stunning angles to maintain readers engaged and coming again for extra.

Think about, as an example, how usually “consumer product” has been written about. I am prepared to guess in case you’ve ever researched the subject, you’ve got already seen all kinds of angles as totally different content material writers attempt to make an previous subject really feel new once more.

However … have you ever ever seen shopper product in comparison with water, earlier than?

Articles like “Be Like Water — A Guiding Principle for Consumer Product” do a superb job at discovering new angles to tug readers’ in, even when these readers have seen loads of shopper product-related content material earlier than.

The extra distinctive and stunning your angles are, the extra possible you’re to seize new audiences.

10. Incorporate unique quotes from thought leaders or colleagues to color a well-rounded argument.

Regardless of how good my writing is, my readers nonetheless do not essentially need to hear my recommendation on defending your psychological well being whereas working from house.

Which is why I did not attempt to sort out the subject myself — as an alternative, I discovered a psychologist to offer well-researched, useful tricks to take my piece to the following stage.

Even in case you’re an knowledgeable on a subject, think about the way you may present different opinions to create a extra well-rounded argument. In case you’re writing a weblog submit like, “Video vs. Podcast: Which Is Better For Your Business?”, see if you may get quotes from each podcasters and video producers (or your personal inside colleagues who really feel passionate concerning the topic).

Skilled quotes or unique insights will impress readers and present them that what they’re discovering in your web site, they will not discover elsewhere on the net. And that is highly effective.

11. Inform the reader why what you are writing about issues to them and their every day lives.

As an example you are creating an book: “A Comprehensive Guide to Excel”.

Not precisely what excited you most if you majored in English, is it?

Think about how your readers really feel: Certain, they may obtain your book in the event that they want the knowledge to excel (ha, ha) of their jobs, however they will not essentially be excited about it.

Think about, nonetheless, how essential Excel is for sure capabilities. Excel may also help an organization’s monetary division analyze year-over-year efficiency to find out how a lot budgeting a marketing group will obtain within the upcoming 12 months.

That finances contributes to essential development, and the enterprise’ capacity to succeed in and convert new prospects. With out it, the marketing group will not be capable of enhance model consciousness as successfully as they’d like — and the enterprise will undergo, because of this.

Once you acknowledge that Excel can really be tied to an individual’s job safety, it all of a sudden turns into far more fascinating, does not it?

Content material writing is not nearly creating fairly sentences. It is also about telling a reader why a subject ought to matter to them, and the way your content material may also help them develop into higher in sure areas of their lives — be it work, household, well being, or journey. Now that is purposeful.

12. Floor your recommendation with examples.

As I’ve lined these content material writing suggestions, I’ve tried to incorporate a number of related examples (i.e. my Rel=nofollow weblog submit).

Examples may also help floor your recommendation and drive a message house — they usually can even assist display how readers can apply your recommendation to their lives.

Significantly if you’re writing about loftier, much less tangible subjects, it is vital you present your readers what you imply, relatively than simply telling them.

However what higher option to display the significance of examples than to … Present you some examples? (Nice segue, huh?)

Let’s dive into some examples of highly effective content material writing, subsequent.

Examples of Content material Writing

Together with the examples I’ve included above, let’s check out some spectacular examples of content material writing.

1. Harris and Harris Wealth Administration’s Weblog Submit, “What Keeps Me Calm For Clients As Markets Gyrate“:

Why It Works

When you’ve got the prospect to learn the entire article, do — the whole piece is informative and interesting. However what this introduction does significantly nicely is hook the reader with a gap that is stunning and intriguing. 

“You never see it until it happens … We were due … I just didn’t expect it …” are all phrases that work to create suspense and encourage the viewer to maintain studying. Zaneilia Harris, the writer of the submit, makes use of emotion to interact along with her readers and make “market downturns” as a subject each private — and common. An excellent instance of utilizing a robust hook to draw, shock, and delight readers. 

2. The Rachel Hollis Podcas‪t‬, “No Motivation? Here’s How to Create Your Own!“

Why It Works

The podcast script is thrilling, related, and highly effective. I discovered myself nodding alongside as I listened: one thing most content material writers hope will occur in response to their content material. 

Particularly, check out the outline for the podcast (if you do not have the time to take heed to the entire episode): “This week … Rachel is delivering her best secrets for creating a firestorm of motivation inside a season where even a spark feels hard to find.” 

The language is compelling and distinctive — and who does not desire a firestorm of motivation? This is a superb instance of content material writing that encourages a reader to finish a process: On this case, downloading the episode. 

three. Trello’s Business Plan Template submit by way of LinkedIn.

Why It Works

Merely put, typically, timing is the whole lot. 

Trello’s content material writers revealed the precise message on the proper time —on this case, the very starting of 2021. Entrepreneurs have been possible drawn to the hook, “Are you thinking about turning your passion project into a real-life business in 2021?”

Moreover, the copy makes use of a wide-variety of examples to draw as many viewers as potential. As an example, the copy mentions the template may also help you set up product descriptions, funds, or business analyses.

Each time potential, it is useful to make sure your copy can entice audiences with totally different challenges or wants — which this submit does nicely. 

four. Brian Dean’s YouTube video, “How to Start (And Grow) a YouTube Channel in 2020“:

Why It Works

When the video begins, one of many first sentences Brian says is that this one: “These are the exact same steps I used to take my channel from zero subscribers to over 5,000,000 views.”

That is highly effective script writing, and goes a good distance in the direction of convincing viewers to maintain watching. Why? As a result of it tells you the content material that follows really helped somebody succeed, and creates a stage of authenticity that could possibly be lacking if Brian merely mentioned, “I’ve heard from others that these tips work.” 

5. Ally Bank’s “Save for what matters in 2021” e-newsletter e mail:

Why It Works

I used to be instantly drawn to the punny slogan on the high of this e mail after I opened it in my inbox, which reads: “On your mark. Get set. Goals.” The remainder of this newsletters packs a punch, too — every sentence is jam-packed with useful data, and better of all, the content material is directed proper at me, the reader. 

And who does not need to make 2021 the “year you save for what matters”?

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[mustafa-el-fats]

in: Featured, Heading Out On Your Own, Money & Career, Networking, Professional Skills

Brett & Kate McKay • August 9, 2012 • Last updated: September 23, 2020

Managing Your Online Reputation

This article series is now available as a professionally formatted, distraction free paperback or ebook to read offline at your leisure.

All the basic life skills we’ve covered so far in this series have been things that your dad, and even your granddad, had to learn when he left home for the first time too.

But today’s young man faces a new challenge that Pops never encountered: managing his online reputation.

Despite the nascent nature of this skill, I truly believe it’s one of the most important things we’ll talk about in this series. As the line between the offline and online world gets increasingly blurry, your online reputation is your reputation. Before you meet your freshman roommate, before you pick up a date, before you shake the hand of a potential employer…you better believe they’ve already Googled you, already formed a first, first impression about you, your interests, and what kind of person you are. Thus, if you’re not careful and conscious about the content you create online, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot in all areas of your life.

Heading Out on Your Own…And Into a Fishbowl World

Leaving for college or another kind of adventure after high school has long been an exciting and heady time. It’s an age where you’re experimenting with ideas and values, testing new freedoms, meeting new people, and often changing your mind about who you are and what you want out of life. One week you feel one way, and the next you feel another. During this process you often make mistakes, and do bone-headed things that twenty years later will still make you wonder, “What was I thinking?”

Just a decade ago, only you, and a few of your closest friends, would have held the memory of those crazy and sometimes cringe-worthy moments. The only record of them could be found by digging up a private photo album or journal.

Today…it’s a whole new ball game.

Now, everything you do and say can potentially become part of your permanent and public record. Everybody’s got a smartphone and can snap a picture of you anywhere, anytime and post it online. And things that go up online about you and from you can remain there forever. Mistakes you made when you were just 19 can haunt you for the rest of your life. Being a young man used to mean you could entirely reinvent yourself by moving to a new place and making new friends, but now your online reputation will follow you wherever you go.

I don’t mean to sound all doom and gloom about it. But that’s the sobering reality of living in the Internet Age, and it doesn’t help to bury one’s head in the sand and try to whatever that reality away. It absolutely doesn’t mean that college can’t still be the fun, spontaneous experience it’s always been; it just means you need to take a conscious, proactive approach to taking responsibility for what parts of that experience end up online and in the public eye.

Why Is Proactively Managing Your Online Reputation So Important?

One of the greatest things about the internet is that it is a giant pot that people can both add to and take from. This puts the most enormous wealth of knowledge in human history right at our fingertips and provides an endless amount of inspiration that can be added onto and “remixed.”

The downside of the big internet pot, is that the moment you put something into the pot, you pretty much lose all control over it. Many viral embarrassments have started out as something someone just wanted to share with a few good friends. But those friends shared it with their friends, who shared it with their friends…on and on until it ended up on Tosh.O.

There are essentially no guaranteed take backs when it comes to what you put online. You can erase your Facebook status, blog post, comment, tweet, or video, but someone else may very well have already shared it, copied it, taken a screenshot of it, or downloaded the video and reposted it somewhere else. How websites looked on a certain date in time are captured and archived on sites like the WayBack Machine (take a look at AoM circa 2008!). Emails that you thought you deleted forever can still sometimes be retrieved, and just because you deleted an email doesn’t mean the person you sent it to didn’t archive it. If someone else wants to post something of yours, you may not be able to get them to take it down without suing.

All of which is to say, pretty every piece of digital content you create can potentially exist forever. And this digital record can be accessed by any of the 250 million internet users in the US, not to mention the 2 billion online all over the world.

What’s on that record can have a big impact on both your personal and professional life.

Your college’s admissions office may have Googled you when they looked over your application. As soon as your freshman roommate knew you’d be bunking with him, he Googled you. When you network with someone at a party and tell them about your great idea, they’ll Google you later. And 81% of singles say they Google or check the Facebook page of someone before meeting him or her for a date.

Even though only 7% of Americans think their online reputation influences hiring decisions, in reality, 75% of US companies have made an online screening a formal part of the hiring process, 85% of recruiters and HR professionals say that having a positive online reputation influences their hiring decisions, and 70% of recruiters say they have rejected candidates based on something they found about them online. And since those numbers come from a study done in 2009, they’re undoubtedly even higher now.

What kinds of online discoveries cause recruiters and HR personnel to push your resume to the trash? This chart shows the most common red flags employers look for:

As you can see, it’s not just content you create that employers are checking out, it’s stuff your friends and colleagues post too. Be careful who you associate with.

Some young folks may be tempted to respond by saying, “Well, if a company is going to reject me for posting pictures of my drunken revelry, I wouldn’t want to work for them anyway.” But that’s pretty short-sighted. I’d venture to say that these companies aren’t rejecting candidates so much because they like to drink or swear, but rather that their willingness to show off these behaviors publicly shows a lack of judgment and wisdom. Not at all an unreasonable assumption.

The information that new friends and potential employers can find about you online may not even be true. Some people will try to verify it, some will not. And what they see will often come without any context – maybe you were being funny, maybe it’s an inside joke, but they won’t know that, they’ll simply make immediate judgments about what they find. This is why when it comes to managing your online reputation, you must be both proactive and defensive — deleting anything inappropriate,  wisely choosing the digital content you create, and purposefully creating positive content about yourself.

Self-Reflect Before You Self-Reveal

“Young people in particular often self-reveal before they self-reflect. There is no eraser button today for youthful indiscretion.” –James Steyer

There are some practical ways to manage your online reputation, and we’ll get to them in a moment. But the first step in taking responsibility for your online presence is creating a mindset for how you want to approach your online life.

Matt Ivester, the author of lol..OMG! (despite the silly-sounding title, this is actually a great book, with solid advice from the guy who learned about online reputation management firsthand from his misadventures in founding Juicycampus.com), suggests three questions to ask yourself before you put something online:

1. Why are you doing this?

Why? This is the most important question of all, and one that unfortunately usually goes unasked and uncontemplated.

Today’s colleges are welcoming the first “digital natives:” they’ve never known a time when the internet wasn’t a huge part of their lives. And even for those who are old enough to have used encyclopedias for elementary-school research papers, interacting and participating online has become so ubiquitous that it’s hard to imagine that life was ever any other way. This is just how things are, and we do what everyone else is doing, so much so that we hardly ever ask why we are doing those things.  Once we do start asking why, the answers are surprisingly hard to come up with and articulate.

Why do you update your status or share a link on Facebook? Do you want to share news? Are you bored? Do you want to be thought clever? Are you trying to make someone else jealous? Do you want to see if people feel the same way as you? Why?

Why do you care how many likes or upvotes something you submit on Facebook or Reddit gets? Is it confirmation that you shared something with value? Why?

Why do you leave comments on blog posts? Do you want the author of the blog to know that you appreciated the article? Do you think you have the insight to add that might help another reader? Do you want the author to know how and why they are wrong? Why? What do you hope to accomplish? Do you think it will change their mind? Is it because the psychological angst you feel when you think someone is wrong needs to be discharged? Why?

Why do you participate in online forums? Does it provide a feeling of camaraderie? Do you like to hear others’ opinions? Why do you respond when you think those opinions are wrong? Why do you care what a stranger thinks about you? Why?

When you ponder the why behind creating any kind of online content, from a status update to a YouTube video, you may come up with a reason that you find satisfactory and worthwhile. Or you may find that your motivation is hard to make sense of and decide it’s not worth your time. Either way, by asking why, you’ll become what Ivester calls “a conscious creator of content.”

2. Is now the right time?

The internet creates a perfect storm for impulse control: at the same time that it actively solicits impulsive communication and make satisfying those impulses incredibly easy, it makes taking back the results of those impulses incredibly difficult; it’s easy to hit “send” or “submit,” and quite hard to un-send and un-submit something.

Facebook asks, “What’s on your mind?” while Twitter wants to know “What’s happening?” They owe their existence to people’s desire to share their thoughts, videos, and photographs – and they need to be constantly fed to survive and grow and make money. And blogs (including ours) want to engage readers and build community and so ask for comments. The internet is set up to encourage you to share whatever thought crosses your mind, and taking that thought from your cranium to the walls and screens of the digital world only takes a few clicks.

But just because you can share your thoughts on impulse doesn’t mean you should. Not only because you probably haven’t thought through the why behind wanting to share first, but because strong impulses are usually born from strong emotions: anger, depression, and grief, or from chemically-altered states (like being drunk). When you spout off and share personal feelings while emotional or trashed, you will likely come to regret it once those strong emotions fade or you sober up.

The best thing to do when you feel you’re dealing with an impulse to put something online that you might regret later, is just to sit on it. The internet creates a false sense of immediacy, giving you an overwhelming feeling that you have to respond now. But what you’ll find is that something that felt super urgent and mega important to say in the moment, will seem totally pointless when you wake up the next morning.

One method I use to thwart impulsive responses is to imagine myself living before the internet. If I feel a burning urge to tell the author of an article what a chucklehead he is, I think of reading a magazine in the 80s, and how I would have had no outlet to express my opinion about it besides writing up a letter to the editor or talking to my wife or close friends about it. Or if something annoys me and I want to rant about it on Facebook, I think of a time before Facebook when I would have had no choice but to keep my rant to myself. It makes me realize that just as sharing whatever crosses your mind wasn’t necessary then, it’s not necessary now. The fine-folks of the 80s, while they made some questionable fashion-choices, weren’t any less happy than we are now that we’re able to shout what we’re feeling and thinking to everyone 24/7.

3. How controversial do you want to be?

The younger generation  (including those my age) was raised with a lot of rhetoric about how special and unique they are, how important it is to be “authentic,” and that it’s good to be “transparent.” This can lead folks to throw caution to wind about what they share online because, “I’m just trying to be me! And if other people don’t like it, they can bite me!”

But just because you can now display your opinions and personality to a greater number of people than ever before, doesn’t mean you should, or that the more you share, the more authentic you are. Going back to my suggestion of thinking about life before the internet, people used to only be able to share their quirks with a close circle of family and friends, and they weren’t any less themselves than we are (actually they were probably more themselves since they didn’t get instant feedback on all of their quirks).

Examining the meaning of authenticity isn’t within the purview of this post (although it will be a future series), but suffice it to say for now that the ideal for many of the great men of the past was not transparency, but sprezzatura – only revealing themselves to others slowly as a relationship of trust developed. You may want to “be yourself” by trumpeting your religious, social, and political beliefs online every chance you get, but if those meme’s you keep flooding Facebook with is the only thing new acquaintances know about you, they may decide they don’t want to get to know you before they even do — they’ll miss the complexity of your character that would have shown through over time…that you’re both a liberal and a rabid gun owner, or a fervent Christian and a scientist, or a zealous vegetarian and a Marine.

The three questions above can go a long way to helping you judiciously choose what and what not to post online. A final question to consider is what the general public might think of the content if for some reason what you post went viral or you were suddenly thrust into national prominence. Would it embarrass your family? What impression would a stranger have of it? You and your friends might think it’s funny, but would others find it offensive? You never know who’s going to see your post, what’s going to be dug up on you later, and who might be looking at your phone.

How to Manage Your Online Reputation

Managing your online reputation involves both deleting content you don’t want out there and creating content you do. Follow the steps below that Ivester and others have suggested, and complete each step right after you read it. This is the kind of thing that’s easy to put off indefinitely. Do it now.

1. Google yourself.

Before you can know what actions to take to manage your online reputation, you need to know what’s already out there. To do this, first deactivate Google’s customized search – when you typically do a Google search, the results Google brings up are based on things like your location, what you’ve clicked on before, and things your friends like. But you want to see what would come up if someone else searched for you. Here’s how to take off the customized search feature.

If you have a common name like “Rob Smith,” then search for your name with a qualifier like, “Rob Smith St. Louis,” or “Rob Smith Tulane University.”

After you look at Google’s results for you, check out other search engines like Bing and Yahoo as well.

When you look at the results that come up for your name, try to imagine what conclusions someone might reach about you if they had no other context for that content, and knew nothing else about you.

2. Try to remove content that you don’t want showing up in search results anymore.

After you do a search for yourself, it’s time to try to delete things that showed up that you’d rather not have out there anymore. Maybe you signed up for an internet forum with your real name. Maybe you left a comment on a blog post under your real name. Maybe you wrote a review or a blog post that you now feel is too controversial. Some of these things you can delete yourself.

If you can’t delete something yourself, like a blog post comment on another person’s blog, then try to contact the owner of the site to see if they will remove it for you. They may or may not, but the nicer you are about it, the greater the chance of them helping you, so make your request as civil and appreciative as possible.

If you can’t find the contact information for the site owner, try the site WHOis. Website registrars are required to publish the contact information for the person who registered the domain. Oftentimes when you look up a site on WHOis, you’ll find that the owner has decided to keep their direct contact information private and have instead given a proxy email address. Either way, your email will end up in the same place.

Understand that even if you’re successful at removing the offending content from a site, it may take a few days or even weeks before it’s reflected in search engine results. Also, understand that the offending item really hasn’t “gone away.” There’s a chance that it has been archived on the WayBack Machine. Remember, what’s put on the internet stays on the internet forever.

Moving forward, be extremely judicious when using your real name online.

3. Proactively create a positive first impression online.

Your best bet in managing your online reputation is proactively creating positive content about yourself that pushes the bad stuff off of the first few pages of search engines. Set up accounts with large social networking sites that typically rank high on Google and other search engines. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+ profiles are often on the first page when you look up someone’s name. Set up accounts with them and post stuff that you’d be proud to have your name associated with.

The best thing you can do to ensure positive stuff associated with your name is at the top of search results is to start a blog and update it regularly. If you can, try to secure a domain name with your given name for your blog. What should you write about on your blog? You can publish your resume (redacting phone numbers and addresses, of course), write posts sharing insights in an expertise you might have, or use it to create a portfolio of your work if you’re a freelancer. Whatever it is, make sure it’s stuff you want associated with your name.

Cross-link your blog and all your social networking profiles together: put your link to Facebook and Twitter on your blog, a link to your LinkedIn profile and blog on your Facebook account, and so on.

Even if you don’t plan on using Twitter or Google+ or even putting anything on your blog, it doesn’t hurt to have your name registered with those accounts and domain. You don’t want some Joe Schmo mucking up your good name with a bunch of crazy online antics.

4. Adjust privacy settings on Facebook and clean up your Facebook Profile.

To ensure that potential employers or love interests only see the best of you when they look you up on Facebook, make the following adjustments:

First, take a look at how your profile page looks to the public. If you see any information visible that you don’t want strangers to see, make a note of it.

To change what’s visible on your profile page, click “About.”

Click “Edit” on the next page.  On each segment select “Friends” if you don’t want anybody who’s not your FB friend to see a particular piece of information. For networking reasons, I’ve left my job and school information visible to the public.

Visit the Facebook Privacy Settings page and adjust all your privacy settings so only your friends can see photos and status updates you make.

On the privacy settings page, update what your friends can share about you under “Timeline and Tagging.” Enable the ability to review and approve posts or photos that you are tagged in before they’re published on your Timeline. You can also disable Facebook’s tag suggestion when your friends upload photos that look like you. You don’t want your name tagged in an unflattering photo or post.

While you’re on the privacy settings page, limit who can see posts from the past. Even if you used to post everything publicly, this will retroactively make those posts private.

Review the photos that you’re tagged in and untag yourself from any unflattering photos. While you’re at it, you might ask your friend to remove the photo if it’s something you don’t want out there. Even if you’re not tagged in the pic, it could come back to haunt you.

Leave groups and unlike pages that may be seen as controversial…or just dumb. At least set the privacy settings on them so only your FB friends can see the pages you like.  how.

5. Be more conscious of what you share and whom you share it with on Facebook.

Ask the three questions we covered above before posting something on Facebook. That will save you a lot of grief.

Also, take into account if what you’re about to share is appropriate and relevant to ALL your Facebook friends. You don’t need to share your weekend plans with your old boss and former professors. In real life, you adjust what you talk about depending on your company — do the same on Facebook. Create lists on Facebook for close family/friends, acquaintances, professional colleagues, people that are the same religion as you, people you enjoy talking politics with, etc. Before posting something, ask yourself if this is something all your friends would be interested in or is better for a specific list of your friends. And even if you’re only posting for a list of close friends, still keep in mind what others would think if that status or photo got shared with people outside the list. It could happen.

6. Create strong passwords for your accounts.

If the recent story of tech writer Mat Honan’s online life being completely demolished by hackers doesn’t motivate you to strengthen your online security, then I don’t know what will. Create strong passwords for all your accounts and change them every six months. A strong password is at least 8 characters long and includes at least one special character (&!#) and both upper and lower case letters. Your passwords shouldn’t be the same for all your accounts. To manage all your passwords, use an app like LastPass.

To reduce the chance of getting hacked, enable two step authentication. Here’s how to do it on Google (if you use Gmail) and Facebook.

7. Use passwords on your laptop and mobile devices. 

An unattended laptop or mobile device provides a devilish opportunity for friends or random strangers to mess with your online life. I know several people who had to do a lot of scrambling to recover from an offensive tweet sent from an unattended iPhone by a mischievous friend. Avoid that. Enable password protection on all your mobile devices.

8. Set up a Google Alert for your name. 

Keep your finger on the pulse of what’s said about you on the web by setting up a Google Alert for yor name.  Just enter your name as a search query and Google Alert will email you a digest once a week (or daily if you want) of all the new content that’s hit the web with your name in it.

Conclusion

The internet is an amazing educational, social, and networking tool — you just need to use it wisely. Using it too little can be just as damaging to your personal and professional life as using it too much. Be a “conscious content creator” and use sound wisdom and judgement in deciding where you personally want to draw the line between your public and private life.

Any other tips on managing your online reputation? Share them with us in the comments (only after asking yourself why you’re commenting and making sure it’s the right time, of course)!

 

Related Articles

Going Undercover: How to Protect Your Privacy Online

Being a Gentleman in the Age of the Internet: 6 Ways to Bring Civility Online

Escape the Algorithm!

3 Ways You Should Never Start an Online Comment

16 Ways to Support the Art of Manliness in 2016

How to Support and Follow the Art of Manliness

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TGF Thoughts: 1x06-- Social Media and Its Discontents

Thoughts under the cut... 

The Kings wrote this one, which always means it’s either a big episode or it contains a topic they’re passionate about. This episode falls into the latter category.

And Jim McKay directed. He’s directed many TGW episodes (and has directed at least one episode every season), and also lots of episodes of shows ranging in style from Rectify to The Americans.

The episode kicks off with a white dude in front of a solid green screen ranting about coding and how men are inherently superior to women. He is very mad about a change in Google’s algorithm that implies that women can invent things. Like, he’s seething. Over the idea that women could invent things. His resentment—and his complete lack of logical reasoning—would be almost comical if this weren’t based on a very real online harassment problem.

We cut away from the green screen to Neil Gross slapping a sheet of paper down on the RBK conference table and explaining that’s just one offensive post made on his social platforms.

The device used to illustrate the content of the posts is reminiscent of how the writers have brought cases to life in the past. Whenever a case requires a lot of talking, the writers like to bring in these illustrations to make the plot clearer and more captivating (see 3x07 and 6x18). In this case, they may also be trying to put faces to posts that would most likely (but not necessarily) be made anonymously.

Neil presents the RBK team with 4,758 “problematic” posts. What, is he only looking at the past hour?

Neil continues to comment on how cool it is that there are black lawyers… while only addressing Diane.

He brings a gift for the RBK team (no sign of it being RBKL yet…). It’s a Chummy T-Shirt with “Team Reddick, Boseman & Kolsted” written on it. I bought the Chummy shirt the CBS store offered and it’s super soft and comfortable. If CBS made this shirt—without the typo, of course—available, I would buy it too. Hear that, CBS? I am telling you I will spend more money on your product!

Barbara’s last name is misspelled on the shirt (it’s “Kolstad,” not “Kolsted’), and she notices immediately. When she points it out to Adrian, he just notes that Neil is bringing in $86 million a year. Wasn’t it $58 million last episode?

Neil needs a new Terms of Service agreement because two of his sites have become “like the Wild West of racism and sexism.” These sites are “Chummy Friends” which is Facebook-like (a way a real life Neil Gross would literally never describe his own site, but character Neil Gross has to because how else would we know what Chummy Friends is standing in for) and Scabbit, the Reddit clone from 5x09. (In 5x09, ChumHum definitely didn’t own Scabbit. Florrick/Agos represented ChumHum at the time, but they were the ones going up against Scabbit in court. I suppose they acquired it.)

Ah, one of the trolls is played by Ophelia’s boyfriend from Sweet/Vicious, which gives me a great opportunity to tell all of you to go watch Sweet/Vicious. Especially if the case this week made you feel angry and powerless. Go watch Sweet/Vicious.

Neil wants the posts gone on moral grounds… and because they’re hurting his business by scaring off advertisers.

“I notice only eyes for Diane,” Adrian comments to Barbara. This is true.

Neil sets a deadline: a new TOS by 5 pm. He then continues to talk about how cool it is that black lawyers exist and how it gives him hope, which he seems to see as a compliment but Lucca, Adrian, and Barbara all (correctly) read as patronizing.

As soon as Neil leaves, Diane suggests splitting into groups to tackle the problem. Barbara immediately overrules her and says they are going to sort the posts instead. (Why wouldn’t ChumHum have given them a digital copy of these posts? That would be much easier to sort.)

Adrian suggests making piles for racist posts, anti-Semitic posts, and threatening posts. He forgets misogynistic, which Diane immediately realizes (and which is a weird oversight I have trouble buying, given that Neil mentioned sexism twice in his introductory speech). Is this meant to be a comment on how Adrian thinks (I mean, you know how I feel about the way he talks to Barbara!)?

Barbara also asks what’s missing, so now I’m confused, because… duh? It wouldn’t just be a white woman who’s bringing up issues of misogyny, even if I bet Diane would list misogyny as an issue before she’d list racism.

Diane calls Maia onto the project through the glass wall. Maia is currently busy, not with work (…) but with a personal phone call to her father. “Dad, I’ve been working pretty hard lately, but, um, I’ll try,” she says. STOP THE PRESSES: MAIA’S BEEN WORKING HARD? Maia hasn’t been on a case that we’ve seen in three episodes, and she’s had a seemingly endless amount of time during the workday to investigate her own problems. Is this Maia’s idea of hard work? Hahahahahahahahhahahhahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha

(Seriously though, SHOW, NOT TELL.)

“But the problem is, I’m an associate. I don’t control my own fate,” Maia says. Ah, so in her first two lines, she’s managed to announce that she’s working hard (when, obviously, she is not) and then inadvertently take my favorite Alicia theme about controlling one’s fate. I want to want your character on the show, Maia, but I kinda just want to buy you a one-way ticket to Mandyville. (To be clear, I don’t care that Maia happens to mention controlling one’s fate; Alicia doesn’t own that issue. I don’t like these lines because they remind me 1) of the ongoing issue I have with the way Maia’s being written and 2) of how much better the Kings did when they explored the same things with Alicia. I know they’re capable of writing better material than this.)

Maia agrees to go see her dad that night. She gets off the phone to go—GASP—do work.

In the conference room, Lucca’s reading a post about the abortion debate. Julius calls it “political” and I’m just wondering: what’s the difference between threats and politics? If your politics are to deprive people of their rights, and you’re stating them in the most abusive language possible, and directing it at a specific individual, how is that not a threat/harassment?

Lucca asks to call a vote on whether this is “political” or “threatening” (also, why can’t it be both?). Julius plays rank and reminds Lucca that she’s an associate and he’s a partner. Ugh. He’s just mad he’ll lose to someone he outranks. I love that Lucca always shares her opinions even when she’s not asked and she’s outranked. Some (like Julius) may not like it, but I admire her confidence. And, I love that she doesn’t speak up to show off or to prove her ideas are the best: she does it because she truly believes that what she has to say is important. (Even better: it usually is important.)

Diane calls a vote on another post, this one about rape. Barbara immediately says it’s a threat. Adrian says it’s not—he’s just making a distinction between a threat and misogyny. Lucca disagrees, vocally. Adrian says the person has to say “I am going to rape you” in order for it to be a threat, because otherwise it’s protected speech. Um, but, as Neil Gross already said, this is ChumHum’s call, not a First Amendment issue. Your right to be a dick on Chummy Friends isn’t protected by the Bill of Rights.

Diane reminds Adrian of this, and Julius goes, “Yes, but the terms have to be fair.” Do they? Legally? Or just for optics?

Maia speaks up to argue against Julius. “And if I’m attacked 50 times a day?” Maia says. Julius says that those who are the most harmed shouldn’t be judging speech. Maia takes out her phone and reads one of the abusive texts she’s been sent.

“But that’s about your parents’ scandal, right?” Julius argues, as though that makes a difference.

“My guess is yes. But sometimes they’re so busy discussing my rape that they, uh, they don’t have time to state their reasoning,” Maia retorts. Then the discussion shifts away from this.

A missed opportunity, I think, to have Maia be able to do more than say, “hey, I got a threat, and it was bad like all these others are also bad!” Has she perhaps noticed a pattern? Spoken with others who face the same threats? Read up on the issue? Picked up on other problems the TOS needs to address? Anything? This is Maia’s only contribution to the case.

Don’t get me wrong (especially since I’m always ragging on poor Maia, who hasn’t done anything other than be poorly written). I think it’s smart to bring Maia into this conversation. She has dealt with this problem personally (on Chummy sites or off), and that insight is valuable. She doesn’t need to save the day or have all the answers (she’s just a first year associate!), and I know that once they’re out of the brainstorming phase there’s not as much Maia can to do get involved. But this harassment stuff is the only thread we’ve gotten about Maia’s personal life that isn’t conspiracy drama about her parents (or the two appearances by Amy in the early episodes, #BringAmyBack), and now there’s a case about it, and the writers are only going to do the bare minimum to tie the two threads together? Maia jumps at the opportunity to help with this project. But is there more? Does she volunteer to help see it through, does it make her want to work on something else as a distraction, is she totally neutral about it to the point where people are whispering that shouldn’t she care, something, anything!?

This case doesn’t need to be a lens to develop Maia. I usually hate cases like that—the ones that only exist to parallel the main characters’ life. But if the show’s going to tackle the topic, why not loop Maia in to a greater degree? Especially after three consecutive episodes where she’s not doing any work. Just give her work to do. Tie her into the cases of the week, and not just the ones that she can relate to. Again, this was never a problem on TGW. If anything, the problem there was that Alicia was on too many important cases. That happened because TGW wasn’t an ensemble show, so, especially at first, everything had to relate to Alicia. TGF is an ensemble show, so it should be really easy for it to find the balance between “Maia’s on every case and everyone needs this one associate on every project” and “Maia never works.”

I KNOW I AM A BROKEN RECORD BUT I’LL STOP WHEN THE WRITERS DO.

Lucca gets a call from Colin and ducks out to take it. He wants to have lunch and also to know what color panties she’s wearing. She says she’s color blind—I think as a joke?

Why does “lunch” always mean “sex” on this show?

Colin goes to talk to his boss about Kresteva’s nonsense. The boss is more interested in his salad than in justice. His boss explains what Kresteva’s trying to do—scare off other firms from taking on police brutality cases by making an example out of RBK, even if that means letting Henry Rindell out on bail. Ah, this is what I suspected but at least we know the strategy for sure now.

Now Colin is “oversight head of whatever, we’ll figure out the title later.” He has no veto power, though. This boss seems fun.

Diane wants to ban every use of the n-word, which Adrian argues against because that would end up banning every rap lyric on the planet from being quoted, as well as Huckleberry Finn. Yeah, Diane. I was with you on the “adding a pile for misogynistic posts” but Adrian’s right here.

Barbara slips up and uses the word “tweets” instead of “posts.” But it’s okay; we all know we’re talking about Twitter here and not Chummy Friends.

I wonder if the writers contemplated calling it “Chummy Chums” or using the word “Chum” in it.

With no segue (deleted scene?), Julius begins talking about how there’s a problem: 50% of misogynistic tweets are sent by women. Okay, and…? How is that a problem? If women are being misogynistic and abusive, why wouldn’t they also be banned?

Lucca and Marissa chime in to say that study (which, naturally, they’ve both read) is bogus, because of how it defines misogyny.

Even Marissa is arguing against Julius. I love it. Diane taps Marissa’s arm like, “not your fight, drop off the coffee and leave” and Marissa, instead of quietly exiting, calls more attention to herself and says, “Yeah, I’m going.” Julius is all, “Who is that?!”

“I’m bored. Teach me something,” Marissa announces to Jay, who is working. People on this show have such odd ideas about their professional responsibilities. Or maybe it’s just Marissa.

Jay tells her to fuck off, I think. Marissa insists: she wants to learn how to investigate!

She asks Jay if he’s ever seen a dead body in person because he’s looking at crime scene photos. He says yes, six. “I’ve seen twelve,” Marissa replies. Jay didn’t expect that. Marissa doesn’t explain this happened during her time in the IDF. It surprises me we didn’t get more exposition there.

Anyway, this conversation makes Jay more receptive to Marissa’s questions, so he tells her she needs to get an investigator license unless she assists a licensed investigator. Marissa takes this as an invitation to join him.

Then Jax walks in and interrupts them and Marissa has to call Maia out of a meeting, because there are labor laws specifically in place for Maia Rindell that protect her from having to work for more than 15 consecutive minutes.

Maia and Jax go into a conference room to talk. There are three windows in the room’s window-wall, and there’s a great shot where Maia and Jax stand behind the window on the left and the window on the right, leaving a lot of distance between them.

Conspiracy stuff happens. Jax warns Maia against talking to her dad because he’ll be wearing a wire.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” Maia says. Do you really though?

(The answer is no, because we follow Maia through the hallways of the office and back to her desk, where she picks up her personal cell phone and phones her father to cancel their plans.)

(Rose is doing a very good job as Maia. I love the way her face changes when Henry insists that they can’t talk over the phone; it has to be in person. She takes it as an indication that Henry really might be wearing a wire, and begins to question everything she thought she knew… again.)

(I like the idea of this plot and the idea of Maia but the writing, ugh.)

More bickering about the TOS happens. I’m going to stop recapping this stuff because I think it’s pretty clear where I stand on it, and once we get to Felix… I just don’t have the time to break down why every argument he makes is wrong.

Colin texts Lucca to meet her now, so she smiles and then proposes a solution to the TOS dilemma: an appeal process. Users will be suspended after a certain number of harassing posts, a panel will review, and they’ll have a chance to appeal. I have questions about the logistics of this, but I like the idea. So does the rest of the room, Julius included. Adrian’s thrilled to have solved the problem well before the deadline.

The policy goes into effect IMMEDIATELY and without any notification (well, we don’t know that there wasn’t a new TOS agreement everyone had to click, but this would’ve been news) and begins to piss off/delight trolls. Now they get to troll lawyers!

Maia goes to meet with Elsbeth. This I’ll excuse because it seems pressing and affects the firm, so it’s kind of working.

Elsbeth doesn’t have furniture in her dentist’s office office, so there are only folding beach chairs.

I think Elsbeth’s “Ada” was designed just to fuck with me, because last week it interrupted an Alicia update and this week it’s playing a song by an artist called “Good Girl” because Elsbeth said, “Good Girl.”

Elsbeth wants Maia to feed her dad false information. Maia’s hesitant, but comes around to the idea. Elsbeth tells her to record the conversation if she does feed him the info.

Lucca and Colin are in bed together, and Colin asks Lucca out for dinner the next night. She wants to know if he means dinner or dinner dinner. The former just means “fucking” and the latter means a date (then fucking). Lucca, we deciphered this code (well, as it applies to “lunch”) during the Willicia affair, but it’s good to get confirmation.

Colin wants the date, and Lucca turns him down.

Ugh, fuck this Felix guy.

But, he reveals something interesting: Diane donated $18,860 to Hillary (which is well over the contribution limit, isn’t it? Where’s he getting this number?), and Barbara donated $23,000. Barbara donated more than Diane did. I’m surprised, but I really shouldn’t be, since a large donation lines up with what we already know about Barbara.

I don’t get how this panel works. They’re going to spend this much time on each Twitter Egg? All the name partners at RBK, for several days, hearing out every troll in person? Why did they institute a new TOS without a trial period or testing it out at all (with mock panels and etc)? This appeal system, in its current form, seems like a waste of time and money. And also weird, because… do you have to go to the RBK offices to appeal? Is there a standard procedure for who’s on the panels? For what happens during deliberations? Do you have to give up anonymity to appeal (that would make sense, tbh)? Are they a matter of public record?

For a show that comes around to the conclusion that we shouldn’t engage with trolls, it sure spends a lot of time on Felix’s antics.  

Now Diane and RBK are being harassed online. There’s a never-ending stream of hate. And somehow, in all that, Diane realizes that each account is keeping their harassment to 12 posts. This confuses me. Are their terms of service so vague they don’t tell you what would get you banned (probably; they could just say “continuous harassment” or something like that instead of revealing the exact number or that there is a number of harassing posts you can send)?

So, Adrian wonders if there’s a leak and asks Jay to investigate. Knowing that the trolls will probably talk to a white girl, he asks Marissa to help.

Lucca’s out at drinks with the dude whose ass we saw in the pilot, Zack. He’s her personal trainer. She doesn’t care about him at all, because the only reason she’s out with him at all is so that Colin can run into him and get jealous. Colin doesn’t. Awww, Lucca, you’re starting to care!

Maia goes to meet with her dad, and I wonder if she called first (which… would be the logical thing to do if she’s worried he’s wearing a wire, since he’d need to anticipate the conversation in order to actually be wearing the wire, right?) (unless “wearing a wire” means “making an iPhone recording” in this case?) because there’s a party going on when she arrives home.

At the end of the night, Maia and Henry have a chance to talk. Unfortunately, it plays out exactly as Elsbeth suggested it might, and Maia has to feed her father the lie about RBK.

This Ada thing is a running gag now. Hmm.  

Marissa goes to investigate and finds one of the trolls in person. Marissa compliments him, and suddenly he’s let his guard down and tells her everything she needs to know—namely that Felix has their transcripts.

Adrian asks Jay to investigate Julius as the source of the leak. Neither Diane nor Barbara seem to agree with this decision, but they don’t disagree strongly enough to argue.

Ugh, Felix.

I am not the hugest fan of these definitions that pop up in the mean posts. Not sure they’re necessary, nor am I sure those terms are what would confuse a viewer who didn’t already know exactly what this episode was about. Actually, who is the intended audience of this? It seems a little too widely discussed to be these writers’ usual material.

As Lucca, Barbara, and Adrian discuss what to do, Elsbeth arrives, carrying three Vera Bradley bags and grinning. “Oh my God, when did this law firm become a circus?” Barbara wonders.

Felix warns Diane that Neil Gross may have gone to her firm for the TOS for a reason.

Elsbeth updates Barbara, Adrian, and Lucca about the story she planted with Henry.

Marissa enjoys pretending to be someone she’s not for the purposes of investigating. Anyway, turns out Marissa and Jay are investigating Felix’s boyfriend.

Annnnd it works, and turns out the leak isn’t Julius… it’s ChumHum’s offices. Diane realizes it’s a set-up.

Marissa is alerted to a new problem: instead of using the n-word, trolls are now writing “Neil Gross.” Oh, no. (So they DID ban specific words?? I DON’T UNDERSTAND)

Marissa brings this to Diane and explains that one of the trolls really likes her. Diane is confused by how Marissa would even know the troll, and Marissa says, “It’s nothing. They’re easily confused when women offer them attention.” This is her best line since she told Elfman, “God, handsome men are so weak.”  

Lucca walks into Colin’s office, angry, and tells him she hates games and to knock it off. He’s not doing anything bad… he’s just not acting jealous, and that makes Lucca mad.

Colin figures it out, and realizes that Lucca’s plan didn’t work. “Let’s go,” she says. I can’t wait until these two just decide to become a couple and stop with the games.

Ugh, I am not here for this Lucca-kisses-and-fondles-Colin-while-he-drives-down-a-dark-and-twisty-road thing. I know these writers well enough to know the car isn’t going to crash, and so it just feels weird and unnecessary until Colin finally pulls over. It also feels exactly like the Kings’ (okay, mostly Robert King’s) idea of edgy sex, and there was more than enough of that on TGW. More 3x01 Willicia type scenes and fewer scenes that remind me of season 4 Kalinda, please and thanks.

Colin lives in a giant house. Why does one person need all those rooms?

Julius notices that someone’s gone through his things and storms into Adrian’s office (or maybe it’s Barbara’s office? They’re both there). Julius, understandably, isn’t happy. He says he was the most loyal employee they had, but no more: he knows he was targeted for this, and that people think differently of him now. He quits the firm and calls Andrew Hart, the lawyer who gave him his card in 1x03.

Diane has to inform Neil Gross about how his name is being used. He’s not pleased, and now he just wants this whole TOS thing to go away as fast as possible. What a shock.

Ugh, Felix. Diane says they’ll reinstate him and he’s sad he can’t keep trolling. Boo hoo.

Diane monologues at him about how he’s a clown and how he destroys his points by being racist and misogynist and how he’s a bully. It’s satisfying, but doesn’t really solve any problems. Like, is the show saying here that harassment is hard to control so it’ll never be controlled, so just don’t feed the trolls?

Diane confronts Neil about the leak, and he responds—even though she’s right—by calling Adrian and Barbara in for another meeting, one without Diane. Barbara is pleased with this: for the first time in weeks, her power doesn’t seem like it’s slipping away from her.

Lucca isn’t wearing high heels!

Colin shows up to RBK and meets with Lucca. He warns her to stay clear of RBK’s finances. Why? Because of the story Elsbeth planted. It’s sweet that Colin warns Lucca. She thanks him, genuinely, but she’s distracted… Maia’s right there, and Lucca knows this means Maia’s world is about to be destroyed even more.

[thedanny522]

Yep, you read that correctly. 100% free.Hello, affiliate marketers!You already read the title and clicked on the thread (thanks, by the way), so I'll keep this to the point and spare you the long story (plenty of details below though).You're here because you want to make money and so am I. However, right now I'm actually here to make you money, not me (for the time being).Let me explain.I've been freelancing full-time as a content writer for several years and I'm looking to transition into direct response copywriting. After getting a small taste of it with a current client, I've found that I love it!Unfortunately, I don't have a badass portfolio to showcase when pitching to new clients (yet).That's where you all come in.I'm offering 100% free copywriting services to 3 members from this board. If I had the time to write copy for everyone and put it in my portfolio I would! But with my current writing queue from existing content marketing clients, I simply can't dedicate the necessary time to too many people to deliver great copy. It is what it is.​No. I'm not charging ANYONE.I know. I know. In the past, I too have seen threads with a Redditor offering "FREE ___ to the first 5 people!!11!!1" and then after you've contacted them, what do you know... they've already "found the 5 people they want to work with for free, but would be happy to offer you a package at $____ amount of money."Yeah, that's pretty obnoxious, and I'm not doing that. If you're not one of the 3 people I work with, then no hard feelings, I just don't have the time (and I'm not going to try selling you on anything).​The "Fine Print"Wait, how is there any "fine print" in a free offering?Well, there is. Sort of.The only fine print is that we'll be working together with the understanding that you'll let me showcase this work in the future to other potential clients. I'd like to track the increase in conversions, open rates, etc. and build some case studies for future use on my site. If you really like the stuff, then a quick little snippet as a testimonial would always be much appreciated as well (and I can link back to your site by your name, company name, etc. if you'd like).Also, while this isn't a necessity exactly, I have a strong preference for those of you in the finance, business, digital marketing, and other related niches. That's where the majority of my experience has been in the past and that's what I'd like to continue honing my skills on. I'll still consider other areas, but those are definitely my preferred niches to work in.​Still reading? Great, shoot me a message!If you've made it this far, then sounds to me like you're interested.Go ahead and message me here on Reddit (preferably a DM, not a chat) or [shoot me an email](mailto:KeysburgKopy@gmail.com) and tell me a bit about what affiliate product you're selling.Let's get the ball rolling! via /r/Affiliatemarketing

[minnievirizarry]

How to 10x Your Content Strategy [6 Ways]

According to 2017’s B2B Content Marketing Report, over 91% of the most successful respondents reported that their organization is extremely committed to content marketing.

This should be a wake-up call for every business without a strong or dedicated content strategy.

At the same time, nobody is saying content marketing is easy. And SEO — the marketing approach that works with virtually all forms of online marketing, including content distribution and discovery — is still a relatively new field, whose rules keep changing all the time.

Years ago, Rand Fishkin, CEO of Moz, coined the term “10x content,” saying that the time had come when good, unique content simply wasn’t good enough anymore.

What was needed was stuff so good that it beat out the first results for a query a user might make on Google.

In this 10x spirit, I’m going to offer 6 ways that have helped me think about 10xing my own content strategy. In essence, it’s easy

In essence, it’s easy stuff—but don’t let that fool you. These are serious principles that, if ignored, will pretty much guarantee that the crawlers will bury your content.

1. Don’t skimp on the writing

One feature that immediately distinguishes good content strategies from bad ones is whether or not the writing is junk.

Whether it’s an article, a video script, or an ebook, in one way or another, it all comes down to the copy.

If it’s lazy, sloppy, or useless, it won’t matter in the long run how optimized it is for search engines.

All the keywords in this world won’t save you from junk writing—and indeed, the crawlers have long been sophisticated enough where they have begun screening out this sort of stuff.

This is not to mention the users themselves, who have a much better BS detector than I feel most content strategists give them credit for.

Write well, edit for typos, and have good, hopefully, original research. Principles like this will attract people to you.

For example, Leadpages, which offers landing page solutions for small to medium-sized business owners, produces regular content that provides research and info you can’t get elsewhere. This type of content strategy has worked extraordinarily well for them, and they continue to post growth and attract new users.

This type of content strategy has worked extraordinarily well for them, and they continue to post growth and attract new users.

2. Think beyond advertising

This one is a serious paradigm shift that many marketers just can’t seem to understand. Content marketing is not the same as advertising.

It performs many of the same functions as advertising, but its approach is way different and, in my opinion, way more respectful to the customer.

Great content builds a genuine relationship between your customer and your brand because it’s actually useful—it provides good information about a topic your customer/user is already interested in.

It doesn’t shove a sales pitch down the throat of your unsuspecting visitor. That would be impolite. Instead, you host valuable information that the user cares about and you let them come to you.

For example, weightlifting site BarBend.com recently published a comprehensive post about battle ropes (those are the heavy ropes you may have seen weightlifters swinging around at the gym).

This is a great example of the 10x strategy at work. The post provides value to its readers by not only giving a thorough analysis but also an easily digestible custom infographic.

Granted, this approach is a slower game than a flashy ad campaign, but it can deliver serious ROI when done thoughtfully.

Generally, graphics like this allow for better sharing across platforms like Pinterest, Tumblr, and Reddit, which can up engagement and views by several multiples. (The folks at BarBend informed me a visual hit on Pinterest alone could increase readership by 4x-6x on certain articles like the above.)

3. Say something new

The internet is stuffed right now with content answering almost every question imaginable, and much of this content is optimized to anticipate the way a user will search for it.

Your content strategy needs to take this oversaturation into serious account. How good of a chance does your page have to stand out if it’s merely engaging queries that the rest of the world has already dealt with?

We’re definitely not talking about page 1 Google results here, and that’s about 90% of all organic search traffic.

One way to approach this conundrum is to attempt to tackle the questions that haven’t been adequately answered yet.

This takes some data analysis, as well as creativity. Where are the blind spots in content?

These untapped queries represent tremendous opportunities to provide uniquely useful content to users.

In the battle rope case, someone who began their search merely curious about those heavy ropes in the gym finds themselves gaining a deeper understanding of neural connections from Aaron Guyett, Master Battle Rope Trainer, and U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sergeant.

It may be useful to focus your content strategy around responding to timely questions or events that quickly arise and need answers, rather than age-old issues for which millions of pages of content already exist.

But haven’t those heavy ropes existed for years? Yes, but with this explosion of new interest and a lack of up-to-date and comprehensive information on them, now is the perfect time to post on the topic.

Consumer reviews for overlooked, ubiquitous products like cars or security systems are more good examples of this principle at play.

A user base will always be curious about new products, but there may not be any pre-existing content that can address that curiosity.

4. Say it in a new way

And no matter what area of interest a content strategy aims to tackle, it’s also important that marketers begin to pioneer new ways of addressing questions.

Of course, the venerable listicle has proven to be an effective way of engaging user interest. But this was only figured out through trial and error.

You can bet that there are better ways of disbursing content to engage user interest. All it takes is creativity and determination to find them.

Even as early as 2014, for example, visual content began to usurp and overtake the written word, and it won’t be long before new content strategies depending chiefly on video become the mainstays of content marketing. Mark my words.

The battle ropes post also includes three videos that show exactly how to do different rope exercises with proper form. This is an easy way to show and tell.

The point here is that, even if you aren’t able to address an entirely new question or problem for your user base (and that is admittedly a bit of a tall order), you can still carve out your niche by providing this information in a unique way that has its specific appeal.

Remember, Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t the only one to invent the telephone—he just had the best iteration, and that’s why we remember him and not Elisha Gray or Antonio Meucci.

Who, you might ask? Exactly.

5. Make it shareable

This is somewhat obvious, but your content strategy has to take into account shareability if you really want it to be 10x.

Shareability is an elusive factor, and it can end up being a rabbit hole that you end up wasting a lot of time following down when you should have been more worried about the baseline quality of your stuff to begin with.

But with that caveat in mind, it’s still important to think about some of these qualities.

So don’t write a 300-word headline, obviously. Address relevant issues that speak to your readership, and try to make sure your content fits a narrative form that appeals to people—almost more than anything, people love a good story.

Going back to the battle rope example, it’s easy to imagine the kind of person that would seek out and share the post.

What are those ropes I keep seeing at the gym?

Are the stories I’ve heard about battle ropes causing injuries true?

How do I make sure I use battle ropes correctly?

It’s the kind of post that people won’t only enjoy, but they’ll share it to help out their friends.

Also, make sure that all content strategy is designed with the mobile experience in mind, as it is fast becoming the dominant way to experience content.

And of course, don’t forget these:

6. Long form is good form

For some time, long-form content just wasn’t seen very often.

We can speculate why: Most of us don’t have much respect for a user’s attention span, and it makes sense why when we know that the average user stays on a page for less than 20 seconds.

For some time, long-form content just wasn’t seen very often. We can speculate why: Most of us don’t have much respect for a user’s attention span, and it makes sense why when we know that the average user stays on a page for less than 20 seconds.

But maybe that’s the fault less of the user than of the web page. If your content is useful, why not make it long?

Juicy, long content chock full with helpful data and illustrations excites users and makes them want to share. It answers their questions and provides additional insights to leave them feeling fulfilled.

It answers their questions and provides additional insights to leave them feeling fulfilled.

Of course, I’m not saying all content need be long form, but gone are the days when it should be avoided simply as a matter of course, and a robust content strategy should include it.

On top of the battle ropes article meeting all of the above criteria, it’s 1,400 words of analysis and in-depth interviews with industry experts.

It’s all-encompassing, well-written, provides real value to readers, says new things in new ways, and is shareable. It’s 10x content.

Kenny Kline is a serial entrepreneur. His ventures are primarily focused on media and digital marketing. When not in front of his computer, he can be found beekeeping, knitting, and being as Brooklyn as humanly possible.

The post How to 10x Your Content Strategy [6 Ways] appeared first on Ninja Outreach.

from SM Tips By Minnie https://ninjaoutreach.com/10x-content-strategy/

[humanauction]

chapter draft - R (digitisation of youth)

R - disenfranchised middle-class youth

people, they say this new lot, these kids, are many things:

narcissistic selfish can’t focus disconnected hard to control entitled nihilistic lazy no accountability

it’s got to a stage now, that the people in charge - those people - have actually started asking them what they might want. seems a lot like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but whatever.

to the kids, they ask:

“so what do you want?”

and these new lot they say all sorts of things:

we want to be heard we want to have a job that means something we want to make a difference we want to leave our mark on the world

and…

we want meetings on tiny chairlifts (google) we want fruit and macha tea, barista coffee for free. (zoopla) we want inclusive gym memberships (find company) and we want monthly staff prize giveaways (apple) we want fitbits (target) iPads! cereal! BREAKFAST-LUNCH-AND-MOTHERFUCKING-DINNER!!!

and so they get it. but they still aren't happy. they never use hardly any of it. but they do make sure people. all the people. their friends, fans, followers. all of those people.

:-)

sooooo lucky, babe

and this makes the kids feel.

lets break this one down for a second. what can be blamed, now that the time for blame has well and truly elapsed? you can still try it, but whats the point? most of your torturers will be dead soon if they aren't already. so anyway, coming from a blame-based culture of email accountability what have we got:

i. technology 2 - nurture C) nature IV = AAA

technology

Facebook. it has a lot to answer for. twitter, too. instagram, reddit, snapchat, VK, vine, youtube… all of them. enablers that they are. because technology has skewed the kids minds and everything they do is uploaded. everything. clever or stupid, bad or good. there forever. even if you think you deleted it. uploaded and photoshopped. because even though these kids are keen for everyone to know they are definitely having fun, the most important part becomes the enhancements. masks are added, things get rubbed out and smoothed down, everything gets a cool looking filter with a anonym. so even when having fun, the fun still needs to be improved upon before sharing it with the world for their approval. everything:

what they eat; what they wear; where they go; who is there; what makeup; cars they saw; buildings they passed.

go to a fireworks display sometime. don't take your phone. instead just look around. try to count the people just enjoying the display. then try to count all the people busily recording or streaming it for upload. all these uploads, they would be fine if they were examples of your daily happy life, but the overwhelming truth is that most of these kids, they make it look amazing but inside they don't know who they are and they are weak and they are cowardly. and yet to the rest of the world they are confidence incarnate. someone, anyone, has a question or a problem and immediately, out of nowhere:

Andreas messaged you; je$$ie commented on you link; tom messaged you; doug28 messaged you; Leon messaged you; Melinda Hart messaged you; hotdog24 messaged you; messaged you; messaged you; messaged you; messaged you…

and it goes on. and on. and hundreds of people “like” your sad, existential, question, even though this is the only genuine, honest, question anyone has asked in months. and all these scared little weak cowardly children who know nothing, you know what they say?

they tell you EXACTLY what you should be doing. no questions, no doubt. they KNOW everything about what you need to do. they simultaneously search google - with its very limited menu of results - and type comments. they copy the words of some sadu from india, or a woman respected for her feminist stance, or elon fucking musk. but they don't say this, instead they quickly repackage it for your very public consumption, with their own mark added as if this pseudo-philosophical answer isn't actually the re-hashing of some ancient, greek or german or chinese scriptures they don't even know exist.

“but why?” ask the adults, “why?”

why? why? everything always comes back to one thing. its almost a running theme through societies facilitators: the internet, mobile phones, drugs, booze, sex, gambling. they all give us this one thing that we all love:- dopamine

dopamine NOUN

Biochemistry

[mass noun] A compound present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including adrenaline.

the irony of the fact all anyone is trying to do is release something already present in their own bodies is thoroughly lost on the kids, however. they don't really know what dopamine is; all they know it they have no confidence. how do they feel better about themselves then?

posting pictures; getting various likes; gaining followers/subscribers; receiving calls & text messages; getting something shared; having their comment favourited; tweeting; being re-tweeted (that’s a big one)

because what these things do to these young minds is exactly what smoking, drugs, alcohol and gambling did for the generation before. and the results of heroin, crack, super-strength booze, barely regulated gambling, binge-encouraging licensing laws and draconian governmental drug policy have now been accepted as deeply damaging and complete failures respectively. so kids, they don't do all the normal stuff. they don't learn to get natural levels of things in your brain like serotonin or dopamine you would get from doing all those things your grandparents enjoyed so much:

dancing travel picnics laughing the cinema sports love

you get the idea. without this they have to find it elsewhere, or else be miserable. these kids, they are at a difficult point as it is, and they have access to this thing the adults don't really understand. they may have invented it, but the great thing about kids is they'll always find a better way of using your idea or invention than you ever thought of. no one ever really thought social media would end up being our primary mood regulator. and that creates a unique difference between older generations ability to access large dopamine stimulants and the new. for the traditionalists there are age restrictions. there are legal restrictions. there are “controls” placed on “substances”. but the internet and social media is an ever expanding constantly evolving dopamine dealing monster of the kind the adults have never seen before. its easy to see why as we get older religion becomes more important. when you start to see the devil in things, you start to think maybe we could do with some sort of righteous opposition.

so low self-esteem combined with a literal 24/7, 365-days-a-year access to small, neatly-packaged releases of the very addictive, Dopamine. and the adults look at the kids and they despair.

how? why?

as if living through the first attempt to supercharge the release of mind altering alkaloids and the like had happened to someone else. or maybe that’s why. and the ultimate fears of the kids are now so different. so removed as they are from the real world, everything negative is directly relatable to their social media feeds.

if 20,000 hectares of primary rainforest gets bulldozed for soya someplace? thats ok. a north african nation collapses into war creating a flood of immigration? so what.

no one liked my comment; I'm not getting as many views as previous vlogs; losing subscribers; being unfriended.

these are the things that they obsess over, reading their own posts and comments over and over and over and just check one more time in case… in case nothing, really. just to see how other people have reacted. if they have reacted. whoever they are. or most likely are not. and the adults, they don't understand. so you got unfriended, so no one liked a video you posted.

“what’s the big deal, kid?”

they don't understand. despite everything they have essentially become more technologically able versions of their own parents. they got through just in time to buy a house, to have a career, to afford a family. mostly. just. but to a young mind already busy withdrawing into a digital construct they view to be more real than the reality they occupy in, increasingly, physical form alone. it is not only a big deal, it is the only deal they can relate to. and in the end, they just end up in the same cycle of addiction that has plagued humanity since we learnt to identify, cultivate, extract, distill, process and store the things we love so much to consume to excess.

take any junkie.

please.

no, but seriously take any addict and examine their behavioural patterns for just a second. ask one addict. ask a former user. ask a junkie. ask me. ask any, ask all. ask them to take you back to when all this started and the story you get will go something like this:

“when i was between the ages of 9 and 16 something happened to me. maybe it was one thing maybe it was a series of things. maybe it was a person, an event, a situation. and whether or not this was true in hindsight, at the time, i didn't feel i had any friends or support and someone introduced me to (enter relevant drug/drink/behaviour here), and it made me feel like i fitted myself. and this was the first time i had ever really felt like that,”

rewind a second, to when you were even younger:

“when i was younger all that mattered was my parents. they stood as gods. real gods, like the one in the old books. not a kind and patient lord, no, an autocratic benevolent and wrathful being. that made me feel unimportant, scared, abandoned.”

why does this matter? let’s go back forwards for a second to most people’s ideal path through their developmental period:

so you are at an age where your parents recede in your mind as you are made aware through religion or neglect that there is a bigger picture full of clans and tribes and groups and affiliations. you need the approval of different people now. potentially people your parents would not approve of. and these people, some of them, eventually, will become something you feel a part of, support, are supported by. based on things like love, respect, and mutual understanding. as you grow older these regular and reoccurring figures lean on you and support you and they become your family.

nice, right?

but what if this never happens? not really. not physically. what if this only happens on a screen and your peers consist primarily of fans, followers, subscribers or thousands of friends you will never meet? it is human to need the tribe, because it is human to need. but back to our gambling, alcoholic, addict:

so now i’m 19-46 and I'm running through cycles of abuse, abstinence, relapse, abuse, abstinence, relapse… based on the stresses in my life. normal stresses. job problems? consume. personal problems? consume. the message is consume and he/she does so willingly. the supply is so massive demand will never catch up. it never occurs for the longest time to her/him it might be the behaviour that causes 90% of all consumption related stresses. without having ever formed any relationships in his/her adolescence that weren't mutually exclusive to the drug/drink/behaviour she/he decided to be his/her favourite(s). she/he can’t just go and see a friend. by this stage any interaction requires consumption.

but there are treatments. there are options. there are ways to get away. it isn't easy, but it is possible and there is some sort of legislation to deal with problematic members of society. if nothing else, there is medication. but with an increasingly technologically immersed society, how can someone addicted to something like social media and the internet possibly get away.

ask a scientist. ask a few. ask me. or ask google this exact thing:

people who spend more time on social media are more likely to suffer from depression than those who don’t.

and that. that’s a fact. so now you're an addict. do any of these things:

check your phone first thing in the morning? have your phone out when you are with friends? check your phone whilst driving? read emails or generally scroll whilst in meetings? message people you know are not there to answer?

addict. like it or not, thats exactly what you are.

2. nurture & 3. nature:

the western failed parenting techniques of child psychology and personal empowerment. the whole:

“you are a precious snowflake” “you are special” “you can be anything - if you try hard/want it badly enough”

and these kids, they live in a whole new world. there is political correctness for the first time. some kids always come last at everything. they used to just be last, but now? now they get a certificate or a medal for taking part. for the first time, just being there is rewarded.

but its a bit like mcdonalds in the end. you remember the star system? well if you dont, the employees wore stars they earned to show… something. but rewarding failure or mere participation, it doesn't work. in the end the medals aren't worth anything, the stars are pointless, and all they do is depress the individual who “won” it/them and has to display this very public badge of weakness or subservience. you get it in the military too - medals earned and medals given. they are two very different things, and the second are largely auction pieces.

so these kids, the ones we are talking about, they go through this whole, ever-shorter, “childhood” of entitlement, filled with promised futures of exceptional achievement.

and then they go to the workplace. not to work, because now there aren't any jobs and you are going to be working for free, then minimum wage, and eventually you’ll be a professional and wont earn enough to survive in a city like london. the kind of city you need to be in if you stand a chance at all. so these kids, they move to the new city slums and their parents guarantee rents these kids cant afford. first day, they walk in, probably late, get shuffled about for a couple of hours between people who need someone, but don't really want them and WHAM!

imagine: a huge wall, a wall so huge it blocks out the sun.

got it? ok, so now imagine that wall falling like a rogue wave off the coast of hawaii the size of an office block directly through your soul when they make you understand, these, these, these adults. make you understand, it turns out, that what you were told was wrong. everything all of it. and more relevantly here:

“you are NOT a precious snowflake” “you are NOT special” “you can NOT be anything - NOT if you try hard/want it badly enough”

ego shattered. soul screaming. hot adrenaline flushes. green soundless black-out flashes. it’s like a panic attack. oh no wait - it is a panic attack. and it hits fast. you, who can do anything, cant control panic when it hits. everyone thinks they’ll be able to. mostly no one ever can. and now you have a whole generation with a naturally low sense of self esteem, who need medication for anxiety and panic attacks on top of everything still to come. nothing is real. everything a lie, pretend, an illusion. everything is fake except for the only fake thing here. so they dive into a digital simulation of an approximation of the life they wish they have and get pleasure when people tell them they like the person they in reality, aren’t.

4. AAA

remember how it was, before the internet? before broadband?

having to wait for CDs to be released? waiting for the shops to start selling them? or records? digging through crates for weeks, month, years, for that one tune? having to go and watch bands play live to hear rare performances? that feeling of finding something new? to have to wait week-by-week for your favourite show to air? before auto-record? before boxsets? on normal analogue CRT television sets? those big massive things? having to go and take a night-class to learn something? by doing it? with other people? going to the supermarket to chose your food, let alone actual real markets? contribute to delivery costs? for anything? food? clothes? postal items? from china? having to research from books? referencing whole books? lots of them? technical books? having to use them in situ because they were reference material? microfilm? those big blue/green screens of blackness?

photocopying? like scanning, but different?

museums? of history? to see how things looked on walls? in frames? books? weapons? jewels? bones? museums? of art? deciding on your favourite school, again? style? artist? sculptor? surrealism? dada-ism? dutch? renaissance? meeting girls? meeting boys? face-to-face? standing around? asking them out? the groups? the bravado? the nerves? the acceptances? the rejections? borrowing books from the library? waiting for a book to be returned? paying fines for late returns? meeting up at the cinema? making plans in advance? agreeing where to meet because of all the people? because no phones? going to the video store and seeing if any of the newest movie were for some reason behind another movies box-cover? because they were all out? yeah, you took the copy of the movie you wanted from behind a box with the picture of the movie you wanted on it. thats how you knew they had it. and if it was a new movie, they had loads of copies.

but they always ran out. remember that?

not now, no way. now it’s all: AAA

Access All Areas

in a world of near-instant gratification, these kids they get confused. its back to the whole first day at work scenario. the one where they arrive knowing fuck all and expect to be making life-changing decisions by the end of the week, if not the day. imagine that same kid after six months, dejected, feeling wasted and useless because they aren't achieving anything related to the buzzwords they crave:

importance impact effect

abstract concepts. like time itself. irony at least is still doing a healthy trade through all of this, this, temporary glitch? collapse of civilisation? no one really knows, and increasingly the kids, they don't care. means nothing to them. doesn't give them what they need when they see pictures of it so they don't look and the algorithm makes sure that part of life goes away. and these kids, they don't know what a 10,000lb bomb looks like, let alone how you get it halfway across the globe. and drop it on someone they will never meet? definitely don't care. instant access, instant gratification - what did it get them mainly - desensitisation to everything that isn't directly related to their ever-shrinking worlds. what would you like to see?

road rage videos organised fights between rival hooligans how to cold-extract OTC drugs to leave only narcotics how to make guns and knives at home any and all types of porn, gay porn, horses fucking hookers porn dog-fighting bull-fighting murders decapitation compilations rape war-footage bombing campaigns

its all there. google it, you don't even need to boot TOR from a flash drive outside a coffeeshop and use a secure, encrypted VPN client to start surfing the real web. the “dark” web. you don't even know what’s on there. no, all of that stuff is on google. once you know this stuff exists, mainly, most people, they ignore it. they don't like it. we all know horrible stuff happens every day.

how do you build legacy, quickly? an over-night empire? seems maybe you can’t, so knowing this, the kids, they call for revolution. but what for today? we wait for nothing now and this is what they know. don't like your wrinkles? inject your face. anyone over 24 should consider it really. make-up: it’ll only get you so far. and it takes seconds. you don't need anyone even nearly like a doctor related anything to do it, either. just a girl from a shop. what could possibly go wrong? lips? cheeks? piercings? tattoos? a culture expanding as people at once require armour to protect them and imagery to define them, yet all at the expense of the seemingly increasingly expendable physical form. as they retreat into virtual reality so their ability to interact on a personal level is reduced. as they become less able to interact with different types of identities due to essentially poor socialisation through lack of experience, so they need aggressive external visual stimuli to confirm what it is they like, and by extension like to be seen doing; being; enjoying… combined with obsession in the western world with perfection of the physical form, unrealistic expectations of the human body and the now-perverted nature of sexuality, it creates people at once obsessing over how they look, yet at the same time destroying it with chemicals, inks and holes ensuring that they will never achieve the natural perfection they secretly, unknowingly programmed to strive for.

but the world, it continued despite this western regression into virtual reality. and in the meantime some terrible things have been happening.

the middle east becomes a battle ground. a global recession wipes out most peoples chances at a productive future. but these kids, none of this means anything to them. despite going global, the choices available due to the frankly poor algorithms that chose your future online, it drives the kids deeper into smaller, more extreme, more perverse groups. where all they care about is a constant rolling stream taking them down and backwards towards the last thing they saw. despite a potential global meltdown, international political upheaval, environmental catastrophe… they largely - after signing a petition maybe, or liking or sharing some corrupt culture and land destroying oil disaster waiting to happen - remain obsessed with:

what about x celebrities lips? look at the funny kitten/child/puppy limited edition gold adidas trainers cars women men food place they will never go things they will never see

they feel better. like things. re-tweet. minds so programmed to rank and number everything, this all-consuming infatuation with what the best one is, the prettiest one, the thinest… the top tens:

(search for most self/celebrity-obsessed top tens on youtube)

1. Living in a Car: Top 10 Places to Sleep 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

(+ add section of “i added him on snapchat, but i didn't subscribe to his youtube. channel.

and the adults, they don't understand what this means…)

when they look back, in the future, this will be the time. the time when the lines, they first started to blur.