#the Venn diagram of things that happen in mash and things that happen at a summer camp in the woods is a circle

[icomefromthemountains]

Me at my summer camp job next month after binging all 11 seasons of m*a*s*h: getting a lot of mash vibes from this…

[rescue-ram]

I’m giving you Trapper John for the character ask.

Alas I already did The Son and Boy, but in my deranged mind there's a Venn diagram for this character and "Trapper" refers to the show version and "Trapper John" refers to the book/movie version, so just for funsies...

How I feel about this character

Okay so Show!Trapper is my fave show character, but Book/Movie!Trapper is HIGH-KEY my fave book/movie character. He is the funniest and most fleshed out (relatively speaking) character in the book, and Elliot Gould plays him with a certain nuance (especially in his first and last scenes) that I find really compelling

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Still just Hawkeye 😅 Though his freak-for-freak girlfriend Lucinda in MASH Goes to Maine is underrated mfmfkkv

My non-romantic OTP for this character

The other Swampmen 👍 Though I think canonically he and Hawkeye are heterosexual life partners by the end of the book kdkcjc

My unpopular opinion about this character

I think just liking this version of the character counts kfkfjfjdj But also, whenever I write about Trapper being autistic, I am thinking about the book version of the character who is so so so neurodivergent

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

Honestly nothing. I think both the movie and the book are flawed, but I also think trying too hard to fix them would ruin what's there or so fundamentally change them they're no longer the works they once were. They stand self contained in my mind. There's probably a universe out there where Show!Trapper is a little closer to his book/movie counter parts and maybe I would've liked that, but I think it could easily be to the detriment of Hawkeye. I think Genie once said to me Hooker had three characters who were all half baked so the show got rid of one, gave Hawkeye a full set of character traits, and Trapper got whatever was left kfkckck.

[abeautifulblog]

Sooo not to be a downer, but... 18 & 19? 😣

18. What is the most negative comment you have gotten?

19. How do you handle negative comments?

Not a downer question at all -- so let's mash those together into “gremble's guide to dealing with negative feedback.”

(And giving it, sort of.)

First off, I think it's important to recognize that not all feedback is created equal. Sometimes the problem is with the reader—because let's be real, some people have zero reading comprehension skills, so any feedback they have to offer (positive or negative) is going to be pretty worthless.

(Like when you’re reading a review panning something you liked, and they’re complaining about a plot hole, and you’re like, “That... was not a plot hole. That... was very clearly addressed... Were you even paying attention, bro?” o_O)

(Or if their criticism is something vague like “I couldn’t get into it.” Okay, but--throw me a bone here, what, specifically, was the stumbling block? If they don’t point out concrete problems, they’re not giving you anything to fix.)

Other times, it's not that they're wrong, but just that there was a mismatch between the story they wanted to read and the story you wanted to tell. And that's not necessarily anybody's fault—you’re not a bad writer, nor are they a bad reader, just because they were hoping for something else. But that means their criticism may not be terribly useful either—if they say “you should have done X instead,” when X is a development you straight-up have no interest in making happen, that's not a flaw in your story, it's just a difference in personal taste.

(The fact is, not everyone wants the same things out of their fiction. This was an understanding I came to some years back, that the venn diagram between “media I enjoy” and “media that is objectively High Quality” is not a circle, and it doesn’t need to be.

And then I proceeded to break up with my boyfriend of the time because he couldn't grasp that concept, and wouldn't stop giving me shit about the things I liked.)

And lastly, of course, sometimes it is a flaw in your writing—that the story you were trying to tell could have been told better if you'd done something differently. (Ideally, you want the people who can spot those flaws to be your beta readers, so you can fix the problems before they go to print.)

*

Although to be honest, unless you're the unlucky victim of a targeted campaign of abuse, you're not likely to get negative comments on fic at all—even gentle, constructively-critical comments are rare.

Fandom on the whole has a very well-developed sense of “don't like, don't read”--not just for sex-kinks, but if you don't like a pairing, or a trope, or hell, if you just open a fic and read three paragraphs before deciding that the prose quality is waaaaay below what you can tolerate, fandom etiquette is to discreetly remove yourself from the room, and not holler YOU SUCK!!! to the host on your way out.

(And if you are being targeted, turn off anon comments and make use of AO3′s abuse-report button. People are entitled to disagree, they’re not entitled to be dickbags about it.)

I'm pretty sure the don’t like/don’t read thing happened with some readers of Beautiful Day—because there were a few people who'd commented positively on the early chapters, and had Joseph icons or made Joseph-positive remarks (“I love this fic like Joseph loves ocean time!!” was one), whom I never heard from again after “This House”--because I'd abruptly taken the story somewhere they didn't want to go.

(Although I am vaguely curious how far they got before quitting—whether it was my characterization of Joseph as a reptilian sexual predator that offended them, or whether they noped out even earlier because they didn't like being made to confront the harm his affairs are doing to his family.)

But I've never had a Joseph fan challenge me head-on about it—because they may not like the direction I'd gone, but it clearly wasn't a mistake. I had a fundamentally different take on his character than they did, which meant they weren't going to enjoy my depiction him, now or in the future, and so they wisely stopped reading.

Here’s the thing though: I knew when I wrote it that I was going to be alienating a significant chunk of the fan base. Before posting that chapter, I mentioned to my BFF that I was nervous about how it was going to be received, to which she said, “Well yeah, you do call a fandom favorite a 'shitstain of a human being.'”

I knew that, and I went ahead with it anyway—because that was a hill I was willing to die on; it was a hill I was willing to lose readers on.

To a lesser degree, I also knew “The Old College Try” wasn't going to land for everyone, for a number of reasons. It was the longest chapter to date, it was tone whiplash from the rest of the fic, featuring characters and a pairing that were not what readers had signed up for. I knew Alex was going to be a polarizing character, and there was no guarantee that people who'd been enjoying Robert's quiet psychological drama would also enjoy watching a bunch of college nymphos having a sex comedy.

(And indeed, that's the chapter a few people have singled out as their least favorite.)

But I did it anyway, because that was the story I wanted to tell. (And just crossed my fingers that readers who were unenthused would stick it out until Robert's story picked up again.)

*

I don't think I've ever gotten any AO3 comments pointing out objective flaws in my stories (again, fanfic tends not elicit that kind of feedback), but that is the primary purpose of beta readers.

And when I get critical feedback from betas, I deal with it like any mature and sensible artist does: by hyperventilating into a paper bag for half an hour.

Then I get a hold of myself and try to consider their feedback rationally.

And it usually turns out that they’re correct—I've talked before about some of the behind-the-scenes moments when a beta reader pointed out the flaw in what I'd been trying to do, which were often A-HA! moments that broke the gridlock I'd been in.

It can be hard to put yourself out there for beta readers, to ask someone to enumerate all your weaknesses, and be ready to listen to them when they do. (And not go into an OMG I SUCK meltdown over it.) You have to remind yourself that they do like your writing and they do think you’re talented—if they didn't, they wouldn't care enough to spend all this time taking it from good to excellent.

You're not likely to get that kind of criticism if you just post your fic on AO3 as-is, because readers will usually keep that to themselves, even if they're thinking it. But having someone who will give your fic that tough love, who will put every line through the analytical wringer, is worth growing a thicker skin for. I've had editing sessions with betas that felt like I’d gone through a meat grinder—but I came out at the end with a story that was staggeringly better than the one I’d started with.

*

In conclusion, there's a degree of self-indulgence in being a writer—that yes, you should listen to other people's feedback, and consider whether there's merit in it, but at the end of the day, it's your story, not theirs. You're not going to be happy with it if you’ve compromised your vision to please someone else instead.

(Unless it’s like, grammar mistakes, such as capitalizing pronouns in inquit tags, in which case stop bitching and fix them, Sam, don’t argue with me.)

[zombiesbecrazy]

Pity Free Confessions

Summary: Sometimes you play video games with your best friend. Sometimes you blurt out about your unrequited love problems. Sometimes you do both.

Written for DickBabs Week - Day 2 Prompt - Best Friends

Note: OMG, I completely forgot that it was DickBabs Week! I totally don't have time to write anything, yet, here we are. Day 2 Prompt - Best Friends.This stands alone but if you've read any of my other DickBabs fics, this comes six months after Chapter 2 of Five Times with Feeling and directly before Strike, Hit, Throw. Unedited and rushed, but I needed to participate and spread the DickBabs love :)

AO3

“I find myself in a bit of a conundrum.”

“Which is?”

“I’m in love with my best friend.”

To Wally’s credit, he didn’t even look away from the screen and continued to mash the buttons on the controller. Hell, he didn’t even blink. They were alone in the Tower today, between missions and everyone else busy in their own cities with their own mentors, leaving the two of them to waste the day away playing video games and eating junk food.

It felt good to relax and ignore a lot of his problems for a while, but there was something that Dick had been unable to ignore for months and if he didn’t say something soon he was going to explode, which is why he had suddenly just blurted it out to Wally.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, because you’re great, but you’re not really my type. I appreciate your interest though.” Wally’s character jumped into a hoard of thugs on top of a building and he was focusing on trying to take them all down in the time limit.

“Gee, thanks. Not you.”

His hands gripped the controller tighter and started moving his arms like he could make his character fight better with sheer will and enthusiasm. “Donna’s like your sister. That would be weird. Don’t be in love with her either.”  

Coughing, Dick choked on the root beer that he was drinking and it almost came out his nose. Damn, that hurt. “Shut up.” Dick punched Wally’s shoulder, making his character fall from a rooftop, die and respawn at the beginning of the mission. That made Wally finally turn and glare at him. “I’m meant Barbara, you butthead.”

“Thought as much, but you should have used her name. You have too many best friends.” Wally hit pause on the game and looked at him. “You should tell her.”

“She’s got other things on her mind.” Dick flopped back on the couch dramatically, sinking into the cushions. What he wouldn’t give for it to come to life and swallow him whole rather than deal with his emotional turmoil. Stupid brain. Stupid heart. Neither of them seemed to be able to just turn off for a while. “More important things than dealing with my unrequited love.”

“How do you know it’s unrequited?” asked Wally, kicking his legs up onto the coffee table in front of them that was littered with their snacks. “She’d be lucky to be in love with you. Anyone would be.”

“I thought I wasn’t your type?”

“Just because the two of us aren’t meant to be it doesn’t mean you aren’t a catch.” Wally looked Dick over and sighed. He pulled the blanket off from behind the couch and put it on top of Dick’s melted form on the couch. Dick must have looked pathetic if Wally was trying to mother hen him like that. “Tell her.”

“It’s not the right time.” A lot had happened in their lives in the past six months. Barbara had been shot. Jason had been killed. Bruce was continuously furious all of the time. No one needed to see him moping around after a girl like a little lost puppy; especially not the girl herself. She was getting her life back together and shouldn’t have to deal with his mini crisis. Why hadn’t he figured this out at a better time? Or why couldn’t he at least still be in denial about it? It would be easier that way. Ahh, blissful denial.

“It’s always the right time to hear that someone loves you. It’s like a big word hug.”

“It’s scary,” groaned Dick back and he pulled the blanket up over his head. He knew he was pouting and whining and acting like a little kid not wanting to eat his vegetables, but that didn’t matter in front of Wally. The good thing about having a best friend was that you could tell them anything.

The worst part was that they would call you on your bullshit even if you didn’t want to hear it. Especially then.

“Ladies and gentleman, may I present Nightwing, hero and defender of Gotham and Bludhaven. His kryptonite is emotions. Don’t worry though, it was passed down to him from his Bat-father.” He could hear Wally’s voice dripping with sarcasm but didn’t budge from under the blanket. When he didn’t get a reaction, he heard Wally sigh. “You are such a drama queen.” He pulled the blanket back down off of Dick’s face. “Love is a great feeling. It doesn’t have to be scary.”

“Okay fine. Verbalizing it is scary.”

“You just told me that you love her and the world didn’t end.”

“And I was terrified to do that. Telling her is a thousand times worse.” But he had to admit that he felt a little bit better now that he wasn’t the only one in on the secret. “What if she doesn’t feel the same way?”

“Does it matter?”

“I guess not.” It didn’t. Not really. It wouldn’t change anything about the way he felt anyway. “I just don’t want things to change between us and to get all weird. I don’t want to tell her that I love her, hear that she doesn’t feel the same way and then have to see the… the… pity in her eyes when she looks at me.” He sat up but kept the blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders. “Look at Dick, with his silly little crush. He’s a delicate little flower who needs to be tiptoed around and be given gentle hugs and spoken to like he might shatter at any moment.”

“You like hugs.”

“Not pity hugs.”

“She won’t give you a pity hug.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Dude. She just went through something huge. She’s still going through something huge. She understands better than anyone about not wanting anyone’s pity.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe. I’m right.” Wally started to stare very intently at his hands that were fidgeting in his lap. “Did I tell you I went to visit her in the hospital?”

“What? No. Neither of you said anything.” Wally just nodded and he turned a little pink. Dick poked him and he gave a little yelp. “What happened?” prodded Dick.

“She yelled at me for visiting her out of pity.” Dick winced in sympathy. He had been at the receiving end of more than one of Barbara’s anger explosions before and it was never pretty, usually because she was right to be dishing it out. “I deserved it. She wasn’t completely wrong. I didn’t realise it until later, but it was at least a little out of pity,” said Wally before he turned to sheepishly look back at Dick. “She and I are friends, but we aren’t that close. She pointed out that me visiting her in the hospital when I would never have seen her otherwise was more about making myself feel better and she didn’t want that.” Dick understood. She had been upset that he visited her in the hospital the first time when she had explicitly told him not to and she was one of his best friends. He could imagine how angry she’d be about Wally. “So no. She’s not going to give you a pity hug. Even if she doesn’t feel the same way about you, she still cares about you a lot.”

“Have you talked to her since?”

“We’re cool. We’ve texted, which is what I should have done in the first place. We’re texting level friends, not visit in the hospital after you’ve been paralyzed level friends. I’ve been sending her videos of people doing extreme wheelchairing in skate parks. She says she likes them.”

Dick smiled, because while he hadn’t heard about Wally’s visit, she had been sharing the videos with him too; he just hadn’t know the origins. “When did you get so wise?”

“I’ve always been wise, but no one ever listens. It’s a curse.” Wally unpaused the game and started the mission again. “But in this case, I had a feisty red head yell at me.”

“Story of my life. Too many best friends and too many red heads, and all of them yell at me.”

“You should make a Venn Diagram of where those all intersect. It would be an interesting thing to study.”

Dick watched as Wally’s onscreen hero ran through a dark all to pick up a weapon before heading back to the rooftop where he was about to be killed again. He didn’t have enough XP for it to go any other way, but Wally was stubborn. Wally cleared his throat, eyes glued to the screen. “So… Babs,” he began again, not dropping the conversation.

“Babs,” sighed Dick.

“Like, full on love. Not just a crush. Not just ‘hey that girl is swell’. Full on love with a capital L and heart eyes.”

Dick couldn’t hold back a grin even just thinking about how he felt about her. He was so deep down the rabbit hole. “Yep.”

“I repeat, you should talk to her.”

“We’re meeting up tomorrow for some sparring. She’s been doing weapons training now that she’s out of rehab and I want to see how it’s coming along.” She had been talking about her training with Richard Dragon and that she was learning escrima at a higher level, and yes, he did want to see her new skills, but…

“Or you just want to see her.”

Damn, Wally could read him like a book. “Yeah.”

“Because you want to kiss her.” Wally made kissy face noises at him and Dick hit him again, once again making Wally fall off the building again and die. “That was your fault. I had them that time.”

“No, you didn’t. And don’t be crude.”

Wally tossed the controller onto the table and grabbed a bag of chips, tossing one into his mouth and crunching it loudly, purely because he knew the sound of it irritated Dick. “I think it’s sweet that you are still innocent enough that you think I’m crude for mentioning kissing.”

“It’s not that… it’s…” Dick shook his head, embarrassed to be talking about this with anyone. Everyone had emotions. Why was it so weird to talk about them? “I don’t just want to kiss her.”

Wally snorted. “Who’s being crude now?”

“You are officially my least favourite of my best friends,” said Dick, rolling his eyes. “I just want… everything for her. I want her to be happy. I want to be the one to help make her happy. Somehow. In any way possible”

“You are a hopeless romantic to the core.”  Wally sat back on the couch and dropped his arm around Dick’s blanket covered shoulders. “You know my opinion. Just tell her. No risk, no reward.”

“No risk, no heart breakage,” countered Dick.

“Minimal complete heart breakage potential. At absolute worst, she’ll let you down gently and you’ll still be friends. Yeah, you’ll be a down for a while, but that is when we solve your problems with ice cream.”

The worse that Wally suggested sounded terrible and he wanted to avoid it all costs even though he knew that in the grand scheme of issues ‘one of my best friends doesn’t love me as much as I love her’ is pretty minor. Still wanted to avoid it like the plague though. “And best case scenario?”

“That she is hopelessly in love with you too? We celebrate with ice cream. Either way, there will be ice cream. The difference is that celebration ice cream has better topping options.”

“I’ll think about it,” said Dick, chuckling. “Thanks, Wally. I take it back. You aren’t my least favourite best friend. Definitely top three. And not just because you are promising me ice cream.”

“On the podium. I’ll take it.”

Wally was right though. Dick was a vigilante. A hero. He had faced far worse things than being in love every day and had come out unscathed. Well, maybe a little scathed, but still intact. He could do this. He could finally tell Barbara the truth. He was brave enough to face that answer head on.

Maybe it was finally time to take that leap.

[steklir]

From Commander-in-Chief: “Gabby Blabby Abby? Grabby Hands? Dr. Crabbie Pants? Ugh. I’m so glad you ended it with her. She was too old for you, anyway.”“Just wait until you meet your future mother-in-law,” Anya sing-songs. “You’re in for a treat.” For the love of holy causes and effects, upon all that is good in this world, p l e a s e tell us how this meeting goes! *angel's choirs singing please* Like, what wins - Lexa's Heda composure or her awkward gay noodle bean-ness? I'm so curious

Haha, hmm… One question is who tells Lexa and whether Clarke actually finds out (wait, Clarke doesn’t know about her mom and Anya, right? Or was that her mom and Raven? omg need to pull out my venn diagram again! okay, it’s unclear. so just for fun, let’s say that Clarke doesn’t know about it either. bc what is that fic but crack and miscommunication?)

–

January 3rd, 2021

“Babe. Don’t freak out but—Lexa. Stop. It’s fine.”

President Woods takes a deep breath. “Of course it’s fine. I’m fine. Go on.”

“Are you going to need your panic room?”

“It is not ‘my panic room,’ Clarke. It’s not, like, therapeutic. It’s just called a panic room because it locks down.”

“Ummhmm. And it just so happens to be your bedroom. Where you do all your panicking.”

“I’m the President of the United States, Clarke. I don’t panic,” Lexa sulks, digging a pen into the surface of her desk before remembering it’s a priceless historical heirloom. “What were you saying?” she prods, furiously trying to buff away the scratch with her thumb.

“My mother—”

Lexa whips her head up. “Your mother?”

Clarke smirks and saunters over to the Oval Office desk, hopping up and crossing her legs. She’s wearing a skirt today, thin nude tights that might as well not be there, and Lexa’s mouth suddenly contains too much saliva. It won’t go away; Lexa Woods might be the first president of the United States to die at her desk, choked by her own drool. 

 “She’s—”

This time it’s a secret service agent who interrupts, knocking on the doorframe with an apologetic expression. “Heda, Dr. Abigail Griffin to see you.”

Lexa narrows her eyes. “I don’t have her on my schedule.”

“It’s a recent update, if you’ll refresh your tablet—”

Fuck. There she is. 2pm. 

Gabby Blabby Abby. 

Anya’s ex-girlfriend always did had a way of ruining Lexa’s day; it shouldn’t be a surprise she’s still capable of doing it, presidency and an army of bodyguards or not. The woman’s scarier than Anya, and that’s saying something.

“Fuck, I’m sorry, Clarke, this might take awhile. The Director of the NIH is always after me for more funding, no matter how much I maximize out their budget. I’ll try to make it quick and meet you in the sitting room in twenty minutes or so? And then you can tell me more about your mother and why I shouldn’t be panicking.”

“Okay, maybe panic a little,” Clarke says, wide-eyed.

“Why?”

“Abby Griffin is my mother.”

What is it like to breathe? Lexa can’t remember. Why isn’t any air getting into her lungs? They’re certainly working hard enough—or is that her heart?

“Babe. It’s okay. She was happy to hear I was seeing someone. And I don’t think she’s here about the NIH today, if that helps.”

“Dr. Crabbie Pants is your mom?” Lexa squeaks. 

“Excuse me?” a low, dangerous voice growls from the door.

“My deepest apologies, I’m hearing over my headset there’s an emergency, please excuse us,” Lexa blurts out at double speed, grabbing Clarke’s hand and dragging her through the doors into the adjacent room. It’s not safe enough though, not safe enough by far, and she pulls them into the next room, too, slamming and locking the door behind her and then the front entrance, just to be on the safe side. 

“Clarke,” that terrifying voice reverberates through the bedroom doors and Lexa is happy to admit that she’s panicking right now. “Clarke, Lexa, get out here this instant.” 

The control panel—Lexa dashes over to the picture frame and tears it off the wall.

“Lex, sweetheart, it’s fine,” Clarke tries to soothe. “She’ll love you. She won’t tell anyone, either, don’t worry. I know you want things to settle down a bit before we announce anything.”

“Your mother is Dr. Abigail Griffin, I don’t think everything will ever be fine again, Clarke.”

“I mean…didn’t you make the connection between our last names?”

Lexa pauses. “I did not.”

“Babe…”

“Fuck, what is the code? She’s going to ram down those doors any second now.”

“I think you might be over-reacting.”

“Your mother once pointed a gun at me. Twice, actually. All because I came home early. Oh, god, I’ve seen your mother naked, Clarke. Naked.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s Anya’s fault! She never locks her bedroom door, how was I to know she’d be—”

Clarke goes still and dangerously quiet, a look of murder in her eyes, and Lexa instinctively flinches and then wonders how she could have possibly missed the influence of Abby in Clarke’s mannerisms, the gleam of power and just a hint of wild in her eyes. The capacity to wield goodness or terror with the raise of an eyebrow.

Meanwhile, the pounding at the door grows louder, more…animalistic. 

“My mother fucked Anya?”

Lexa takes a step back, hands held up where Clarke can see them. “Um. You didn’t know? They dated. For about a year.”

Jumping aside as Clarke charges closer, Lexa watches her finger-mash every single key on the control panel until the lights start blinking and several clicking sounds are heard. 

Steel falls onto steel and the panic mode is fully activated.

“Clarke?”

“To be clear, this isn’t panicking,” Clarke notes, scary-calm. “This is for her own protection.”

Lexa believes it.

“Now. We’ve got a few hours to kill,” Clarke decides, still thrumming with electricity, enough that Lexa almost doesn’t want to touch her. (Almost—ha! Not even close. Lexa has a high pain tolerance and she’s never been so grateful) “Whatever shall we do with them?”

“Clarke, I love you but please don’t use words like ‘kill’ right now.”

“Get on the bed.  I’m going to make you scream loud enough my mother has to hear it. I love you, too.”

Lexa swallows. 

This probably isn’t the time to mention how similar Clarke is to her mother. 

Or to think about it.

At all. 

Oh, god, she’s taking off her tights. Oh god oh god.

“Oh and Lex?”

“Yes?”

“We’re pretending that wasn’t the first time we said I love you.” Her shirt is off now. The President mentally commits to tax breaks for every company that manufactures red lacy lingerie. 

“O—okay. Good. Yes. Fine. Superb.” 

“Lexa. Bed—now.”

“You know, I bet your mother would hate it even more if it was me making you scream,” Lexa attempts, already on top of the covers.

“Nice try, my messy little bottom. Hands on the post.”

All mental images of her sister doing the same under Clarke’s mother’s command go right out the window, thank god. 

[swissforextrading]

Propaganda from the Uncanny Valley

Art has always been an ideal vessel for propaganda: persuading with emotion can cut through the need for rational argument. With Facebook’s release of thousands of examples of propaganda created for social media in 2016, it’s becoming clear that artlessness is just as good. After Congressional hearings in the United States, Facebook has announced an “Action Plan Against Foreign Interference” that would double its security team in 2018, and is planning to release a tool for users to check if they’ve clicked on any of this propaganda in 2016. Two conservative activists on Twitter were recently revealed to be bots; that’s two out of the company’s estimated 36,746 Russian-backed bot accounts, though a private investigation found 150,000 such bots operated to influence the Brexit campaign. Russia denies any involvement. Third-party tools, such as botcheck.me, have been developed to evaluate Twitter account histories for bot-like patterns. Today’s propaganda artists are on the frontlines of the “creative” algorithm: the emerging trend of data channeled into “inspiration” for content and channeled back into creative products. In line with our past events examining cyberthreats and digital humanitarianism, we’re looking at how creative algorithms work (or fail) and how that is influencing the next wave of propaganda. What happens when bots talk — and people listen? Batman Elsa Birthday Babies Artist and researcher James Bridle recently took a critical look at YouTube videos crafted for children. The children’s market is a ripe target for this kind of content: toddlers love repetition, parents love the endless stream of (unwatched) content, and producers love their low costs and production values. Bridle writes that the algorithms aren’t just curating this content. They are surfacing the most powerful combinations of keywords, and using them to dictate what content is produced for the site. YouTube selects videos matching similar keywords for its “up next” queue, which are played automatically when one video ends. Create a video that matches these keywords, and you assure that your video will join the infinite stream of content shown to a child searching for Elmo or Frozen videos. There is no shortage of cheap and quickly created content with word-salad titles like “Batman Finger Family Song?—?Superheroes and Villains! Batman, Joker, Riddler, Catwoman.” The audience for that title isn’t a child, or parents. The audience isn’t human at all: the audience is the YouTube algorithm. Once the keywords are crafted for that algorithm, the content is second nature. Throw those characters together and back it with the “family finger song.” The keywords dictate the content, not to benefit any child, but to ensure that the algorithm plays that video in automated queues of videos related to any of those title terms. Bridle points out that something is amiss in these videos. They certainly allow less-than-scrupulous actors to inject weird content into a child’s stream. One nightmarish example shows Spiderman, the Hulk, and Elsa all being bashed in the head by the Joker and other villains, who then bury these favorite children’s characters alive in quicksand. That’s blatantly outrageous content created by anonymous bad actors. But even in harmless videos, there’s something weird about inverting the relationship between keywords and content. Keywords are a categorization of what content contains. By knowing the types of content people are looking for, breaking those words apart from any context and re-assembling them, you create something like a formula to guarantee search results or, at least, high placement in auto-generated content streams. The Dark Art of SEO This is what used to be considered the dark arts of “SEO” — Search Engine Optimization. It’s a tool used for writing blog spam that could show up in search results. The impact of blogspam was somewhat limited to 500-word texts redirecting you to purchase products. Today, we’re seeing SEO create epic, 30-minute-long animated videos that don’t explicitly ask you for money, but generate revenue anyway. The content of these videos is secondary. Kids watch whatever is dictated by the most valuable keywords. Humans create this content quickly in response, resulting in something with no educational value, reflecting a surrealist mash-up of arbitrary search terms: the digital storytelling equivalent of empty calories. Machine learning processes take human inputs, strip them into basic units, and then reassemble them into infinite variations. It’s this blend of human and alien processes that make “AI consciousness” such a weird concept. But it’s a very specific kind of weird: uncanniness. Rethinking the Uncanny For an example of uncanniness, there may be no easier example to understand than the Dadabots‘ album, “Deep the Beatles!” The album is the result of a machine learning computer “listening” (or scanning sound data) to Beatles records and producing something that is, simultaneously, very much the Beatles and very much not the Beatles.  Ernst Jentsch first defined a certain emotion, “uncanniness,” in 1906: “In telling a story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty [of] whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton, and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately.” It’s an oddly prescient line of thinking that seems to describe the entire internet experience as of 2016. The uncanny has moved from literature into the real (albeit virtual) world, spreading a residue of low-grade, unsettling surrealism into our everyday lives. Looking at a Twitter account with 38,800 followers posting nothing but unsourced political memes in 2015, we might have asked how this person had so much time on their hands. Today, we have to ask if they’re actually human. In its congressional hearings, Facebook shared 3,000 images it claims originated from a shadowy organization in St. Petersburg, Russia, intended to influence American voters. What we see in these images is the surface-skimming of keywords, created from real political debates, boiled down to their most toxic and potent forms. Facebook is transcribing your online actions and reducing them into easily-digestible traits. It can tell if you’re neurotic, a reader, a beach-lover, extroverted. It can tell if you’re gay or straight, married, religious, or have children. It can tell if you’re worried about immigrants, guns, or unemployment. These categories can then be skimmed and recycled into content. Just like a four-year-old who wants to watch an Elsa video, advertisers can tell if you want to see anti-immigrant content, and then deliver it. The Meme War Two anonymous researchers are creating an online archive of these political images. They include groups across the spectrum, from “Army of Jesus” to gay groups, “Woke Blacks,” “Missouri News,” “Feminist Tag.” They target pro- and anti-immigrant sentiment. If there was a set of keywords that could be targeted with divisive political rhetoric, there was a group created to appeal to them. From there, real people, selected by the algorithms, boosted and amplified messages that were essentially dictated by those same algorithms. The social media propaganda images aren’t sophisticated. They’re full of spelling errors, extremist language and imagery. One had Satan suggesting that Hillary Clinton would win the election if he beat Jesus in an arm-wrestling contest. The viewer was encouraged to “like” the post to “help Jesus win.” That content was created specifically for people whose personalities showed a strong affinity to the Bible, Jesus, God, Christianity, and Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly. The ads can also create associations that rely on several layers of deception. A few targeted Facebook accounts of people with clear anti-immigrant bias and presented advertisements from a fake pro-Muslim group. The ads included an image of Hillary Clinton hugging a woman in a burka with the message “Support Hillary to Save American Muslims.” The idea is that this would be shown to Islamophobic voters, who would share it out of a sense of outrage. When Propaganda goes viral Sharing is an impulse built into all social media, and it’s the real mechanism being “hacked” in contemporary propaganda. We share things we relate and respond to, because they reflect who we are, how we want to be seen, and who we want to connect with. After Freud, psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan took on the study of the uncanny. For Lacan, the uncanny reflects a conflicted appeal to our ideas of ourselves. The images and messages reveal a sense of our identities being reduced, partitioned, and invaded. Something uncanny emerges in this process. These are strange objects pretending to be familiar.   Looking at these archives of propaganda images is unsettling because it reveals parts of us we know — the political memes, ideas, and philosophies we believe in — and so they belong to us. But they also push the boundaries of those beliefs, including our ideas of what other people believe about us. It’s an environment that contributed to an especially toxic online atmosphere in 2016. What’s next? Not all creative algorithm content is created equal. In 2013, Netflix analyzed extensive tags it had created for every piece of its content to see what worked for most of its subscribers. From that data, they were able to discern a “Venn diagram” for a successful streaming series, which they agreed to produce, sight unseen. That show was “House of Cards.��� But that wasn’t just the product of blind faith in data. Instead, it pointed to a new kind of intelligence, as described by Tim Wu in his New Yorker piece about the show: “It is a form of curation … whose aim is guessing not simply what will attract viewers, but what will attract fans—people who will get excited enough to spread the word. Data may help, but what may matter more is a sense of what appeals to the hearts of obsessive people, and who can deliver that.” The similarities between the art of crafting algorithms into fan-favorite entertainment and crafting successful online propaganda campaigns? You might say it’s uncanny. --- swissnex San Francisco is exploring a number of topics around AI and ethics in 2018. Stay tuned with our event newsletter to stay up to date. https://nextrends.swissnexsanfrancisco.org/propaganda-from-the-uncanny-valley/ (Source of the original content)