#there were so many misquotings and its such a long video | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

justonedir · 6 years ago

Text

Transcript of Instagram Livestream hosted by Armstrong Martins on November 2, 2018:

(user names are best guess, some words were hard to understand and a line serves as a placeholder, several time stamps to allow for others to verify)

Armstrong (abbreviated to Arm later on):

I have a very busy evening tonight, yeah, and I just wanted to chat to you guys about - so I posted a picture on my Instagram, my latest post, yeah, and I posted a picture of myself, just putting a good message there and I got responses because I tagged Eleanor in it.

And the thing is yeah, what I wanted to share with you today is do you know what the equivalent of gossip is? Who - Do you know what the equivalent of gossip is? Do you know what gossip actually is? And the reason why I’m talking to you like this is because I’ve decided that I’m not gonna allow the media and people, general public as well, to shape what I do. Because what I - wow, Emily, that’s perfect ‘s’il bien’ ‘s’il bien’ that’s, that’s perfect. I love that.

The reason why I’m speaking to you, yeah, like this is because I need you guys to understand who I am and, listen to me, everyone is free to unfollow me and not support me at all but I’m really really a neutral person. You know someone’s experience and I’m not saying that everyone should have my opinion about a person but my opinion about this specific person in question Eleanor, yeah, she’s been an absolute queen to me, yeah, she really really helped me and supported me a lot behind closed doors and that’s not what everyone’s gonna see, yeah, and so really, she does mean a lot to me because alongside Louis and the show and other people, like she really was involved in getting me to a place where I needed to be, yeah, and I wasn’t always this (mumbled)_______ to come and speak to you guys about that, yeah. Guys, but I really really want you to understand who this person is, she’s such a nice person, she’s such a, such a nice person and there’s so many bad comments about her and do you know what the equivalent of gossip is? The equivalent of gossip is murder. If you’re gonna speak about someone’s name, yes, someone’s name, imagine if someone was saying your name, imagine if someone was speaking bad of your name? Someone was saying, let’s pick one for example, “kissie Athena”. What if someone was saying Athena, yeah, she is that, she’s this, and so many people are doing that yeah, they’re just getting behind each other where, um, um, just because of like how everyone has joined up to talk about a person, yeah, that is ripping someone’s whole life apart because, think about it, this is actually real life, she’s really hearing what you’re saying. It’s actually a person, why are we talking about people like this, why are we going this? Why do we, why do – people will say ‘well that’s the world we live in” yeah, but it’s not the world we live in. It’s not. It’s just the world that we create.

You know what – “jerry dodger” – they could be jealous, yeah, and I get what you’re saying, yeh, but the thing is, yeh, the thing is, like, slandering someone’s name is BAD. Because like, you know what I’m saying, between us, like between myself and all of you, yeah, like we see when we do our chats and stuff, yeah, that we have people coming out of depression, and you know all of us were helping out what Jasmine, Connor, like we’re having a conversation and brining people out of the situation, but we’re still trying to put people in depression, we can’t do that. And I love of all you guys, yeah, and I’m gonna back you all the way, yeah, but there’s certain things that I want you to know about myself, yeah, I don’t cross that line. We’ve got to respect people. We’ve got to love people. We have to love each other cause otherwise there’s no point in all this.

Does someone disagree? And it you disagree, can you tell me why?

Comment:

“They don’t believe she’s Louis’ girlfriend”. She’s a front, that Louis’ not with her. (Armstrong scratches his head.)

Armstrong:

Look, believe me, I can assure you that Louis’ with her. Ok? Believe me, I can assure you that, yeah. So if you have any respect for the person that you’re trying to support, why would you slander his partner? That’s OUT OF ORDER. It’s OUT OF ORDER. It’s not – Georgia – do you know what? I want someone to join me that has an opposite opinion to me. Let’s join, let’s have a conversation cause I want to pick your brains, I want to literally ask you questions, yeah? I wanna pick your brain, yeah, and find like whether, let’s deem it, let’s deem it like, let’s talk about it and see whether we can come to a common ground.

You guys, you don’t understand, imagine like, no one, you can’t see what happens behind closed doors. Do you know, do you know what, first of all, yeah, do you know what it takes to be a woman? Do you know what? I want to give a round of applause, yeah, to every single lady that’s on this chat right now. I want to give a round of applause to all of you women. You girls, yeah, are the strongest thing I’ve ever seen on this earth. I’ve no idea how you guys find your strength. You guys can have kids, droppings, you guys can just endure so much, I don’t how you guys do it. I mean, I’m inspired by you women, I’m inspired by you guys. I’m actually inspired by you guys, genuinely, yeah, I don’t know how you lot can really really, the things that you guys like endure, sorry about that (camera fell). The things that you women can take. There’s certain things, patience, that we, as a guy, we can’t take, we can’t take.

You know I’m saying like – guys! – I want you to get in your head, yeah, that we aren’t gonna make a better world, yeah, if we keep on doing this. Guys! This is someone! Just because she don’t come on social media, yeah, and chat back to people, don’t mean that she’s not – look – I want. This is what I want from you guys, yeah. I want the ones that really – my phone keeps on wanting to die - (6 min 40 sec) my phone keeps on wanting to die, my charge isn’t working, it don’t seem like,

Comment:

Many people say she’s only a person that doesn’t love Lou or things like that but she’s a beautiful soul and I can imagine –

Armstrong:

Guys! This is what I’m saying. These are the conversations that you guys need to have between yourselves and stop, like, like, HOW do you come to a conclusion about something? How do you come to a conclusion? Have you ever met her before? Have you? You haven’t. And look, the biggest crime in life is assumption. Assumption is the biggest crime in life. Everyone’s just making assumptions, yeah about –

Comment:

– “veil raymus” “Let’s talk about you. Armstrong, let’s talk about you. “

Armstrong:

Let’s talk about me. I’d love that. I don’t really want to come on here talking about other people. Really. Cuz –

Comment:

“She, she made racist comments and body shamed. That’s how I come to my conclusion. We shouldn’t hate nor should we praise.

Armstrong:

I like that to be honest. I like that answer. I like that answer. But you obviously see something special about a person yeah if you’re just chatting about them but you still follow them. That makes sense, doesn’t it. Whether you follow them on Instagram, whether, you still follow them. Cause you still talk about them.

Comment: Pixel box

Armtrong: Pixel box – what you sorry for? Yeah, you can, put your word across, Georgia. Guys, this is what, (reading another comment) “but this is none of anyone’s business, I get what you’re saying but this is none of anyone’s business” Ok, I like that answer as well. But why does my picture have to have these comments then? You know, listen, guys, guys, we are gonna to a family, yeah, and we’re gonna have to set some rules. I need you guys to, in my, anything concerning Armstrong, whatever you want to do in the world, that’s great, but anything that says Armstrong, I need love, I need there to be love on all of the comments, I need love there. Anyone’s being negative, blow them out of the water because they’re trying to bring everyone down. What’s the point of being negative? Listen, I’ve laid down on a hospital bed for 3 months, yeah, and you never know what tomorrow looks like. Like, until someone’s been to that place, yeah, where you’re on your deathbed, yeah, and you don’t, like, until you’ve been in that place, you don’t really understand how short life is.

Guys, do you know what I do what I do? To open the door for you guys. To open the door for something you want to do. Yeah? Look –

Comment: “Anna guitar covers”

Armstrong:

Yeah, I get what, I get what you’re saying about Let’s talk about something positive and stuff like that, but really I’m literally talking to Strong nation, yeah, like I’m a speaker to my people, yeah, I’m a speaker to my people, then we’ll move on to something more interesting. I’ve gotta go, I really ain’t got time, I’m sorry for coming on late, I was supposed to come on at 4:00, but look guys, (10 minutes 24 seconds)

Reading: “you can’t control every comment or you’ll ……”

Armstrong: Ok, I get what you’re saying, yeah, I get what you’re saying. You can’t control every comment, great, but I’m saying, I can try and get through to you guys, cause you guys are the only people I care about, people that really want something good to happen in life, you know what I’m saying?

Thank you! Reading: People are constantly hating on Eleanor without any reasons and I don’t get it…….”

Guys, anyways, the truth is, yeah, from day dot, you guys know me to be a real dude, yeah. I’m a real dude. I’m just a ____________(mumble) I follow her and that’s it. People don’t follow her, that’s still it. But let’s not – do you know how many – listen – do you know how many people done wrong to me here, so much wrong. You think I’m going to go on twitter and Instagram and start slandering someone. No, that’s bad. I’d rather knock someone out, yeah, than slander them. You’ve gotta, it’s better that you have a fight, have a proper full on fight, yeah, than just go slandering because you know what? Do you know what you actually look like? You look like, you look like a bunch of letters, yeah, that won’t back it up in real life, you know what I mean. That’s it, like, it’s not really - let’s – you know what (12 minutes 1 second)

Reading “Let’s quickly” Armstrong: Yeah! Jasmine – Let’s spread love, not hate. Reading: Let’s do this quickly so that – Let’s do this quickly so that I can get on with what I’ve got to do. Let’s do this quickly

(12 minutes 42 seconds) _________ First video chat (didn’t get name)

Girl: “Oh my god. This is not happening”

Arm: Yeah baby.

Girl: Oh my god. I literally just woke up. I look so bad. I’m so sorry. Can you hear me?

Arm: Yeah darling, alright?

Girl: Yeah. Oh my god. I’m freaking out. Sorry.

Arm: Don’t freak out.

Girl: How you been?

Arm: Me? I been great. I been great. I been great.

Girl: That’s good.

Arm: So what do you think about all what’s going on then?

Girl: I just literally just woke up and went online and I think you guys are talking about Eleanor. But, um, you want my opinion on that? Her or?

Arm: I want your honest opinion, your honest opinion.

Girl: Um, I respect her, you know. I’ve never really - I’m a Larry shipper but I respect Eleanor, you know? I love her – but, no I don’t, I just respect her a person. I don’t follow her and I just let her be, you know? I do not go on her stuff or hate on her. You know, it’s just, I don’t care what she does, it’s whatever, she’s her own person, I’m my own person, I’m a do me, and that’s it.

Arm: do you know the reason why I made this – do you know the reason why I’m even speaking about this?

Girl: I think a lot of people just bring it up to you and its like, I feel like its when people talk about Larry or Eleanor on here, I think it’s disrespectful because we’re here to support you, you know? Talk about –

Arm: Thank, what, – owww! (big smile) Oh my god! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! You know what? You’ve made my night. You’ve made my night. You’ve actually made my night.

Girl: Oh my god. I’m just, I’m literally shaking, I don’t even know what I’m saying, I do, but I don’t, you know?

Arm: You’ve actually made my night. Can we, can we like? Like. Guys, like, look at this, yeah? Guys, support me, yeah, push me. Push me! Guys, believe in me, forget the music and stuff like that. I’ll get at singing, I’m the best at singing, you know what I’m saying, but just push me, yeah, get me, I, listen, I’m telling you, I’m like, see me, I’m the Tupac Shakur of this generation, yeah?

Girl: Yeah, I believe in you.

Arm: I’m gonna break into the lives of all of you, yeah, and I’m gonna fix everything that needs fixing. And do you know why? Because this is what I want to do, this is what I care about, this is why I can’t say, oh yeah, screw all of that and support everything you’re saying just to pull your guys legs and stuff like that. I can’t agree with things that are wrong, so that guys, I want some of you, whoever who is humble enough to send Eleanor a DM saying, look, just send some love, spread love. Just spread love. Just spread love. What is you was in a relationship with let’s say, um, nescafe, yeah? You girls are in a relationship with nescafe yeah? Imagine everyone “awh, she’s not nescafe’s girlfriend” (Armstrong snaps fingers) Jammie Dodgers (?) just taught me how to do this with my hands today, Jasmine. (Snaps gingers) Ah, she’s not, she’s not going with nescafe, alright darling, xoxo y space believe that” “She is a not going out with nescafe” “nescafe is actually going out with cup of tea” yeah?

Girl: yeah. So like Harry said, treat people with kindness, and that’s what I do.

Arm: Treat people with kindness, treat people with kindness. Treat people with love.

“Jerry Dodger”, you’ve taught me all the moves, I can see you right there, I wanna talk all of this stuff, alright. Am I doing it right Jerry? Yeah, darling, thank you for your opinion on that yeah, I’m gonna have a chat

Girl: Thank you so much.

Arm: I’m gonna have a chat with one more person and then I’ve got to literally go, I’m so late for everything.

Girl: Ok, I love you, ok?

Arm: I love you more than food. (laugh)

Girl: (Laugh) Ok, bye, Have a nice day.

Arm: Nice one babe

Girl: Alright, bye.

(17 minutes 21 seconds)

Arm: Let’s see what’s going on here. Doing one more and then I got to go. But guys, someone, send love, let someone feel love, why do they have to hate each other….. Let’s go, let’s have a look at, let’s have a look at. Alright, one more, then I got to go. Guys, the thing is send love.

Mum: Hellooo

Arm: Yeah baby, what’s happening?

Mum: I can’t hear, why can’t I hear it. I’ve got a crying baby. Hold on.

Arm: I reckon your wifi’s on like

Mum: Have I got it plugged in right? It’s really really quiet.

Arm: Calita, you need to spill some tea, ok cool!

Mum: I can’t hear

Arm: You can’t hear? Hang on a sec Yeaaah, Calita, splill the tea. We want to hear the tea. We want to see where your tea at. Spill the tea, girl. Spill the tea girl. Calita, spill the tea now. Can you hear now?

Mum: Now, I can, a little bit.

Arm: Claps

Mum: I can hear now, I don’t what happened

Arm: The claps, it’s like magic.

Mum: What is, what is this beef ? Can you fill me in?

Arm: You know what I’m saying?

Mum: I don’t, I don’t!

Arm: Beef, you get me, beef.

Mum: what is happening? What is going on?

Arm: The beef is not. ??

Mum: Come on now

Arm: Alright, let me show you something, these hand gestures, and stuff like that, jammie dodger taught me how to do it. It helps you explain stuff yeah? Ok listen, lol, wyz space bar 127 send that message, happened yet. Ok basically in English, yeah?

Mum: What happened? Can you just fill me in?

Arm: I’ll fill you in but it’s hard to describe it without bouncing around. (Armstrong is doing all kinds or hand signals and sounds)

Mum: Right, ok.

Arm: Jammie dodger this is your fault, jammie dodger. Alright look, yeah, I put up a picture, yeah, on Instagram, yeah,

Mum: Alright

Arm: then, yeah, I woke up the next morning, and guess what I saw?

Mum: What did you see?

Arm: Messages on the comments boxes, yeah, ….

Mum: Saying…

Arm: Like, why are you uploading Eleanor, I mean they said that, like why are you tagging Eleanor on your picture. We love your selfie but don’t support Eleanor. You hear what I’m saying?

Mum: What, is this Louis’ missus?

Arm: Yeah!

Mum: Why are people saying that for?

Arm: I don’t know yet, but like next thing you know yeah, all of my social media appreciators came up with some crazy to get me love yeah, and were like, if anyone talks mad on Armstrongs’s media, madwoman’s maddening it

Mum: So you’ve got love, but they’re being too much.

Arm: I had Jasmine, Jasmine was right there, Jasmine was on my case. She was like don’t be talking mad about Armstrong’s friend cause the thing goes “pop” you know what I’m saying?

Mum: I think so.

Arm: I’m just trying to say to them, like, why do we have to be so negative?

Mum: I don’t know.

Arm: You don’t have to like a person, you don’t have to let everyone know you don’t like a person (imitates typing)

Mum: Keyboard warrioring

Arm: I’m just saying –

Mum: That’s the world we live in now, unfortunately. You’re going to have people that say nasty things. There’s actual accounts of people that troll, like they make an account to specifically troll people, but they don’t know the effects it has on others

Arm: You know what –

Mum – It always happens no matter what the generation we live in now, you look at people like my mum and dad, like they married 35 years, you’ll never get that now. It’s so easy to cheat, it’s so easy to divorce, it’s so easy to bully, that’s the world we live in now, and it’s sad it’s sad.

Arm: Do you know what, yeah, I do understand what you’re saying and I agree with you totally. But do you know what, my gripe is this yeah, and by the way, I’m speaking to every single troll that’s - hello darling (mum just picked up little girl), hi darling, you’re so cute!! You look like a cupcake. Bebe, Bebe, you look like a cupcake!

Mum/little girl: Hi! Hi!

Arm: I just want to talk to you sweetheart. I love you’re pink top and your smile right now.

Mum: Awwww

Arm: Ok, I’m just saying, whoever is a troll right now, who’s on it now –

Mum: – Yeah

Arm: I’m telling you, we always doubt, we always doubt the effects of what we do yeah,

Mum:(whilst walking around with child) – uh huh

Arm: we always think that is cool, we always think that is, we always think like it doesn’t make, like it’s not going to come back on us, but I’m saying yeah, when it comes close to us, that’s when we know to start calming it down. Guys I’m saying, if you’re a troll, it will come back to you,

Mum: Yeah, no one deserves (child crying, she walks to go pick her up)

Arm: I promise you it will come back on you, but it might not come back on the way you think.

Mum: Yeah (now holding child)

Arm: Stop slandering, because you’re no one to be slandered. No one even knows you, you’re a fake account. The karma will come back.

(24 minutes 28 seconds)

Mum: And no one understands what that one comment will do to someone. Like you hear, you hear so many things now about people committing suicide because of that one person made that one last comment and tipped them over the edge and it’s not right. It makes me scared to have a family in case someone bullied my children or bullied someone that I loved.

Arm: Oh, hell no!

Mum: I have a bad side to me and I don’t want to have to bring that bad side out to someone else.

Arm: (doing more arm movements and trills)

Mum: You have to keep your cool.

Arm: I have two kids yeah, if it was like a ting like that, all I know is that the ting will go scrap, cap, cap, everyday.

Mum: It’s so hard. It’s so hard.

Arm: I’m not a person who’s like, oh they’re talking about me, let me just be humble and stuff, no I’m coming, I’m coming, me and you will have it out today. But listen, the other thing, yeah, the other thing is this – so

Mum: You lost it! Your lost it! (laughing)

Arm: The other thing is like the karma of doing that troll stuff is coming back to you.

Mum: Oh yeah.

Arm: And it’s like, I agree with what you’re saying, yeah, but it’s like you see there’s a couple hundred people on this chat right now yeah, I reckon you that from here, we can spread something that’s just gonna dead it all. Like, we don’t, like we know yeah that negativity makes money, that’s the truth.

Mum: Yeah, like, it’s like publicity isn’t it? Like bad publicity is still publicity. You can’t, you can’t get away from it, but you have a platform now where you can send certain messages to people and spread the word kind of thing because you’ve got that form of support now.

Arm: Calita, calita, I’ve got to go. Tell me, tell me, when should we do a live again, when should we do a live again? Cause I’ve got to go. I can’t stay here for too long guys. When should we do a live again?

Mum: ummm, whenever you want?

Arm: Let’s do a live, same time tomorrow.

Mum: Ok, Cool.

Arm: Yeah, we’ll get on this, we’ll get on this. There’s another topic I want to talk about but I need people to like really really really like think about their answers.

Mum: Ok

Arm: So guys, today, we’ve finished the madness with Eleanor. I trust some of you lot, some of you, I can’t speak for all of you, yeah, but I know some of you are going to go and send her messages of love, Spread love. Spread some love.

Mum: Literally

Arm: Starts singing “everything’s going to be alight”

(28 minutes 11 seconds)

Arm: Hang on a minute, hang on a minute, (reading) “no you haven’t, trust me, this is going to get worse, you’re making it worse. Let me tell you something, let me tell you something, who is this? “god’s honest truth”

Mum: I’m going now.

Arm: You off yeah! Go on then babe, I’ll speak to you soon.

Mum; Byeee

Arm: God’s honest truth. Guys, you see that negative person right there yeah? That’s gotta go. That has got to go. That has got to go. Where’s the link? Strong nation. Reading: Stop putting all of us in the same bag.

Arm: Listen, you don’t have to be in this bag. You certainly don’t. But, only positive people are my friends to be honest with you (bit mumbled though) Only positive people are my friends, mate.

New video chat starts (29 minutes 44 seconds)

Arm: Hello Carlita

Carlita: Hi, sorry for being so annoying, I’m so sorry –

Arm: You’re not annoying.

Carlita: but I’m _______(represent?) Larry point of view, like, sorry for that, but this is getting so big, that I need to clarify.

Arm: Yeah

Carlita: You know Louis _____, Eleanor and the antis, like we call the people who doesn’t believe in Larry, but we have our reasons that but if someone is disrespecting us because its _________, like we are here for Louis and his music, and for you, I like you so much, honestly I was so upset when you left because you are so talented and stuff, but –

Arm: Thank you, thank you

Carlita: You’re welcome. It’s sad that. It’s annoying every day getting hate because of shipping who we ship, like Louis and Harry but we have to deal with it, like I know, but that’s it.

Arm. The thing is yeah, you, do you know what, and I respect you, yeah, for being just so stand up, getting in front of my face, and saying your true opinion, and I get what you’re saying, but the thing is there is a difference between something that we want to happen and slander. It’s RUDE. It’s just so rude.

Carlita: Yeah, but, they’re not rude. Like some of us are, but me for example, and some of the _____ that I follow, like 28 the Spanish Larry (?) and some stuff like that, we are good people and we like defend their love because we think they are ____________ . I don’t ship them. I think they are truly couple but _____ with bad things.

Arm: But obviously you guys want the idea of him being with

Carlita: If Larry isn’t real, I would respect Eleanor and I respect Eleanor, and I will respect Louis and Harry as well but like I truly believe they are in a relationship.

Arm: Can I ask, can I ask you lot a question?

Carlita: Yeah, of course.

Arm: Would you do this to me, yeah, if I got into a relationship?

Carlita: Um no, but it’s not like that, its not that easy for understand. Like, there are a lot of videos that truly proves that they at least were in a relationship. Like seriously, there are, because I didn’t believe in their love last year, and I’ve been a one Direction fan for 5 years. But when you look through the videos, you see their looks, you just know, that’s it. I’m reading the comments and it’s getting annoying, the theme of Larry and Eleanor, we are here for Louis and that’s it.

Arm: Great. Well, you’re seeing me, do you know who I’m there for ?

Carlita: Yes, for Louis

Arm: Do you who I’m there for? I’m there for everyone.

Carlita: Yes,

Arm: So, I’m just saying, yeah, this is literally about two things. Can there not be negativity about people on my Instagram page and stuff and can there just, can we just love a bit more, because that’s what I believe, and you know what I’m saying. If someone doesn’t believe in love, I don’t think that the person is a normal person.

Carlita: Yes, I know, but

Arm: Someone called Tracy – Miss, - someone called Tracy tweeted “was that shhhht really necessary? No, don’t think so.” Why? Why are you tweeting me that?

Carlita: Uh, some of us are like so childish, so so childish.

Arm: Someone just said, “Armstrong you started it.” Started what?

Carlita: No, it’s like everything happens the same. It’s a lot of drama. Always the drama and it’s not good for us to talk about this because yeah, its true that it is Louis’ private life.

Arm: Reading comment _________ Robinson

Carlita: What? Well, that’s it. Let’s forget about Larry and all the drama and focus on Louis and your career. You are so so good. Really.

Arm: Alright, listen, we’re gonna stop talking about this now. Yeah?

Carlita: Yes

Arm: But, I need you to tell me, yeah, and I’m not speaking to everyone, I’m speaking to some people when I say, send her some love. Send her some love. I don’t care if anyone don’t like me, I don’t give a damn about that. I don’t care if people don’t like what I’m saying. I care about people that are listening to what I’m saying. Like – (reading) Lucia – Like why would you say, “Please shut up.” Why? Why would you be rude to me?” Why? Why? Why? That’s not very nice.

Carlita: No

Arm: Look, like, I’m not interested in ignorant people that aren’t listening to what I’m saying, I care about people that are listening, whether they have their opinions or not, but they’re listening to what I’m saying. I don’t like negativity, Listen, have you ever seen someone die in front on your face.

Carlita: No.

Arm: I’ve seen someone lose their life in front of my face. Do you know how short life is? Listen, I’m just trying to teach you guys cause you guys really want to be social media people forever. You guys can be something that’s what I’m saying, you guys can go out and do something for yourselves. You guys can, you guys can actually, like guys, I’m promising you guys yeah, you know what I’m like, you know what I’m like, babe so you know what I’m like?

Carlita: What?

Arm: I’m like someone that wants to be the president of this industry. I want to be, I want to bring, I want to bring everyone together, yeah, and I want to stand in the gap. I want to be like a politician musician.

Carlita: Yeah, that’s great. Well, the point was, like, we should stop talking about this, because I’m reading all the comments, and they are sending hate.

Arm: Yeah, and the thing is, the thing is, I don’t mind hate. That’s the thing.

Carlita: I don’t mind either. I have to do with hate all of the day, every day for what I believe, for what I am doing, things like that, but I don’t care. Really.

Arm: Someone said, someone said, (reading) stop talking about Louis’ private life. Ok. So why did you have to put his private life on my page?

Carlita: No, no _______. I just need to clarify a pair of things but that’s it. I didn’t want to talk about Louis’ private life.

Arm: Oh my god! (looking at comments) This is actually so real. This is so real, you know. This is actually real. This is, this is, this is interesting.

Carlita: Hmm, well, this is interesting. This started in 2011.

Arm: 2011? Yeah? Great, fantastic. Alright, cool, I’m done with it. I’m done with it. So now guys (laughs), I need, I want everyone to like – look – understand the person I am, and I mean well and I’m not like, I’m not against (trying to make out comments 37 minutes 53 seconds) Reading: “Larry is stupid and so are all of you” Listen palomo or whatever your name is, just delete yourself from this chat. Why would you say that? You’re about to get stormed by everyone. Everyone I permit you to storm that person. I’m joking, don’t storm that person. Send her love. Listen, yeah, I’m gonna - I’ve got a lot of plans yeah music wise and future wise and stuff like that I just want everyone yeah, to just really really keep their eyes on what I’m doing. Guys, I’m promising you yeah, you know that I can’t say exactly what it is yet, but I’m promising you I’m coming with some fire. Do you understand?

Carlita: Well you are so talented so I’m going outside. I’m so proud of you and what you are doing.

Arm: Well the boss has said end that convo (text at 38 minutes 35 seconds) so that’s what I’ve got to do, yeah. Alright, I’ve got to go, yeah, but we’re going this live tomorrow and there’s something I want to chat to you guys about but this chat is about to go all -

Carlita: Bye

Arm: Guys, the chats about to go off tomorrow, yeah, the chat’s about to go off tomorrow. Guys, listen, guys, when we have a chat, I need to find out about something, yeah, and I’m going to ask all of you this, so you guys have to, I need you guys, yeah, all things. Listen, I want to have so many people on this chat, and I want to have so many conversations, but I’ve got to go. Reading: Gay um Gaya, yeah, I’ve already finished talking about that situation. I’m not even going there. Guys, we’re talking about better things, yeah, and it’s about to go off. Listen, all I’m saying is, yeah, I need your strength, I need you guys. I’m going to speak to you guys tomorrow about something. Yeah, I’ve got to go yeah. Love you all, love you all, love you all, love you all. I’ll check my DMs as well. (Reads comments), guys you’re talking about old news. Be happy, love you all. I’ve got to go, I know, I can’t stay longer, I’ve literally, I’ve got to go.

Let’s see who is calling me on snapchat. (answers snapchat) You alright? What’s happening? Person on snapchat – “we’re at fireworks”. ____ at fireworks. Oh my god, Oh, I’ve got to go. Come on the line tomorrow, come on Instagram tomorrow yeah? I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to go. (reading comment) Smiley Louis Tomlinson Love you all, love you all, love you all, love you all. I’ll check my DMs as well. Bye

END

#i don't engage like other blogs but i can do this #there were so many misquotings and its such a long video #my contribution #larry needs to end

19 notes · View notes

thesibfiles · 4 years ago

Text

Courtney going on tour right after?

Theres a misconception that after Kurts death, Courtney went straight on tour right away. This is false. The album was already set to release a few days after and they couldnt change that on such a short notice. Promotion for the album was cancelled and she pushed back the tour 4 months.

“Live Through This was supposed to provide Love an opportunity to step out from her famous husband’s shadow. “It’s annoying now, and it’s been annoying for nine years, Love said in a 1999 Jane Magazine interview of always being connected to Cobain. Released four days after Cobain’s body was found, the album’s promotion was put on hold. Rather than retreat from the public eye, Love openly mourned and helped fans of Cobain and Nirvana make sense of the singer’s death. She sat with grieving teenagers gathered outside the couple’s Seattle home and recorded a reading of parts of his suicide note that was played at the singer’s memorial that gathered near the Space Needle. In the days following his death, Love showed a very raw and emotional side and admitted that, like many fans, she didn’t have all the answers.

It was, and still is, impossible for people to discuss Live Through This without noting the irony of the album’s title. Love has said the name was not a prediction at all, but instead a reflection of all she had endured in the months leading up to its release, including a very public custody fight with the Los Angeles Department of Family Services over daughter Frances Bean. Rumors suggested that Cobain had written much of Live Through This (it’s Miss World, not Mister, just FYI). “I’d be proud as hell to say that he wrote something on it, but I wouldn’t let him. It was too Yoko for me. It’s like, ‘No fucking way, man! I’ve got a good band, I don’t fucking need your help,’” was Love’s response to critics in Spin’s oral history of Live Through This. Love and Cobain often shared notebooks and lyrics with each other, and while there is talk of Cobain’s influence on Love’s work, or the writing of all of it, less is mentioned in the press of her impact on his lyrics and music. Rather than sucking all the life out of Nirvana or threatening the success of the band, like many assumed she would do, she inspired Cobain. Fun fact: In Utero, Nirvana’s last album, was named after a line from one of Love’s poems.

Sadly, songwriting rumors would be replaced by other rumors. Women are often vilified and condemned for the deaths of their male partners. Love, like all women, was supposed to save her partner from death and addiction. Fans of Cobain projected all their anger and resentment over the loss of the Nirvana front man onto Love, and soon she was blamed for not only his addiction but also his death. There are even two movies devoted to the theory that Courtney killed Kurt: the awful Soaked in Bleach (2015) and the equally awful Kurt & Courtney (1998). If you think we’ve come a long way, baby, sadly we haven’t.

One year after Anthony Bourdain’s death, Asia Argento is still being blamed, and in September 2018, Ariana Grande had to take a break from social media after fans blamed her for the death of her ex Mac Miller. A few months later, she would be blamed for new beau Pete Davidson’s mental health and addiction issues. It’s amazing she finds the time to write hit songs what with all the dude destruction she has going on. When women are not being blamed for the deaths of the men in their lives, they are being attacked for not grieving properly. “She wasn’t crying. She’s got $30 million coming to her. Do you blame her for being so cool?” a hospital staffer said of Yoko Ono following John Lennon’s murder in 1980.

About four months after Cobain’s death, Love went on tour to promote her new album. Some questioned and judged why she would go on tour so soon, but Love has said it was a necessity. She had a young daughter to support. She needed to work. She also, sadly, still needed to prove herself. “I would like to think that I’m not getting the sympathy vote, and the only way to do that is to prove that what I’ve got is real,” Love told Rolling Stone in 1994.

Twenty-five years later, Cobain’s death still hangs over Live Through This. In the days leading up to the anniversary of Cobain’s death, former Hole bassist Melissa Auf der Maur wrote an open letter to music magazine Kerrang saying she “would not stand for Kurt’s death overshadowing the life and work of the women he left behind this year.”

“We were extremely well designed for each other,” Love has said of her relationship with Cobain. In a letter reprinted in Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, she calls him “my everything. the top half on my fraction.” The two had similar upbringings, both came from broken homes and spent childhoods shuttling between relatives and friends. They both grew up longing for love and acceptance. When we tell the story of Kurt and Courtney we talk about drugs and destruction, but we don’t talk enough about love.

The two also shared an intense drive and ambition. “I didn’t want to marry a rock star, I wanted to be one,” Love said in a 1992 Sassy interview. Evidence of her drive can be found in the many notes and to-do lists she kept, some of which are collected in Dirty Blonde. There are reminders to send her acting résumé to agencies, to write three to four new songs a week, to “achieve L.A. visibility.” A scene in the documentary Kurt & Courtney features an ex of Love’s reading from one of her to-do lists, which has “become friends with Michael Stipe” as the number one task to complete (not only did Love do this, but he is her daughter’s godfather). This ambition is not surprising from a woman who, when she was younger, mailed a tape of herself singing to Neil Sedaka in hopes of getting signed. Love knew what she wanted at an early age, and what she wanted was fame.

She was certainly living by the “do not hurt yourself, destroy yourself, mangle yourself to get the football captain. Be the football captain!” motto she championed in the 1995 documentary Not Bad for a Girl. Ambition is often a dirty word when it is used to describe women and Love is no exception. She has been repeatedly described as calculating and controlling when she should be rewarded for her blond ambition and viewed as an inspiration. Critics and the press often call her a gold digger who only married Cobain for fame and money. They fail to mention that when the two met Pretty on the Inside was actually selling more copies than Bleach, Nirvana’s debut album. Even post-Kurt, Love’s intentions were always under scrutiny. On the Today Show to do press for The People vs. Larry Flynt, Love refused to talk about her past drug use, despite the host’s repeated questions, saying the topic was not an appropriate fit for the show’s demographic. She was right, but it didn’t stop a writer from describing the move as “calculating” in a 1998 Spin piece.

Cobain was ambitious too; he was just much slyer and more secretive about it. He was known to call his manager and complain when MTV didn’t play Nirvana’s videos enough, and he would correct journalists who misquoted the band’s sales figures in interviews. While success is typically celebrated and rewarded for men and it certainly was for Cobain, he also had to be mindful of the slacker generation that loved Nirvana and greeted success — and especially mainstream success —

While female celebrities like Love are criticized for their rebellion, male celebrities, like Cobain for example, are celebrated and mythologized for it. Cobain and Love both struggled with addiction, but it is Love who is repeatedly vilified for her drug use. “She was vilified for being a mess, for being a drug addict, for not being a great parent — in other words, all of the things we expect in a male rock star,” said Bust magazine in a piece in the magazine’s 20th anniversary issue, which featured Love on the cover.

We make jokes about the drug antics of male celebrities from Keith Richards to Charlie Sheen, idolizing their debauchery and depravity. The new Netflix/Lifetime movie by Jack Daniels, The Dirt, about Mötley Crüe, takes the band’s excesses to almost comic levels. Check out crazy tourmate Ozzy Osbourne snorting a line of ants by a hotel pool! Such zany antics! I would love to see Lindsay Lohan try to get away with that. We never allow women to live down their arrests and their addictions, but we repeatedly allow men to have a redemption arc. Robert Downey Jr. was in and out of jail and on and off drugs for much of the mid to late ’90s, but we rarely, if ever, talk about his past.

When Love isn’t being attacked for her addiction issues, she is being judged for her parenting. Love’s first unflattering press was “Strange Love,” the much publicized 1992 Vanity Fair profile by Lynn Hirschberg. While the piece talks at length about Love’s drug use and constantly questions her parenting ability, it doesn’t paint Cobain in the same light. “It is appalling to think that she would be taking drugs when she knew she was pregnant,” says one close friend in the piece. Hirschberg relies on many unnamed sources and focuses often on the tabloid-like aspects of Love’s life and addictions. “Courtney has a long history with drugs. She loves Percodans (‘They make me vacuum’), and has dabbled with heroin off and on since she was eighteen, once even snorting it in Room 101 of the Chelsea Hotel, where Nancy Spungen died,” she writes. “Reportedly, Kurt didn’t do much more than drink until he met Courtney.” (Even when it is reported by Kurt and Krist that Kurt tried heroin in 1989, way before Courtney, It was also known that he smoked weed and used caugh syrup to get high in 1989 and 1990.)

This double standard was common in coverage of the couple. In Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, the 2015 documentary by Brett Morgen, Love asks her husband, “Why does everyone think you’re the good one and I’m the bad one?” Later in the film we see a scene of Frances Bean’s first haircut. The child sits on Cobain’s lap while Love searches for a comb and scissors. The camera shows Cobain nodding off, and while he maintains that he is just tired, it’s clear he’s not. The scene is painful to watch, especially because those around Cobain carry on like nothing in wrong, giving the feeling this is just like any other day in the Love-Cobain household. The scene is a reminder of how the press treated Cobain’s addiction when he was alive. They just carried on like nothing was wrong, instead directing all their judgement at Love.

#courtneylove #courtney love #hole #grunge #nirvana #kurt cobain #kurtcobain #90s

52 notes · View notes

theliberaltony · 3 years ago

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

This is the latest edition of our column that excavates the origins of public figures’ factually dubious comments. We explain what their claims are referring to, the evidence (or lack thereof) behind them and where they sprang from in the first place.

Who said what …

On July 19, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted the following: “The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone.” Because her post contained several false statements, Twitter labelled it “misleading” and issued a 12-hour ban on her account for violating the service’s COVID-19 misleading information policy. Greene’s claims that there have been 6,000 “vax related” deaths and that COVID-19 is “not dangerous” for people who aren’t obese or over 65 are both inaccurate. Among the more than 163 million people who have gotten the COVID-19 vaccine in the U.S., 6,207 deaths1 have been reported according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but there is no evidence those were “vax related deaths.” And while obesity and old age are risk factors for COVID-19, they are not the only ones, and the disease is still dangerous for people without those risk factors.

Some background …

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, researchers have been studying which kinds of comorbidities can make someone more likely to have a severe case of COVID-19 that could lead to hospitalization or death. After a year and a half, it’s clear obesity or old age does make someone more susceptible. But so do lots of other conditions. The CDC lists 17 categories, including cancer, pregnancy and chronic lung diseases. But otherwise healthy people can also become seriously ill from COVID-19, not to mention die from it. To claim that the novel coronavirus is “not dangerous” for anyone who isn’t obese or over 65 is wildly inaccurate. And focusing on obesity as though it were the only risk factor for severe COVID-19 is a trend among right-wing communities that combines two parallel threads in online subcultures: the anti-vax community’s belief that a healthy lifestyle and one’s natural immune system are as effective as vaccination in preventing disease and the right-wing troll culture’s long fixation on fat shaming.

In a press conference about the Twitter ban, Greene tried to clarify her statement, saying she “was talking about the highest amount of deaths, the highest risk factor” and that “78 percent of people that were hospitalized and died were obese.” That stat is based on a CDC study from March, but it comes with some caveats. First, this figure includes people who are considered obese and people who are considered overweight. Second, 73.6 percent of Americans age 20 or over are considered overweight or obese, according to the CDC. While the numbers for people with obesity are still higher among COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized, needed a ventilator, or died, the stat Greene cited is a bit like surveying COVID-19 cases at a sorority house and finding that 100 percent of the hospitalizations occurred among women. And that’s not even taking into account that the measurement used to diagnose obesity — the body mass index — is flawed, at best.

There is no denying that obesity is a risk factor for more severe COVID-19 infections. Compared with people with a healthy weight, obese people who contract COVID-19 are 113 percent more likely to be hospitalized, 74 percent more likely to be put in intensive care, and 48 percent more likely to die, according to a meta-analysis published in August in the journal Obesity Reviews. But obesity is not the only, or even necessarily the highest, risk factor for more severe COVID-19 infections. Smokers, for instance, have a 40-50 percent higher risk of severe disease or death from COVID-19 compared with nonsmokers, according to the World Health Organization. People diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease who contract COVID-19 have a 30 percent higher risk of death than people without Parkinson’s, according to a University of Iowa study published in September. And pregnant women who get COVID-19 are 70 percent more likely to die than those who aren’t pregnant, according to the CDC.

But Greene didn’t tweet that people who don’t smoke, aren’t pregnant or don’t have Parkinson’s disease have nothing to fear from COVID-19. She specifically singled out obesity, something many right-wing communities online have done since the start of the pandemic.

Where the comment came from …

A common refrain in this online community is that the only people at risk for severe COVID-19 infections are those who are considered either overweight or obese. Occasionally, other medical risk factors are mentioned, but there seems to be a particular focus on obesity. On patriots.win, a forum for supporters of former President Donald Trump, there are dozens of posts about obesity being a risk factor for COVID-19, many of which are scrutinizing news reports of deaths to give an armchair diagnosis of the victims. “The vaccine would not have saved her son. He’s obese and looks unhealthy,” said one post sharing a screengrab of a Daily Mail article about an Alabama woman who regretted not having her son, who died of COVID-19, vaccinated. “Vulnerable remain vulnerable even with vaccine,” the post claims.

After the CDC published its finding that 78 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients were considered overweight or obese, this statistic became a frequent (and often misquoted) datapoint in right-wing and anti-vax communities online. In May, Jordan Sather, a QAnon influencer shared a video with his tens of thousands of followers on the messaging app Telegram of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promoting vaccinations. Many responded with inaccurate quips about COVID-19 affecting only obese people. “They know that obese was 90% of the reason people were in the hospital for COVID?! I guess they don’t believe in the science,” one follower wrote. “Aren’t 80 percent of all C19 deaths from obese people? Hmmm…” wrote another.

There’s a long history of right-wing groups fat-shaming people online. To wit: an appreciable contingent of subscribers to the now-banned subreddit r/fatpeoplehate — which existed only to mock and criticize people who are overweight in the most vitriolic terms possible — moved over to the now-also-banned subreddit r/The_Donald, where Trump supporters posted right-wing memes and discussions. Of course, fat-shaming online is not limited to right-wing trolls. It’s incredibly widespread, and many on the left are just as guilty of it — consider House Speaker Nancy Pelosi publicly fat-shaming Trump on live television, or the droves of internet users who have criticized measures to prioritize obese people for the COVID-19 vaccine, or reward vaccination with free goodies like Krispy Kreme doughnuts. But it does hold a particularly pernicious and prevalent role in right-wing communities online. The fixation on obesity as if it were the only, or most important, risk factor for severe COVID-19 infections is just the latest in right-wing trolls’ longstanding tradition of attacking overweight people online.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Kaleigh Rogers

7 notes · View notes

itsheroinethistime · 4 years ago

Text

Initial folklore thoughts;

folklore

1. the 1- pretty omg she said new shit right off the back omg wow ROARING TWENTIES. “If my wishes came true it would’ve been youD in my defense I have none” “it would’ve been fun if you wouldve been the one” omg omg “the greatest loves of all time are over now” omg. I love this song already. “And it would’ve been sweet if it had been me” DHSKSKS lake

2. cardigan - couldn’t find the lyric video so m going right into the music video I guess. This is pretty. She climbed into a piano. Omg so pretty. I gotta listen to this song without the visuals. I do really like this music video though.

3. the last great american dynasty- youtube really thinks I want State Farm ada I cant wait to listen on spotify but I wanted lyrics. Wow did she kill off bill omg. Wait rebecca killed bill? “She had a marvelous time ruining everything”. She really said let’s make an explicit album omg!! “I had a marvelous time ruining everything!” I love it

4. exile ft bon iver- I don’t think I’ve heard bon iver before tbh his voice is a lot deeper than I expected I was still expecting to hear Taylor. “I’m not your problem anymore!” “I think I’ve seen this film before and I didn’t like the ending” god lyrical genius l. “You never gave a warning sign/I gave so many signs” omgnn

5. my tears ricochet - I hope jack didn’t get me too excited!! “If I’m on fire you’ll be made of ashes too” “if I’m dead to you why are you at the wake?” “When you can’t sleep at night you hear my stolen lullabies”

6. mirrorball - “and when I break its in a million pieces” “shining just for you” “I’m still trying everything to keep you looking at me”

7. seven- oh this is pretty. “I think your house is haunted” “and I think you should come live with me we can be pirates and you won’t have to cry” oh my god.

8. august- “August sipper away like a bottle of wine because you were never mine” omg. “You weren’t mine to lose” oof. Bridge city. “I canceled my plans just in case you’d call” hit different.

9. this is me trying- “I got wasted like all of my potential” holy shit a mood. “It’s hard time be anywhere these days when all I want is you” omg

10. illicit affairs - “what started in beautiful rooms ends in parking lots” oof. “Leave no trace behind like you don’t even exist” . This is catchy. “Don’t call me kid” “look at this idiotic fool you made me” “and your know damn well for you I would ruin myself a million little times”

11. invisible string - “and isn’t it just so pretty to think all along there was some invisible string tying you to me?” Oh I like this bridge too “cold was the steel of my axe to grind to the boys who broke my heart and now I send their babies presents” hdjdkskskshf I love it

12. mad woman- oh fire she mad. “They strike to kill and you know I will” can someone do one of those word things with all the lyrics in this album bc I think kill would overwhelmingly big. I like this so much. “What a shame she went mad”. Omg this is dark. I like it. I think I’m still in my personal lover area but I can get down . “They say move on but you know I won’t” I think this is one of my favorites on this album!!!

13. epiphany - this is a vibe almost archer-esque vibes and I like that. “And some things you just can’t speak about.” “Only 20 minutes to sleep but you dream of some epiphany just one single glimpse of relief”

14. betty - “you cant believe a word she says most times but this one was true, the worst thing I ever did was what I did to you” “would you tell me to go fuck myself” omg djdksoskls I cant believe “go fuck myself” is a lyric in a Taylor swift chorus I stan (like I didn’t already stan before?!) bridge city again!!!! “I dreamt of you all summer long”oh I like this song!!! “Will you kiss me in front of all my stupid friends?!”

15. peace- “no I could never give you peace” , “clowns to the west, id give you my sunshine, give you my best, but the rains always gonna come if you’re standing here with me” oh my god

16. hoax- “your faithless love is the only hoax I believe in” nicd. Oh a blue reference! “You know the hero died so what’s the movie for?” “My kingdom come undone” nice!!!

17. the lakes -tba I guess

My OG top 5:

The 1

Betty

Mad woman

Illicit affairs

This is me trying

Idk I’m not ready for it to break the holy trinity of albums for me since I just met her but it could happen

Also if you read this don’t @ me for misquoted lyrics is the middle of the night and I’m drinking wine and was trying to type and listen

#taylor swift #me #personal #folklore #betty #mad woman #this is me trying #the 1 #illicit affairs #initial reaction

26 notes · View notes

solacekames · 6 years ago

Photo

(This is a great serious study with a lot of data, which is the only way to fight this online disinformation shit.

I’m already accustomed to us Japanese-Americans being almost completely unable to have online public conversations because we get trolled to the point of nausea by creepy fetishists, fakers and just plain racist trolls. But it could get worse. It IS getting worse.

While a lot of the article may sound very “water is wet” please don’t be dismissive of it. It’s very important.)

Members of vulnerable groups such as the Latino, Muslim, and Jewish communities are being disproportionately targeted online with disinformation, harassment, and computational propaganda — and they don’t trust big social platforms to help them, according to new research by the Palo Alto–based Institute for the Future’s Digital Intelligence Lab shared exclusively with BuzzFeed News.

Researchers found that online messages and images on platforms such as Twitter that originate in the Latino, Muslim, and Jewish communities are co-opted by extremists to spread division and disinformation, often resulting in more social media engagement for the extremists. This causes members of social groups to pull away from online conversations and platforms, and to stop using them to engage and organize, further ceding ground to trolls and extremists.

“We think that the general goal of this [activity] is to create a spiral of silence to prevent people from participating in politics online, or to prevent them from using these platforms to organize or communicate,” said Samuel Woolley, the director of the Digital Intelligence Lab. The platforms, meanwhile, have mainly met these complaints with inaction, according to the research.

Woolley said he expects strategies like fomenting division, spreading disinformation, and co-opting narratives that were used by bad actors in the 2016 election to be employed in the upcoming 2020 election. “In 2020 what we hypothesize is that social groups, religious groups, and issue voting groups will be the primary target of” this kind of activity, he said.

The lab commissioned eight case studies from academics and think tank researchers to look at how different social and issues groups in the US are affected by what researchers call “computational propaganda” (“the assemblage of social media platforms, autonomous agents, and big data tasked with the manipulation of public opinion” — i.e., digital propaganda). The groups studied were Muslim Americans, Latino Americans, moderate Republicans, immigration activists, black women gun owners, environmental activists, anti-abortion and abortion rights activists, and Jewish Americans.

In one example, immigration activists told researchers that a “know your rights” flyer instructing people what to do when stopped by ICE was photoshopped to include false information, and then spread on social media. A member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the hashtag related to the organization’s name (#CAIR) has been “taken over by haters” and used to harass Muslims. Researchers who looked at anti-Latino messaging on Reddit also found that extremist voices discussing Latino topics “appear to be louder than their supporters.”

Jewish Americans interviewed by researchers said online conversations about Israel have reached a new level of toxicity. They spoke of “non-bot Twitter mobs” targeting people, and “coordinated misinformation campaigns conducted by Jewish organizations, trying to propagandize Jews.”

“What we've come to understand is that it's oftentimes the most vulnerable social groups and minority communities that are the targets of computational propaganda,” Woolley told BuzzFeed News.

These findings align with other data that reinforces how these social groups bear the brunt of online harassment. According to a 2019 report from the ADL, 27% of black Americans, 30% of Latinos, 35% of Muslims, and 63% of the LGBTQ+ communities in the United States have been harassed online because of their identity.

BOTS

While bots were generally not a dominant presence in the Twitter conversations analyzed by researchers, automated accounts were used to spread hateful or harassing messages to different communities.

Tweets gathered about the Arizona Republican primary to replace John McCain in the Senate and his funeral last year showed that bots tried to direct moderate Republicans to america-hijacked.com, an anti-Semitic conspiracy website. (It has not published new material since 2017.) Researchers also found that Twitter discussions about reproductive rights saw anti-abortion bots spread harassing language, while pro–abortion rights bots spread politically divisive messages.

Researchers used the Botometer tool to identify likely automated accounts, and gathered millions of tweets based on hashtags for analysis. They combined this data analysis with interviews conducted with members of the communities being studied. The goal was to identify and quantify the human consequences of computational propaganda, according to Woolley.

“The results range from chilling effects and disenfranchisement to psychological and physical harm,” reads an executive summary from Woolley and Katie Joseff, the lab’s research director.

Joseff said people in the studied communities feel they’re being targeted and outmaneuvered by extremist groups and that they don’t “have the allyship of the platforms.”

“They didn't trust the platforms to help them,” she said.

In response to a request for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to the company's review of its efforts to protect election integrity during the 2018 midterms elections.

"With elections taking place around the globe leading up to 2020, we continue to build on our efforts to address the threats posed by hostile foreign and domestic actors. We're working to foster an environment conducive to healthy, meaningful conversations on our service," said an emailed statement from the spokesperson. (Reddit, the other social platform studied in the research, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

Joseff and Woolley said more extreme and insular social media platforms like Gab and 8Chan are where harassment campaigns and messaging about certain social groups is incubated. Ideas that begin on these platforms later dictate the conversation that takes place on more mainstream social media platforms. “The niche platforms like Gab or 8Chan are spaces where the culture around this kind of language becomes fermented and is built,” Woolley said. “That’s why you’re seeing the cross-pollination of attacks across more mainstream social media platforms … directed at multiple different types of groups.”

Co-opting

Researchers found that several of the communities studied are dealing with hashtag and content co-opting, a process by which something used by a group to promote a message or cause gets turned on its head and exploited by opponents.

For example, immigration activists interviewed for one case study said they’ve seen anti-immigration campaigns “video-taping activists and portraying them as ICE officers online, and reframing images to represent immigrant organizations as white supremacist supporters.”

Those interviewed said the perpetrators are tech savvy, “use social media to track and disrupt activism events, and have created memes of minorities looting after a natural disaster.”

The researchers found that messages initially pushed out by immigration activists were consistently co-opted by their opponents — and that these counter-narrative messages generate more engagement than the original, as shown in this graphic representing one example:

“In all cases but one a narrative was consistently drowned out by a counter narrative,” the researchers wrote.

Another case study about Latino Americans gathered data from Reddit. It found that members of r/The_Donald, a major pro-Trump subreddit where racist and extremist content often surfaces, were hugely influential in organizing and promoting discussions related to the Latino community. By filling Reddit with their content, as well as organizing megathreads and other group discussions, they drowned out Latino voices. Researchers also wrote that trolls have at times impersonated experts “in attempts to sow discord and false narratives” related to Latino issues.

Old Tropes

The specific disinformation identified by researchers was often connected to long-running conspiracies or false claims. The case studies about online conversations about women’s reproductive rights and climate science found that old tropes and falsehoods continue to drive divisive conversations.

In the case of women’s reproductive rights, researchers studied 1.7 million tweets posted between Aug. 27 and Sept. 7 last year to coincide with the timing of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing. The two most prominent disinformation campaigns identified were false claims about Planned Parenthood. One false claim was that the founder of the organization started it to target black people for abortions. This is based on a deliberate misquote of what Margaret Sanger actually said, which was in fact to warn against people thinking the organization was targeting black Americans.

“Recurrence of age-old conspiracies or tropes occurred across many of the case studies,” Joseff said.

Key to the spread of hate, division, and disinformation online is inaction from social media companies. Many of those interviewed for the studies said that when a harassment campaign is underway they have nowhere to turn, and the tech giants don’t take any action.

“There is just so much, it can't be a full-time job,” the director of a chapter of CAIR told researchers when asked about muting or blocking those who send hateful messages.

When platforms do take action, they sometimes end up banning the wrong people. One interview subject who participates in online activism related to immigration issues said that Twitter removed the account of a key Black Lives Matter march organizer last June.

“Subsequently the march was sent into disarray and could have been avoided would major voices of social rights activist organizers have been present in the conversation,” the researchers wrote.

The case studies also identified the fact that algorithms and other key elements of how social media platforms work are easily co-opted by bad actors.

“Their algorithms are gameable and can result in biased or hateful trends,” the executive summary said. “What spreads on their platforms can result in very real offline political violence, let alone the psychological impact from online trolling and harassment.”

#disinformation #all cops are bustards #appropriation

574 notes · View notes

notyourmothersspellbook · 5 years ago

Note

I tried all the FAQ links I saw, and tried searching FAQ on your blog, but none of them work on the app. I am exclusively mobile and the site just opens the app.. is there an easier way I can access it?

I’ll put it here below the read more

FAQ

What is Witchcraft?

Most basically, witchcraft is an ongoing practice where you develop skills used to perform spells in order to enact real world results. There are, of course, different paths of witchcraft with different rules and beliefs.

Is Witchcraft a Religion?

Nope. Unlike something like Wicca, which involves the worship of certain energies/deities, witchcraft does not require the worship of any god, spirit, entity, or energy. Anyone can practice witchcraft regardless of religious affiliation. In fact, almost all religions can be drawn on and used in your craft (yes, even Christianity which is used frequently in folk practices).

Can Anyone be a Witch?

Absolutely. While some traditional paths require a kind of initiation ritual, the witchcraft that I discuss here on this blog does not. Anyone can practice magic and can practice witchcraft. As a result, if you choose to identify yourself as a witch then you’re certainly free to do so. Magic is a skill that is learned and anyone can learn it.

Can Men be Witches?

Yes. The term “witch” is an historically gender-neutral term and has been since its inception. While you’re free to identify your practice however you like, witch is the term used for male, female, and gender-non-conforming magic practitioners.

What Type of Witch am I?

You may have seen some witches choose to identify themselves as green witches, storm witches, kitchen witches, etc. These terms are sort of like genres so that you know what kind of magic the witch focuses on primarily. A divination witch, for instance, focuses their practice around divination and so would be a good resource for questions about tarot or pendulum readings. You don’t have to identify yourself at all and you’re free to identify with multiple genres or focuses as well. You can consider yourself a kitchen witch and a plant witch if your craft is interested in both of those things. Don’t get so tied up in labelling your practice - the terms are only meant to be a helpful way of finding information and like-minded witches, but if they’re unhelpful or restrictive then feel free to not bother with them.

What Resources do you Recommend?

I don’t often recommend many books just because there are so many different paths and options. However, some books that I do recommend are: Mrs. B’s Guide to Household Witchery (available online and good for beginners), Southern Cunning’s Folkloric Witchcraft in the American South, anything written by Gemma Gary, anything written by Sarah Anne Lawless, The Silver Bullet by Hurbert Davis, A Deed Without a Name by Lee Morgan, Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits by Emma Wilby, Signs, Cures, and Witchery,The Extremely Large Herbal Grimoire (available online), America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem, Witches, Ghosts, and Signs: Folklore of the Southern Appalachians, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, and A Grimoire for Modern Cunning Folk.

I also recommend watching Molly Roberts on Youtube as well as checking out Ben Lucas’s videos on learning Tarot.

Where do I Start?

I suggest starting with your surroundings, which is what influenced most historical witches. What plants grow in your area? What resources can you find within an hours walk of your door? What is the dirt like where you live? What can you grow? Where are the dead of your town remembered? What is the history of your space? What are local folklores or beliefs? When do the seasons change where you live? What is the weather like? What are you near in terms of land and water?

Begin with local legends and stories, begin with the feel of the land and the seasons, listen listen listen to what they’re all telling you. And then, begin with what you need. If you were drawn to the craft because you need work and money, then don’t waste time learning divination first. Dive in to the spellwork that you need at the moment. You’ll make mistakes. These are learning moments.

How do I Know if a Spell has Worked?

Whenever you perform a spell, you should write down what you did and when. That way, you’re able to track what you notice in the coming days/weeks/months. If I perform a beauty glamour on Saturday morning and realize that Sunday night nearly everyone I pass is complimenting me, that means that I got results, but that maybe they took too long to manifest. So it’s back to the drawing board to see how I can make my spell more specific. Experimenting and seeing what works and what doesn’t is the best way to learn and grow your practice.

What is a Grimoire?

It’s a place for witches to keep important information and spells. Some use a blog, some use a notebook or journal, but really it can look like whatever you need. As long as it’s useful to you then the rest isn’t as important.

Do I Have to Work with Gods/Spirits?

Not necessarily. Witchcraft isn’t a religion so you don’t have to think about, believe in, or work with any gods. And while spirits are called on to help provide information, guidance, and power you don’t necessarily have to do direct spirit work especially just starting out.

What are Witch Sabbats?

Popularized by Wicca, the Wheel of the Year is a list of witch-related holidays that are meant to coincide with the seasons. They fall on equinoxes, solstices, and their mid-way points. They mostly borrow from old Celtic holidays, but today we use them to celebrate particular aspects of the year, the season, and our craft. Depending on where you live the sabbats may not line up with your seasons, but it can be nice to have a day to celebrate with other witches around the world. The sabbats are Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lughnasadh, Mabon, and Samhain.

Can I Curse People?

That is your prerogative. Many people will try to misquote the “rule of three” at you, but the fact is that witchcraft has traditionally and historically been about targeting others for revenge and one’s own gain for a long time. While cursing should probably be a last resort after you take mundane action to address the situation, it is your responsibility to decide if it’s something you want to do or not. You don’t get to police others’ decisions and in return you decide what’s ethical for yourself.

31 notes · View notes

okoyespeare-blog · 7 years ago

Text

"I, Tonya" and fandom

“I thought being famous was going to be fun. I was loved, for a minute. Then I was hated, and I was just a punch line. It was like being abused all over, again. Only this time, it was by you. All you. You’re all my attackers, too.” - Tonya Harding; I, Tonya (2017)

"I, Tonya" was an awesome film. I really found it an interesting meditation on fame, notions of truth and the media. One of the parts that really struck me since seeing the film was when 'Tonya' addresses you, the audience member, looking you right in the eye, and says the quote above. In this case it's about the media catering to public desire to blame and shame, a culture which she accuses us of being complicit in. Even though I was only a kid when the Harding-Kerrigan incident made headlines worldwide, I remember the strong feeling around it here, how much she was hated on by people who weren't even that interested in ice skating.

It's a phenomenon now amplified significantly online, across all major social media platforms, with the immediacy of our contact with celebrities, the endless grind of the 24 hour news cycle. When 'Tonya' looked me in the face and said that I, as a consumer of media, was her attacker too, I couldn't help wondering at my own behaviour. Am I also culpable in this blame and shame culture? Even though I've never preoccupied myself with actively hating on anyone or anything online? Well, sadly, yes. Every time I click on an article with an inflammatory clickbait headline. Every time I read a bit of celeb gossip online, or a shitty daily fail article. I'm feeding into that culture, tacitly supporting it.

Oddly enough, my thoughts were drawn to fandom, especially Martin's comments about *that* ship and its fans. What he said was nothing new. He's denounced the shitty obsessive shipper part of the fandom before, and has more than adequate justification (that whole thing about death threats made against his now ex-partner and family, which I can verify, having witnessed one such threat made on here) for viewing that portion of the fandom with anger and contempt. He's also said that he doesn't see S+J as lovers before, a few times. Yet I'm seeing people get outraged at Martin for these comments, twist his words into something more favourable and palatable to their interests, or blame the journalist for misquoting him. 'Not all fans', I'm seeing people say. How dare he tar us fans all with the same 'crazy fan' brush, when it's apparently *just* a minority who behave like this? How dare he be so ungrateful, to say this about *us*, the fans who've made him famous! (There's a whole diatribe here I could go into about whether he even wants the fame, or his considerable level of fame before the show, but that's beside the point). What does it say, though, when one of the more 'pro-fandom' actors in the cast remarks that he doesn't want to do the show anymore because of *that* shitty portion of the fanbase turning him off? It says that there was enough of a problem present in the fandom as a whole, a culture within that was at best indifferent, and at worst tactily approving of this shitty behaviour.

One thing I've never seen the fandom do is to take a long, hard look at itself, despite criticisms from all quarters, and especially by others on Tumblr, many of whom were ex-fans who'd jumped ship. I've seen my fair share of J*hnlock shippers be like, 'well, I'm not doing the bullying and harassment and making threats, it's X group, or Y group doing it, and they're the 'crazy' ones. I'm just here ficcing or arting my ship quietly minding my own business tbh. I don't condone that behaviour at all, but eh, what can I do?' While I saw a few fans actively speak out against the bullying and doxxing within and outside the fandom towards the actors and tptb, there clearly wasn't enough of a collective effort to stop the more outlandish portions of fandom doing their thing. Even me, a self-confessed lurker. I'd seen a whole lot of shit go down over the years of my lurking, mutuals getting doxxed and ending up in hospital, lists of fic writers labelled pedophiles and rape apologists get circulated around, people being videoed without their consent telling their stories of abuse, and didn't say anything. I can't stand Moftiss myself, and ik they've provided their share of shitty stereotyped, sexist/misogynistic generalisations and derision about fans, as have the actors at various points. These comments warrant scathing criticism, definitely. But they didn't deserve harassment and threats in return, I'm never going to stand for that. Still, I didn't say anything, or do anything. I was too scared to cop the doxxing, to rock the boat and cop shit. Maybe, just maybe I should've said something. Talked with the many others who shared the same concerns. Gathered up a collective to buck against these extremist elements in the fandom. Maybe things would have been different if the parts of the fandom against the bullying and harassment sought to try stamping it out, helping support the people who were targets of it. Making them feel valued and appreciated in the fandom, whether they shipped S+J or not.

With the advent of the #metoo movement, as part of the cultural shift, men are being implored to call out their mates and male colleagues for inappropriate jokes and comments, for any behaviour that could be deemed sexual harassment. That as a collective, all men are responsible for eradicating the culture of misogyny. If we, many of us women, are going to call men to account on that front, we, as participants in fandom, need to consider our role and culpability in the cultivation of the fandom culture we share with others, especially with regard to negative behaviour.

#long post #fandom stuff #i tonya #blame and shame culture

4 notes · View notes

gabriel-gabdiel · 4 years ago

Text

Keit-AI! Tomoyuki x Seiko Chapter 20: Hook, Line, and Sinker

The secret behind the issue between Tomoyuki Yamamoto and Aya Fubuki.

The rest of the chapters of my original story based on a plot from 4chan are available here. Enjoy.

First | Previous | Next

For what it was worth, Tomoyuki "Cherry Boy" Yamamoto found a way to return the favor to (Alternate Universe) Seiko "Amazon Queen" Okamoto for her thoughtful birthday gift to him.

The best birthday gift he ever got. A trailer for a film that didn't exist in his universe. Seen only by him within his reality.

The trailer for Akira Kurosawa's "Ran". The legendary director's (unintentional) version of William Shakespeare's "King Lear".

What he was about to send to Seiko was in a sense his "White Day" gift for her "Valentine's Day" chocolate.

A return gift of gratitude. A downloaded video from YouTube Japan.

"Hey, Cherry Boy. What's this?" she texted him back.

"Just open the file," he texted in return.

She then texted, "Boo. I thought it's a round or two from Pacquiao- Mayweather, but it's just another one of your Kurosawa film trailers!"

Huh. Maybe he should've sent her a Pac-May clip. Maybe later. "I'll just send you video highlights of it or even their future rematch when it happens. Maybe even on your birthday."

"There's gonna a rematch?! Sweet!" she cheered, only to ask, "So what did you send me?"

"Send it to him. To me. The other me," he answered. "I swear to you, Tomoyuki will love it. I know I do."

She watched the whole thing. All one minute and thirteen seconds of it.

"Cherry Boy, you're a genius! This is the best birthday gift for Tomoyuki since, you know, he canceled on our proposed movie date and all."

Ah. Of course.

AU Miku ended up giving AU Tomoyuki the cold shoulder because he liked AU Seiko's present more than hers, so to make it up to the Class Rep, his other self nixed his date with the Amazon Queen.

Another love triangle had formed in another dimension.

At least the other Okamoto had a love triangle to speak of. He was definitely still in the "Friend Zone" (sorry, Miku) with the Amazon Queen in his universe, her proposal for a pity date aside.

The Amazon Queen that didn't love him as much as this other" her did.

"Sorry," he texted back, pushing his disturbing thoughts at the back of his mind. "But you know what they say about love and war."

"Fair enough, but what do I tell Cherry Boy when I send this video to him? He'll have questions for sure!"

Nodding to no one in particular, Yamamoto replied, "Tell him it's the long-lost and extremely rare alternate trailer for Kagemusha starring Katsu Shintaro instead of Nakadai Tatsuya."

***

Keit-AI! Tomoyuki x Seiko

An Anime-Inspired Original Story from 4chan's /a/ Board by Abdiel

Original Idea by Hataki.

The mystery behind Aya will finally be revealed.

Disclaimer: This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

***

Chapter 20: Hook, Line, and Sinker

***

Meanwhile, the Miku Machida in Tomoyuki's universe gave him the opposite of the cold shoulder (A "hot" shoulder? Rubbing shoulders?).

Just like good ol' times, they were again together like white on rice. Talking about Sci-Fi things mixed with cool science facts while walking to class. Again fueling rumors of them being together.

"...Oh, oh, oh! Here's another evidence of the Mandela Effect. Most people remember the Monopoly Man as having no monocle, right? But when you take a look at the box of the board game, he definitely does have a monocle! Spooky, right?" she told him.

Ah, so they were talking about the Mandela Effect again. Misquotes and popular misconceptions mistaken for evidence of parallel worlds and traveling through them.

Except in Tomoyuki's case, the Mandela Effect was all too real.

He patted her head like she was a little kid and smiled at her. "It's very spooky," he said, which made her pout cutely, cross her arms, and turn away from him.

"Don't patronize me!" she said with a harrumph.

Damn, she was so cute when she was annoyed.

Jokingly bullying her was almost worth a taste of the cold shoulder that the (probably jealous) AU Miku was currently giving AU Tomoyuki.

Or maybe he felt like tempting fate for once.

Thankfully, Miku forgot his transgression the next minute, bringing up, "Do you remember how the candy 'KitKat' doesn't have a dash between Kit and Kat? Well, it does! It's actually spelled Kit-Kat"

"Hey, you're right," he said, checking out the nearby snack bar and seeing the Kit-Kat logo having the dash when he remembered otherwise.

She grins. "Amazing, isn't it? I'm telling you, parallel universes exist!"

'You don't have to tell me twice,' he inwardly quipped, taking note that in AU Seiko's universe, it was probably the other way around.

In her universe, KitKat bars probably didn't have dashes and the Monopoly Man most likely didn't have a monocle. Along with other weird things like Michael Jackson, who was brown-skinned, bleaching his skin Caucasian white and having legal issues regarding pedophilia (allegedly).

The old Yamamoto would've been over the moon to have Miku as a best friend, even to the point of fantasizing that they'd somehow end up being more than just friends in the future.

But something changed between them from first year to second year.

That tall, beautiful, athletic, and tomboyish something... or someone... barreled over between them, slinging each of her long arms over their nearest shoulders.

"Hey, Nerds. Still talking about that egghead stuff with the black president guy that's not Obama?"

"It's the Mandela Effect and he's not a president in our universe," reminded Machida. "Here, Mandela died in prison, serving as a symbol of the South African revolution. But so many people wanted him to be president, they all swore he became one. Or maybe it's a memory we had from a different timeline!"

"U-huh. And maybe in a different dimension, Mayweather is a knockout puncher with exciting fights under his belt," the Amazon Queen said, saying the most Seiko thing possible. "I appreciate the man's talent, but boy howdy, am I not looking forward to Mayweather-Pacquiao II."

Tomoyuki then made a mental note to not reveal the actual results of May-Pac to AU Seiko, neglecting to tell her earlier of how initially exciting but ultimately boring the actual fight ended up to be.

The Cherry Boy then averted his gaze from Seiko, the... former object of his affection. The sight of her made his heart ache and long for someone else who was like her but wasn't, making him feel guilty for doing so.

Maybe it was for the best that Okamoto wasn't all that into him after all.

So should he abandon his harebrained scheme to get Seiko and Kazuhito "Yankee" Sugata together, like Megumi Minagata suggested?

Not necessarily.

He'd still do it, but this time expecting a more realistic outcome of either heartbreak or a long-delayed hookup between the childhood sweethearts.

Without unrealistic expectations of the Amazon Queen going for the unlikely third option.

It was the least he could do for the alternate universe counterpart of the girl he loved.

***

Things also went back to normal in Class 2B. Somewhat.

"Hey, New-Half (Trans Woman)," called out Kazuhito (who finally decided to not skip classes) to Seiko.

Okamoto shouted, "WHO ARE YOU CALLING A NEW-HALF!?" followed by a smack on his face. "Stupid Furyou-kun!"

Then the rest of the class began hooting and hollering at them for "acting like a married couple" who could help Japan with its population slump.

All talk of a potential pair-up or even love triangle between the Cherry Boy and the Amazon Queen faded once the heartthrob Sugata finally came back with his usual "married couple" shenanigans with Okamoto.

"As if Cherry Boy ever had a chance with the Amazon Queen while the Yankee is around!" was probably their shared sentiment of the situation.

They all just presumed Yamamoto was friendzoned (as usual), although they were hedging their bets that he'd score a pity date or two with their Iincho (Class Rep) at least.

"Please, you two! Stop fighting! Math Class is about to start," pleaded the mousy Class Rep in her usual adorable, bespectacled way that made Tomoyuki fall for her back in first year.

However, rather than scheme on how to get Machida and Sugata closer together to make Okamoto jealous enough to cross her Rubicon and confront her childhood friend about her long dormant feelings with him, the Cherry Boy started doodling and writing something else at the back of a dog-eared, beat-up notebook.

He couldn't stop thinking about Akira Kurosawa's Ran.

He wanted to write more about it. Research about its connection with King Lear even though, according to AU Seiko, it was a coincidental comparison made by western (foreign) media at best.

For the first time in a long while, he felt inspired to go after his passion and hobbies rather than try to appeal to the interests of others in a bid to "belong" in a clique or a long-term relationship with a girl.

For the longest time, he had been trying too hard to fit in with his peers. Only the closest people in his life know about his passion for writing and movies.

Like the glasses-wearing neighborhood girl he ended up being best friends with. Or, lately, both versions of Seiko Okamoto.

When he was under the mistaken belief that the only way he could improve on himself was to get a girlfriend rather than the other way around, he tended to ingratiate himself to whomsoever he attempted to woo.

In the case of his first crush Yukari Goto, he started taking the late train and gave her a hand whenever her klutziness or ditziness got her into trouble.

In the case of Aya Fubuki, he went to dates with her in all sorts of restaurants even to the point of maxing out his allowance and trying to find a job to supplement his dates, only for her to deny the dates ever took place.

In the case of Mana Otonashi, he really should've figured out he was just her plaything all along when she made her own mother tell him to stop calling her. How embarrassing.

In the case of Miku Machida, he got told hard regarding his clinginess and unrealistic expectations as a "Nice Guy". Even after that, their friendship persisted mostly because he absorbed her otaku knowledge like a sponge until he was able to decipher the "foreign language" she spoke whenever they were around each other.

Finally, in the case of his universe's Seiko Okamoto, he tried using AU Seiko's sports knowledge to better relate with her, only for it to backfire since this was info from a parallel world and not their world.

No one wonder people treated him like a doormat with no true friends to speak of. He really was a try-hard poser, wasn't he?

He made up for his lack of personality by attempting to incorporate the interests and quirks of others so that they'd like him better. Whether he was making friends or wooing girlfriends.

It was only with AU Seiko that he felt he could be himself and showcase the cinemaphile nut and wannabe writer he really was. No other woman made him feel comfortable in his skin like she did.

***

As the Cherry Boy put in the finishing touches to the outline of his new personal passion project (researching about what happened to his universe's Ran and writing his own version of the unfinished work with what little info he'd gotten from AU Seiko so far), he found a letter in his bag.

Curious. Who even gave out letters in this day and age of cellphones, email, and chatrooms?

Although it would've been charming if he and AU Okamoto were communicating through transdimensional mailboxes rather than transdimensional keitai (mobile phones). Just like in the South Korean film "Il Mare" (also known as "Siworae") or its Hollywood remake, "The Lake House".

He opened the envelope and then was greeted with the smell of a long-forgotten flowery scent.

He read its contents. The more he read, the more his heart sank to the pit of his stomach. Probably drowning in stomach acid to boot.

Oh shit. Not this again.

Tomoyuki hastily stuffed the letter in his bag, unwilling to humiliate himself in front of Class 2B by cluelessly reading the letter in front of them.

His traumatic experience with Yukari Goto and her mistaken love text to him that was meant for Kazuhito Sugata was still fresh in his mind. Even after all this time.

Speaking of which, Goto's best friend Aya Fubuki was the one who sent him the letter.

The same type of letters she used to slip into his bag or shoe locker when they were freshmen.

The letters she denied giving to him when he confronted her about the dates she swore they never had.

Yeah, he was still kind of sore about that.

What was going on? What was she trying to do?

Miku noticed him and the letter he hid. She was about to ask him about it, but he gave her a begging look to keep things to herself.

Thankfully, his best friend took the hint and turned her attention back to her notebook full of her own doujinshi (self-published fan comics) ideas.

Had she called attention to the letter so that the likes of Matsuda were to read it to the class, the Cherry Boy would've gotten a repeat of the embarrassment he suffered with Yukari that led to him getting his infamous moniker.

He could just imagine the jaw-jacking his classmates would give him right now.

'Oooh! Is that a love letter? Did Cherry Boy get a love letter from the Class 2C Iincho? MASAKA (IMPOSSIBLE)!'

'Hey, hey! Is our own cute li'l Cherry Boy forming his own harem just like his idol, Sugata?'

'Don't be absurd. That's Fubuki from Class 2C. The same girl who publicly called him out on spreading false rumors of them dating. There's no way she'd date that liar's ass now!'

'What is with him and all the class reps he keeps going after? Does he have an iincho fetish or something? He even tried stalking our dear Seito Kaicho (Student Body President) through harassing phone calls!'

'He's such a desperate loser I bet the letter is telling him to leave Fubuki alone!'

Naturally, the last one to speak would've been Matsuda. Still the asshole as always, but he was an asshole with a point.

He sighed. He should let sleeping dogs lie. Leave the mercurial (and probably bipolar) Aya to her own devices. However, maybe she sent him the "love" letter to apologize for her forgetting about the dates they had.

...Yeah right. As if that would ever happen. She at best tolerated him and as little as a few days ago, she hated his guts.

Still, he was curious as to why Fubuki would send him such a letter. Knowing what he knew about her now (as if it was the first time he'd ever met her), it seemed... out of character for her to do this.

Wouldn't she confront him rather than send him a letter? Then again, she couldn't even muster the courage to send Kazuhito himself a love letter, so how much less him?

But Tomoyuki wasn't Sugata though. She'd have no reason to be embarrassed about him. She made it abundantly clear she never had any feelings for him.

'Oh, and I'm supposed to believe that some desperate jerk I barely interacted with who spread rumors that I'm dating him is telling me that Sugata-kun is dating Miku-chan, his latest girlfriend prospect, out of the kindness of his heart? Reeeally now?' was the sentiment she had when Tomoyuki first told him about the Yankee and the Class 2B Rep.

She trusted him as far as she could throw him. They made up eventually when he took a bullet for her, but they at best had a tenuous "acquaintanceship" that could break at the slightest hint of betrayal.

She didn't trust him. She acted like she barely knew him, despite all their dates that she would not acknowledge ever existed.

In fact, Yamamoto was starting to believe that Aya really didn't date him, making him doubt that the dates he had with her were real.

It almost reminded him of his initial situation with AU Seiko, with her calling and confessing her love for him while the real Seiko (correctly) claimed she herself never called him.

What if they—Tomoyuki and Fubuki—were both right? What if he had dates with an alternate universe version of the Class 2C Iincho while the in-universe Aya got the blowback from their rumored budding relationship?

What if he was dating the AU version of Aya all along?

Hell, he should be writing about this plot twist instead of making a script treatment of Ran, to be honest.

Inwardly, he waved the suggestion off, rationalizing that the parallel worlds thing didn't work that way. His heart skipped a beat at the prospect of dating AU Okamoto in the flesh, though.

He'd love it if he could actually figure out how the AU thing really worked.

Nevertheless, his curiosity got the better of him as he decided to meet up on the indicated time and place on the letter after school.

Appearances aside, this was obviously no love letter situation like with Sugata. It wasn't as if Aya was off to confess her love to him or anything.

***

After class, in a meeting place only Tomoyuki and Aya knew about (the Peninsula Bar where they once had Mongolian Barbecue)...

"...I apologize for lying about our dates to our classmates. I was so embarrassed that they found out that I threw you under the bus. If you would be so kind, would you go out with me again?"

That was just about the last thing Yamamoto expected Fubuki to tell him.

But she really did it. She really told him that. The absolute madwoman.

While bowing in apology, no less.

What was going on? Was she high? Was this what Miku meant by tsundere? An insane girl who had the most extreme mood swings possible? 'Bitches be crazy!'

"Wait, wait, wait. Let me get things straight. You intentionally lied to everyone about our dates and now you're asking for another date? And aren't you after Sugata instead of me?" he asked.

"Sugata already rejected me. That ship has sailed." Aya brushed her hair to the side and looked away from Tomoyuki's gaze before bowing her head and looking up at his face with doe eyes. "A-Are you mad at me?"

Unbelievable. It was like he was talking to another person altogether.

Didn't she cheer him on when it came to wooing Seiko and whatnot? What happened to that Aya? Did she forget or was she testing his resolve somehow?

Maybe that AU Aya theory of his wasn't so far off after all. Or maybe it was more of a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of scenario.

Was this really the same Aya that AU Seiko described as "earnest"?

Tomoyuki paced around, took a deep breath, and exhaled. He'd handle this like an adult.

"Yeah, I'm upset. But I also realize if you're ashamed to even admit that we dated, then maybe you're not all that into me after all. You did me a favor. You helped me stop acting so desperate for love all this time."

Aya tilted her head and furrowed her eyebrows. "W-What do you mean, Yamamoto-kun? Won't you forgive me at all? Can't we make things work out?" she asked, batting her eyelashes at him.

It was his turn to bow back to Fubuki, remembering how she cheered him on, telling him to go big or go home with wooing Seiko Okamoto.

To no longer be so clingy and halfhearted with his pursuit of girl crushes like in the cases of Yukari, herself, Mana, and Miku. To no longer serve as any girl's doormat.

If she were testing him and his resolve, then this was his answer.

"I accept your apology, Fubuki. But I have to apologize myself. I'm in love with someone else."

He had to be completely honest. Like AU Seiko said, Aya was an earnest kind of girl who responded to actions instead of words and empty promises.

***

He didn't know what to expect after "rejecting" Aya's proposal to date again.

A shrug and a pat on the back on the back would be nice.

He didn't really think she'd take it so badly. After all, she survived Sugata's rejection fine.

Also, he knew she didn't really love him all that much and she had a bigger crush on the Yankee than she ever did him.

So why the heck was she crying?

"H-Hey, calm down!" Tomoyuki said, only to flinch when Aya looked at him with fire from her red eyes. Ah, now this was more like the Class 2C Iincho he knew and "loved" (or rather, tolerated).

She didn't heed his request though, covering her face with her hands and sobbing from behind them.

Well, this was definitely a first for Yamamoto.

Usually, he was the one who felt like crying, being dumped repeatedly by all his pretty not-girlfriends (because according to Matsuda, his standards were unrealistically high for a nondescript guy).

"...W-Was it Seiko? Your class rep? The one that you confessed your love to and I recorded?" she sobbed.

That was weird phrasing. "My class rep Miku friendzoned me a long time ago. Also, didn't you play that recording on Seiko's behalf?"

"Oh right. The recording. That's what I meant. Seiko. The Amazon Queen."

She blinked her tears back and did an inquisitive head-tilt on the Cherry Boy.

"You're in love with the Amazon Queen? You don't have a chance. She's joined to the hip with your Yankee classmate!"

"Sh-Shut up," he said, crossing his arms and turning away. His heart not as indignant as he let on.

Speak of the (she-)devil, Tomoyuki turned his head in time to meet the eyes of Seiko, drinking water across the table away from them.

Eh?

She had the "clever disguise" of wearing shades and a baseball cap indoors. She looked more suspicious than if she didn't have the disguise.

The Amazon Queen then choked on her glass of water and turned away, hiding her face with the menu.

...Wait. What?

***

To stop Aya from crying any further, Tomoyuki appeased her by buying her a late lunch (or was it an early dinner?) that afternoon at the restaurant with what extra cash he made from his part-time job at a convenience store.

He then excused himself to go to the bathroom, eyeing Seiko all the while from behind Aya's back.

To his relief, the Amazon Queen took the hint and soon followed after him rather than wait for him to confront her at her table.

She was quick on the uptake.

"...What are you doing here?" he asked at the hallway leading to the doors to the restrooms.

"I should ask you the same question!" she ping-ponged his question back at him.

"...Aya gave me a letter in my bag, telling me to come here and stuff," he said, his eyes darting away at the taller girl. "What about you?"

"Miku-chin gave me a letter addressed to me, telling me to come here."

"Machida told you about this... meeting?" he asked before wincing at the look Seiko gave him over his own weird phrasing.

"No, the letter is from... Aya, apparently. But Miku got it from her."

"That's... weird. Did Machida read it too?"

"I dunno, Cherry Boy. She just gave it to me because it had my name on it."

"What's the letter doing with her?" Tomoyuki asked. "Did Fubuki want Machida to know about the meeting too? What did the letter say?"

"The letter told me to meet y'all here. I couldn't understand the directions, so I just moseyed along and followed you all the way to this restaurant instead."

"So you stalked me?" Tomoyuki teased Seiko, forgetting for a minute who he was talking to. Her voice reminding him of... someone else from another world.

"'AS IF', YOU IDIOT! Don't flatter yourself!"

Forgetting for a minute who she was talking to as well, the Amazon Queen gut-punched the Cherry Boy as though he were Kazuhito Sugata instead.

"Whoops. Sorry. My hand slipped."

The two stared at each other for a minute then laughed.

Afterwards, Tomoyuki ended up with a coughing fit and Seiko had to slap his back several times to help him recover.

"T-Thanks."

"S'alright. But seriously though, why are you on a date with Aya-chin?"

"Wait, when did this turn into a date? She asked me to come here to tell me something!"

"But you're feeding her right now and she just asked you out." She pointed to her ear. "I overheard."

Yamamoto crossed his arms and smirked. "Ha! Finally, I got a witness. Told'ya we dated! See what I have put up with last year? It was her word against mine that we dated!"

"You really dated?" Seiko couldn't help but repeat. "Oh yeah. That's right. You got a horrible rep because Aya-chin told everyone you were spreading bad rumors about her."

"RIGHT? You just saw Fubuki confess to me and you still don't believe it!" he ranted.

Biting her lip, Okamoto looked at him then at Aya from across the table, eating by herself.

"I dunno, Cherry Boy. She must've had a reason for doing this. Otherwise, this is quite unlike her." She appended, "B-But don't misunderstand! I didn't believe you were spreading lies about her either! Why else would I be friends with you? I just think this is all a big misunderstanding."

He'd normally storm off at this point, having people believe Fubuki over him, but this time around he was inclined to agree.

Unless her tsundere inclinations bordered on being clinically bipolar, the Aya who played his confession to Seiko via cellphone voice recorder was not the same Fubuki whom he suspected gave Okamoto and Machida the heads up on their non-date to ruin their perception of him.

Then, to Tomoyuki's surprise, the Amazon Queen suggested, "Y'know what? Why don't you go on a date with her today anyway?"

"WHAT? Are you crazy? I told her I already have my eyes for someone else!"

Yamamoto looked Seiko in the eyes as he said this, which made both of them look away from each other, blushing afterwards.

Seiko cleared her throat. "No, no. It's not a date-date. Just a fake date to see what Aya-chin is up to."

"A-Are you serious?" asked Tomoyuki. He didn't like where this was going.

***

By the time he returned to their table, Aya had the strangest, hugest (smuggest) grin on her face.

Did she know that Seiko was there, watching them? 'What are you planning, Fubuki?' thought Tomoyuki.

He didn't want to keep up a facade just to ruin Seiko's positive impression of one of Machida's friends, but Fubuki ended up cutting him off the pass.

"Hey, hey! After we're done eating, let's go to the arcades like we used to," she told him, and his plan of coming clean ended then and there, the words of protest dying in his throat.

And long story short, they ended up at a nearby arcade, with Okamoto following them close behind.

What was even going on anymore?

'...Eeeeh.'

Under the watchful gaze of Seiko, Tomoyuki ended up doing what he always did in arcades: Play a fighting game and die at the third stage.

"Dammit," Yamamoto said after the CPU King hit another 10-hit combo on his Eddie Gordo from Tekken insert-sequel-number-here.

So much for Eddie working against even experienced players with just button mashing. The computer A.I. couldn't care less.

Same thing happened with an old Street Fighter III: Third Strike arcade cabinet at the back. Got knocked out fighting Sean with Akuma. He then popped a blister on his left middle finger from jiggling the joystick while mashing buttons all the while.

The only fighting game he could probably beat was Karate Do on the Famicom, and that game sucked. Or Yie Ar Kung Fu. Which also sucked.

By the way, those were games in old cartridges that he got as hand- me-downs from his cousins along with an old Family Computer.

He expected Aya to fare worse than him, only for his ego to take an even worse beating than the characters he played in Tekken and Street Fighter.

Aya had a crowd form behind her as she crushed every challenger she faced off against in Tekken with just one quarter.

Well damn. Who knew that the studious Class Rep of Class 2C was an avid gamer?

Meanwhile, on her part, Seiko decided to bide her time with Dance Dance Revolution. Followed by foozball against a grade schooler. Followed by attempting to wreck the mechanical punch pad on the Sonic Blast Man (a game that measured punching power) cabinet.

Huh. He could've sworn he heard that Taito recalled all cabinets of the punching game due to the injuries it caused or something. Or maybe that was just him misremembering/getting false memories care of the Mandela Effect.

Or maybe it was even possible that in AU Seiko's universe, the game was recalled even though in his own universe, it wasn't. 'Who knows?'

A bead of sweat dripped on Tomoyuki's forehead as Okamoto wandered to a nearby billiards hall just beside the arcade, seemingly forgetting herself and why she went to the arcade in the first place.

'S-Seiko-chan...'

Speaking of people forgetting themselves, Aya stopped her winning streak short, handed her character off to some kid in the crowd to let him play, and grabbed hold of Yamamoto's arm.

Tomoyuki gulped, distracted by the smoothness of the 2C Iincho's skin and the softness of her... chest. "Um, welcome back?"

"Hey, hey! Cherry... I mean, Yamamoto-kun!" she corrected herself, her finger circling around the Cherry Boy's chest. "Can you win me a prize at the claw machine? Pretty please?"

"Er... I-I'll try," Yamamoto said, knowing that he'd fail. Still wondering what Aya's "deal" was.

As he predicted, he was terrible at the claw machine game. Unable to pick up one stuffed bunny or even a Doraemon. It'd be cheaper to buy the doll at a gift shop rather than pick it up through crane.

In the background, Aya cheered him on.

He had doubts in regards to the sincerity of her cheering in light of her betrayal of him, but it sure harkened back to their own dates where she'd do the same thing.

So he kept buying quarters. And trying. And failing. But he had a girl cheering him on, so he didn't mind losing so much.

"You can do it, Yamamoto-kun! Just like ol' times!" Aya told him.

'Ol' times...?' he thought.

From there, the Cherry Boy blinked and remembered how one of their first dates had played out like this.

With him attempting and never getting a doll and Aya (currently the Student Council VP but was once the Student Council Treasurer) laughing at him all the while.

"Oh, for the love of Kami-sama! LET ME, CHERRY BOY!" huffed a reddened, cap-wearing, and shades-sporting Seiko before taking the crane controls and picking up the Doraemon doll herself.

"...." Tomoyuki exclaimed. Silently.

The Amazon Queen handed the doll to Aya, only to realize too late what she'd done. "Er..."

Fubuki bowed at Seiko and said, "Thanks for the help, but I want my date to get me a dolly. Not you, Mister."

"...M-Mister!?" said the tall Amazon Queen with a sneer, her hand cocked back as if to slap the Class 2C Iincho.

"Uh, of course! Coming right up, Fubuki!" said Tomoyuki, who inserted another token only to waste it again by losing immediately. "Dammit."

Unable to help herself, the "disguised" Seiko got a hold of Yamamoto's hands and instructed him how to play the crane game.

"Now listen carefully, Cherry Boy. First, pick your target carefully. You've already played enough to get a feel of the claw, right?"

She then touched his hand, the softness of which surprised him, as she told him, "Try maneuvering the prize into a better position. This machine gives you enough time to position the claw, so take your time."

Tomoyuki gulped as the taller girl got too close to him. The smell of shampoo on her hair and the softness of her hands distracting him. Electrifying him.

Making him long for the softness of another her. A more "untouchable" version of her. From more than just far away.

Aya, on her part, put her hands on her waist and tapped her foot at the pair, sighing and clearing her throat loudly.

But they couldn't hear her. At all. As though they were trapped in another world. Their own universe. With no parallel universe versions of themselves to worry about.

"THERE! Right there, Cherry Boy!" said the Amazon Queen with her heaving chest cushioning Yamamoto's back like a chair's backrest. "Take it! Take it now! It's all yours, baby! Take 'em all!"

They soon formed a crowd of their own, with the guys and the girls blushing at the whole exchange.

Thanks to Seiko's teachings, Tomoyuki got to snag a whole bunch of plush toys in one go. He was about to deliver them en masse unto the slot when he noticed all the eyes on him and how suggestive the Amazon Queen looked with the way she helped wriggle his... joystick.

"AAAH!"

"Hey! Watch out! EEEEK! WATCH IT! KEEP YOUR HANDS TO YOURSELF!"

There was a crisp slap followed by profuse apologies.

Yamamoto's hand slipped right into Seiko's chest in true harem protagonist fashion, which led to a reflexive, "BAKA FURYOU-KUN (STUPID YANKEE)!" and predictable violence from the Amazon Queen.

"I'm sorry! It's an accident! AN ACCIDENT! OWIE!"

"Ah! Cherry Boy! Sorry! Did I hit you too hard?"

From there, the whole bunch of the stuff toys fell back into the bin rather than out the claw machine's slot.

All except one: An ugly-cute cartoon snail doll that had its tag snagged by the tip of the claw at the last second.

Tomoyuki's reddened face (due to Seiko's handprint on his cheek) turned pale blue in realization. He screwed up in the middle of showing off!

'...Eh? Wait a minute, why was I showing off anyway? And in front of Fubuki, of all people!'

Speaking of Fubuki, she took the snail doll he'd gotten for her, frowning in a way that made it look like she'd just tasted something sour. Or maybe bittersweet.

"...Thank you," she told him.

"Uh, no problem," he answered, scratching his cheek.

He then caught Aya giving the flustered Amazon Queen a quick glance before she gave him a quick peck on the same cheek he just scratched.

Not knowing what else to do, Tomoyuki turned and faced Seiko, who had a slack-jawed expression on her face.

And in the Cherry Boy's heart of hearts, he found himself hoping that it was jealousy that was written all over Okamoto's face.

Even though earlier, her fit of violence was something she did while remembering her real crush and childhood friend, Kazuhito Sugata.

With the cherubic smile of a fallen angel, Aya then whispered to Tomoyuki, "Come with me. I have one last thing I want to do before we end our date," before holding his hand and leading him out of the arcade... to a chorus of cheers by everyone who witnessed the exchange there.

Stupidly, his mind in a haze like the Cherry Boy that he was after being kissed by a girl, he followed right after Fubuki like a lost dog.

He couldn't stop glancing back at the Amazon Queen though, who had slumped down on the floor with the Doraemon doll in her hand, her cap dropping, revealing her (sexy) disheveled hair.

***

Before Tomoyuki realized what was happening, he found himself in front of a hotel.

A love hotel.

From there, his memory became a blur. A whooshing motion blur from a high-speed roller coaster ride.

He could barely make out any details of what was going on, his body going on autopilot.

This wasn't really happening, wasn't it?

Then they were at the front desk of a hotel.

He then found himself paying for a room on that hotel.

With a girl beside him. A cute girl. A beautiful vision of... beauty with hair as long as the day and black as the night. And legs that went on forever.

Granted, she was a girl with an obnoxious personality (or set of personalities), but she was still pretty. And a girl.

What was he talking about again?

Soon, they ended up on an elevator. Then they went to their room with the number indicated on the room keys.

Was this some sort of elaborate prank by Matsuda again? Damn, that bigheaded jock just wouldn't leave him alone, would he?

Wow, the room looked nice. He'd been in hotel rooms before, but only when he and his parents ended up vacationing on some beach resort or had to take short flights to Hokkaido.

Besides, those were airport or resort hotels. Not love hotels.

Did he mention he was staying in a hotel room with a pretty girl? That was a big "first" for him.

After being turned down flat by several girls, he was now about to... Oh baby.

He gulped, his throat suddenly feeling quite dry.

Realizing the implications of the situation, he sat down on the bed and thought things through.

Could it be? Was he finally about to graduate from being a Cherry Boy to a real man?

Wait, why was he with a pretty girl in a hotel room anyway? That was quite unlike him, the Virgin King of Class 2B.

Tomoyuki Yamamoto ending up in a love hotel sounded like a setup to a joke just short of a punch line.

Oh right, he was on a date with Aya. But why though? Why would any girl date him?

Hey, he wasn't that bad with girls. Sure, in his first year alone, he got rejected by not one, not two, not three, but four girls. All of whom belonged in the so-called Sugata Harem in one way or another.

He was a beggar who was a chooser, after all.

But he improved in the end, didn't he? He made friends with Miku Machida, made amends with both Aya Fubuki and Yukari Goto, and even Student Body President Mana Otonashi had started talking to him again.

He wasn't as awkward around women as he was last year. He graduated from the "Nice Guy" mode of thinking with the help of his best friend Miku.

So it was perfectly fine for him to end up in bed with a girl who originally rejected him, right?

He regrouped. He improved. He evolved. So he... deserved this. Right?

Hell, he even had the audacity to try and woo Sugata's childhood friend and the girl whom he was closest with in his harem, Seiko Okamoto.

He wanted the Amazon Queen so bad that, by fate, serendipity, or coincidence, he ended up with the phone number of her AU self.

That was how he was able to learn all about her. Warts and all. From another her from another universe.

Wait.

What the hell was he doing with Aya Fubuki if he was in love with Seiko Okamoto?

"...."

Oh no. Oh nooo. Oh nononono. Oh Kami-sama, what did he just do? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

His hands gripping his hair almost to the point of pulling them out by their roots, Tomoyuki paced around the nice hotel room. That he paid for.

What kind of a thirsty pervert was he?!

He then remembered the last thing Aya told him before he had his epiphany.

"You stay right there. I'm just going to take a shower."

'AAAAAAHHHHH!' he screamed internally, finally noticing the sound of the running water inside the hotel bathroom.

He could've stopped this at any time. He could've said no. But he didn't, and he'd gone past the threshold of refusal.

The point of no return, perhaps?

Wait, he could leave a note and say he had something to do. Uh, like his part-time job or something.

Maybe flaking out on her wasn't the best-laid plans (of mice and men), but... but... he had no other choice!

Also, why was she suddenly enamored over him after all these months she hated him enough to lie about them dating? Was this how tsundere acted? Seemed kind of psychotic to him!

The worst part was that, even if nothing happened to them in the hotel, the fact that he went in a hotel in the first place with her would probably be enough to ruin his chances with Seiko forever!

He was just about to write his note when he heard knocking on the door. Did Aya order room service? He had no money left for that!

Anyway, fingers crossed, he hoped against hope that Okamoto would believe him when he said that he followed Aya by accident into a love hotel and he had no intention of sleeping with her. Kinda.

And so understandably, he fell to the floor butt-first in surprise when he saw that it was Seiko who was on the other side of the door. Like an actor from Vaudeville doing a slapstick standup (or sit-down) routine.

"I-It's not what it looks like. I can explain..." he started, feeling like an unfaithful husband caught red-handed in a hotel room with his mistress by his wife. Even though he had no reason to think that way.

To his surprise, an unusually quiet Okamoto asked him, "So did you two do it already? Did she pop your cherry, Cherry Boy?"

Well now. Nice to see she was blunt like usual.

She then slapped her forehead and mumbled what sounded like curses to herself before apologizing and saying, "Look, it's none of my business. I don't even know what I'm doing here. I'm sorry for bothering you two lovebirds. I'm also sorry for doubting you when you said that you and Aya-chin used to date. Goes to show what I know, right?"

The contrite Amazon Queen bowed at Tomoyuki and started to leave when, by instinct, the Cherry Boy grabbed hold of her arm and said, "Wait. Don't leave. I'm... I'm actually glad you came."

To his surprise, that actually worked. Seiko stayed.

She walked back to the doorway as he noticed for the first time her cap that hid her head full of hair that was usually tied in a ponytail.

She looked positively tomboyish. Heart-achingly so.

"I... I just happened to follow Fubuki back to this hotel," was the explanation he came up with in short notice.

Goddamn, that sounded so stupid. Even though it was true.

He also wanted to say he thought it was a prank, but that sounded even more like a lie than what he just said, even though it was also true.

Why was he being so stupid anyway? It was because he was thinking with his dick! That was why! He followed a girl to a hotel room without question like the naive virgin that he was.

"U-huh. Completely by accident, huh?" Seiko couldn't help but smirk.

"I don't know what I was thinking!" Or so he said, although he knew exactly what he was thinking, and so did Okamoto. "But I haven't slept with Fubuki. At all. Nor do I have any intention to do so."

"Well, why not? This is your big chance, Cherry Boy," Seiko brought up his nickname for emphasis.

"B-Because, like I told her, I'm already in love with someone," he said, his eyes never leaving hers. Unafraid of the implications behind his words.

"So you went to a hotel room with her and paid for it?" was the retort that he waited for Seiko to shoot back at him, but she never said it.

Instead, she stared back him and nodded. "You'd break Miku-chin's heart if you went through with this."

Ugh. Not this again. "No, I'm not in love with Machida! I'm in love with...!"

He then slammed the door in front of the Amazon Queen's face by reflex when he heard the bathroom door open.

AHHH! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

And out came Aya, her skin glowing, her long hair sopping wet, her naked body wrapped in nothing but a towel. A rather short towel, at that.

He ended up with his back against the door, his eyes staring at everything else but Fubuki.

He had never seen a cleaner hotel full of fresh sheets, nicely decorated walls, a flat-screen television set, a refrigerator full of overpriced drinks, and a nice view of the city.

The bed cushion was soft, the pillows were pure stuffing as well, and even the nearby lamp was nice. It... tied up the whole room.

Nothing too fancy, but not bad. It was worth whatever it was that he paid for it. Maybe.

"I'm done with my shower," Fubuki stated the obvious, cat-smiling and batting her half-lidded eyes at the Cherry Boy, her normal personality pretty much doing a one-eighty.

"W-We shouldn't do this," Tomoyuki said, pulling at his collar.

"Do what?" teased the coy Aya, which seemed rather unbecoming of the normally straight-laced Class Rep of Class 2C. "Don't get cold feet on me right now, Yamamoto-kun."

"I-I told you, I'm already in love with someone else!"

"Which is why you followed me all the way to a love hotel and paid for it?" came the retort Yamamoto was waiting for all this time. Fubuki then started playing with her towel. "Maybe I can change your mind...?"

"NOOOOO!"

Not only Yamamoto, but Okamoto screamed that word.

As Aya was about to take off her towel, Tomoyuki attempted to grab it with the intention of putting it back on her.

The door behind him opened, and out (or rather, in) stumbled the Amazon Queen. Right onto the Cherry Boy. Who ended up stumbling himself and accidentally ripping the towel off of Aya's body.

Then, to the chagrin of the pair, they ended up falling on the edge of the bed, making a mess of it, the pillows and bed sheet flying and ending up on the floor along with them.

"EEEEK!" screeched Seiko, grabbing hold of the damp towel in order to cover Tomoyuki's eyes with it. "Don't look, you pervert!" was what the tomboy said even though Aya was the one volunteering to take it off.

"...L-Look, I'm sorry if I led you on! I'm sorry if I came here without thinking! But I mean it when I say I'm in love with someone else!" cried Yamamoto while Okamoto kept pulling the towel over his face and cranking his neck at an odd angle. "OW! Stop that, Amazon Queen!"

However, Seiko suddenly stopped moving, which resulted in the towel slipping from the Cherry Boy's eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, but his curiosity got the better of him, leading him to take a peek.

There stood Aya in all her naked glory. Or she would've had she not been wearing spats (spandex shorts) to cover up her nether regions. She was still topless though.

And yet something seemed missing from this picture. Fubuki's chest was as flat as a board.

Well, that wasn't unusual. Many Japanese girls were flat as boards themselves. Maybe Fubuki wore padded bras?

But then Tomoyuki's eyes went south of the border and saw something else of note.

A noticeable bulge on Aya's spandex shorts.

What?

No. No way.

Maybe her... (ahem) hair down there was unusually thick. Like an untrimmed hedge. Or even a forest. So that would explain the bump or bulge. Right?

'I mean, it can't possibly be... Nah. Of course not.'

Yamamoto then realized that Seiko was looking at the same thing as he was when he glanced back at her.

He saw eyes of wonder, confusion, and terror. She then asked the Cherry Boy, "Is that a bulge in her...?"

And then Aya began laughing. Or rather, cackling. Like an evil overlord about to go on a monologue.

"I would've preferred that you end up in a compromising position with me, but I guess this will have to do, Yamamoto-kun."

"...W-What?" stuttered Yamamoto, not knowing what was going on.

Thusly the two remained stock-still on the bed as the topless, flat- chested, and... spandex-bulging Fubuki retrieved her cellphone from her purse.

That proved to be a mistake.

And so Aya ended up with a digital photo of a disheveled Seiko sitting atop a damp-faced Tomoyuki beside a messy hotel bed that she took with her cellphone camera.

"A-Aya-chin, w-what's going on?" asked the Amazon Queen in a shaky voice.

"Oh, you haven't figured it out yet?" Aya took off her damp wig, revealing the short dry hair underneath it. "I'm not Aya. I'm her brother, Fubuki Akira."

***

Both Seiko and Tomoyuki stayed in the hotel lobby for a bit, staring blankly into the distance, before they both bid their farewells to each other.

Seiko was the first to leave. Tomoyuki told her to go ahead because needed another minute. Or hour.

He called in sick at his part-time work. He knew he couldn't make it there on time. Nor did he feel like working.

After buying a drink and snack from a vending machine, he went back to the empty hotel room (since it was already paid for) to gather his thoughts. Aya... no, Akira... was long gone by then.

Damn. Wasn't that something?

That was the last thing he expected her... him... to say. It seemed like something out of a movie.

Like Dustin Hoffman's character in "Tootsie". Or Ming-Na Wen's character in "Mulan". Or Jaye Davidson's character in "The Crying Game". Or Hillary Swank's character in "Boys Don't Cry".

Hell, that revelation in the end was very Tootsie-ish in its execution.

On that note, he really felt like crying right then and there.

Akira Fubuki, the younger brother of Aya that, Yamamoto realized, was about the same height and build as her, had admitted to "catfishing" the Cherry Boy when he was in first year high school.

Akira didn't like how, as he put it, Tomoyuki was "stalking" and "bothering" his big sister, so he pulled a prank on him to teach him a lesson.

Which, in retrospect, made a lot of sense.

The rumors. The anger Aya had when Yamamoto kept insisting that they had dated and she was lying about them not dating. The way Aya's personality was completely different from the "Aya" he dated.

Even the fact that Miku received the letter addressed to Seiko could also be explained away by Akira mistaking Seiko for Miku after overhearing the name from his sister.

Everything now had a... not-so-simple explanation. But an explanation nonetheless.

To reiterate, Akira Fubuki pretended to be his sister Aya in order to "catfish" Tomoyuki Yamamoto.

Tomoyuki kept repeating that statement inwardly but he still couldn't wrap his mind around it. Seriously, what the hell?

The funny thing was that both the girl Fubuki and Tomoyuki ended up telling the truth after all.

'So let me get things straight,' thought the Cherry Boy while staring at the TV but not really watching the game show that was on.

Akira specifically put on his sister's clothes to impersonate her and go onto dates with Tomoyuki in her stead. This led to the misunderstanding later on that led to a falling out between Yamamoto and the Elder Fubuki.

Or maybe it wasn't a falling out, because technically, Tomoyuki never really met the real Aya until later on. He'd been dating her brother instead under false pretenses.

Akira also took a photo of him and the Amazon Queen in a rather compromising position in order to... what? Make them, or rather make Tomoyuki, suffer further by having blackmail material on him and the Seiko?

Man, Akira really must hate him go through all that trouble to catfish Yamamoto.

...Right?

Granted, his dedication to pranks aside, it was still embarrassing for Akira to go into drag and pretend to be a girl just to embarrass the Cherry Boy with his big reveal in the hotel.

They must've gone through so many dates. They were so many, in fact, that Yamamoto lost count. He had enough dates with Aya (actually Akira) to presume that they were now boyfriend and girlfriend.

But why did he do it? What the hell did the Cherry Boy do to deserve Akira's wrath and his methodical revenge plot in the first place?

Now that was the million-yen question.

The Friend Zone King couldn't quite buy Akira's excuse that his crossdressing was all for the sake of protecting his sister from him.

Why didn't Akira just allow Aya to reject Tomoyuki outright? Why go through all this trouble?

Come to think of it, didn't Akira already get what he wanted out of Yamamoto last year? The crossdresser ended up making his sister hate the Cherry Boy's guts by impersonating her and going on false dates with him.

What prompted the male Fubuki to bother Tomoyuki again after all this time?

And then it hit the Yamamoto. Of course.

Tomoyuki recently made up with Aya (sort of) when he prevented her from making that ill-timed love confession to Kazuhito Sugata.

Her jealous li'l brother with a siscon (Sister Complex) must've arranged this little revelation at the hotel to destroy the mended fences between Yamamoto and the female Fubuki.

But that backfired and Akira ended up taking the blackmail photograph of Yamamoto and Okamoto as a consolation prize.

Regardless, the twerp got him. He got him hook, line, and sinker.

***

Although Tomoyuki didn't feel like going back to school that Friday, he still went.

Might as well. He wasn't going to solve this mystery staring slack- jawed at his room's ceiling, feeling sorry for himself.

Seiko herself couldn't even look him in the eye that morning, but he didn't let the fact hurt his feelings or anything. He completely understood.

That night they had at the hotel was awkward for everyone involved.

The long weekend that would've let him sort his thoughts and feelings out aside, he had several important things to do that day.

Like apologize to Akira's sister, Aya.

'First thing's first.' He went straight to the entrance of Class-2C, waited for (the real) Aya Fubuki (and her "sidekick" Yukari Goto) to arrive, and bowed down to Aya in apology.

Oh boy, did he get the wrong impression of her. She really wasn't at fault at all for the dating rumors spread about him and her.

Neither was Tomoyuki, but at least now he knew the truth. They were both right about the situation in certain points of view.

The ever-cynical Aya pulled Tomoyuki aside and asked, "Did something happen? What's up with you?"

"I just wanted to apologize," Tomoyuki said, shrugging and avoiding her gaze. "I know I've been doing that a lot lately so it might sound shallow coming from me, but... I really am sorry."

Fubuki then crossed her arms and prodded, "...And?"

Yamamoto cleared his throat. "I was wondering if you know the classroom number of your brother, Akira."

The Class 2C Rep held herself, her arms folded tightly around her chest and wrinkled her nose at the Cherry Boy. "Why?"

"I just want to talk to him, okay?" he said, not knowing (or willing) to broach the subject of catfishing and crossdressing with Akira's big sister.

"But you've never even met..." Aya's eyes widened. "Oh no."

Shit. Did she realize the truth? Did Yamamoto let the cat out of the bag? Would Akira in turn send that compromising photo of him and Seiko to the whole school? Or to Sugata?

Fubuki then unfolded her arms, sighed, and said, "Look, I'll talk to my li'l bro. If he threatened you in any way after seeing that we've mended fences, then I have to apologize on his behalf. He's very protective of me. Please understand."

"I-It's nothing like that, I just want to talk to him!" Tomoyuki protested with a sigh (of relief) of his own before a little birdie in the form of Yukari blabbed, "Well, if that's the case, then Akira-kun belongs to Section 1A."

"...YUKARI-CHAN!" screeched Aya before pulling at the ditzy blonde's twin tails hard.

"OWIE! I'm sowie, Aya-chan!" cried the ditz, reasoning, "But Cherry-kun only wanted to talk to your bro! What's the harm in that?"

"Class 1A, huh?" said the Cherry Boy, scratching his chin. "Right. I guess I'll go talk to him then. Thanks, Goto!"

"Waaait, what for? What did he say to you?" insisted Aya, who began to look more like the Aya of old with her frown and glare.

Tomoyuki raised his arms in surrender and backpedaled. "Nothing bad! I promise! I just want to clear the air with Fubuki Akira! It's not like we're going to end up in a fist fight or something...!'

Serendipitously, Yamamoto ended up literally bumping into his classmate, the Judo Club President and one of the Four Kings of Class 2B, Kanemoto.

Yep. Matsuda's friend Kanemoto. Or Matsuda #2. Or the bishonen (pretty boy) version of Matsuda. That Kanemoto.

"...Fubuki Akira? You're looking for Fubuki Akira? Hahaha! Cherry Boy, are you off to have a rematch with him?" Kanemoto asked, overhearing their conversation.

Yamamoto would've just cowered away from one of his regular bullies had he not taken a double-take at what the Judo Club President said. "Uh, rematch? W-What are you talking about Kanemoto?"

The sneering jock nudged Yamamoto's side. "Aw, come on. Don't be coy. You two got in a slap fight over me back in junior high. You wanted first dibs over yours truly and Fubuki Akira was your love rival."

Tomoyuki stuttered, "W-What the heck are you...?" before he felt a chill in his spine.

"Yamamoto-kun! You're going to have a fist fight over my li'l brother!?"

"AH! Aya-chan! I mean, Fubuki! Of course, I'm not! Don't believe Kanemoto's lies...!" so he said, but a feeling of déjà vu hit him.

And so the puzzle pieces in his mind began to fit. He remembered who Akira was.

This wasn't the first time they met, and he wasn't referring to their fake dates.

***

By some miracle, Tomoyuki Yamamoto got away from Akira Fubuki's protective sister in one piece.

Yamamoto guessed that his wimpy demeanor in the face of Kanemoto's "outlandish" accusations let him off the hook.

For the first time, Aya gave Tomoyuki the benefit of the doubt. She probably reasoned, "Why would the bullied Cherry Boy ever start a fist fight with my li'l bro?"

Ironically, the one time she trusted him was the one time she shouldn't have.

Kanemoto was right. Yamamoto did fight the younger Fubuki brother. And it was over the infamous jock.

No, not because they wanted to win Kanemoto's heart (or at least, as far as Yamamoto was concerned, that wasn't the case).

This stain in Tomoyuki's past was part of the reason why he believed that he completely deserved most of the bullying done to him all this time.

***

To Be Continued...

It's a trap! The trap arc is almost over with. What else is in store for Yamamoto and his Non-Harem? Stay "tuned"!

Farewell, Abdiel

#catfishing #trap #it's a trap #finds a way #keit-ai #keit愛 #tomoyuki x seiko

0 notes

socialcoldstreams · 5 years ago

Text

Climate communications: Social media has gone insane over fires in the Amazon area of Brazil, with most posts being wrong

Social media has gone insane about fires in the Amazon region of Brazil (60% of the Amazon is in Brazil, 40% outside).

A post shared into my social media few days ago with comments about how the Amazon is being destroyed by record breaking wildfire and (cue conspiracy theory) the news media is not even covering the story!

This looks a lot like an IRA (Russian) inspired bot twitter storm to create social havoc – the photo is not even from 2019:

Social media sourcing of nonsense then turns into Youtube videos:

This next item shows how easy it is to fool 16 year old children into a state of fear, turning them into activists – based entirely on false social media memes and pseudo-news reports:

Clearly, there has been media coverage. The burning forest photo is from years ago, not 2019. The fires in Brazil have nothing to do with billionaires. The amount burning now, per NASA, is average.

Yet this social media meme has now turned into an international incident.

And lo, we are running out of oxygen too! Take a look at these, both of which have been shared hundreds of thousands of times – yet are completely wrong:

The first photo, above, is of a different fire, taken in 2013, and is not even in the Amazon rain forest. This item was posted by an Italian pro soccer player. The second photo, above, was taken by a photographer who died in 2003, and was posted by the President of France.

Nearly all social media posts are wrong – typically misquoting facts, using fire photos taken years ago, and falsely alluding to conspiracy theories (such as no media coverage) with silly memes that the fires are so bad, they are visible from space (this is very common).

Propagandists have distorted this further by linking the fires to climate change (nearly all of the fires were started by farmers, clearing land, some – possibly many – of which are in previously cleared land, and there is no drought in 2017-2019). Pseudo news service CNN runs with histrionics (also known as yellow journalism) linking the fires to climate change (which is not at all true). (The media no longer uses the term “climate change” – now they use “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” – this will be another post here soon!)

Other social media posts linked the fires to the consumption of meat. Brazil produces much beef, and 60% of cleared forecast, as of 2011, was estimated to be used for cattle, but the land is also used to grow sugar cane for producing ethanol fuel and palm-oil. Much of the area that is burning is not forest but previously cleared land.

Per NASA, the fire situation in the Amazon is average and typical for this time of the year (see below).

The New York Times sets the record straight.

France24 notes that most celebrity twits about the Amazon fires are just wrong.

Amazon fires won’t deplete the earth’s oxygen

Mother Jones says Stop sharing those viral photos of the Amazon burning

Forbes: Why everything they say about the Amazon … is wrong

AccuWeather: 5 things the media won’t tell you

Forbes: Since 2003, fires globally have declined by 25%.

NASA says the fire situation in the Amazon is average based on a 15 year long satellite observation record.

Here is what NASA says:

The BBC reports that fires have decreased dramatically – this year – compared to 2003-2010. Beginning in 2011, the area burned dropped dramatically and continued at mostly much lower levels until 2019. 2018 was the lowest its been since 2003 when they started measuring the Amazon fires.

Fires are typically viewed as bad and it may be bad that the Amazon experiences many fires, every year, and that forest is cleared by farmers and ranchers by burning. But the social media descriptions – and breathless media reports – that its record breaking are distorting the truth as at this time.

Reports of “record breaking” using an index that only goes to 2013 is a form of cherry picking propaganda. Comparing 2018 (the lowest year since 2003) to 2019, the increase is made to look unusual.

By leaving out this critical context, a hell of lot of people and pseudo news media are looking like idiots for promulgating a false panic.

International politicians have begun calling for action based upon these false reports.

Social media is a bonfire of idiocy and will do more harm to the world than fires in Brazil.

Update October 2, 2019

The number of fires fell by 35% in September versus August, and September is down 20% versus September 2018. For the year, January – September, the number of fires burned remains 43% above the prior year – but from the chart above, 2018 was the lowest number of fires since 2003. There has not been a report on the total acreage burned.

Climate communications: Social media has gone insane over fires in the Amazon area of Brazil, with most posts being wrong was originally published on SocialPanic

0 notes

mittsartistrydesign · 7 years ago

Text

ANIME?? OwO ;;

Anime. When you read that, most of you think of a specific art style; large sparkly eyes, crazy hairstyles, disproportionate bodies, and over exaggerated expressions. If you're a parent, you most likely recognize Poke'mon, Dragonball Z, or Sailor Moon as anime. If you're like me, and grew up in the glory days of Toonami, you have a much wider understanding of the variety of Japanese animations. You may also think of the many, many genres within said animations, some of which are not family friendly at all. You may have thought of the term "weeabo" or "otaku" to describe the fans of it. Though used excitedly by (typically) young fans to identify themselves, these terms are most often used as derogatory labels by older generations and those who do not watch anime. It's possible you've thought of the meme of Hayao Miyazaki, a renowned Japanese animator, screenwriter, and director, misquoted as saying, "Anime was a mistake." I bring up anime, mistake or not, in today's blog because of its influence over the art styles of many artists who were raised in the 90s and early 2000s. This is not going to be a history lesson, or a deep dive into anime culture in America. There are plenty of those around that I'm sure are easily found. This is just a look at my own experience being an artist and, dare I say it, a weeabo. As a kid, I didn't really have a concept of what was "good" art or "acceptable" art. I only knew what I liked and didn't like. I liked shows such as Digmon, DBZ, Tenchi Muyo, and Inuyasha, so I wanted to mimic the art styles in my drawings. I wanted my art to fit into the world that was presented before me on the TV screen. From there, I went on to buy manga (comic books written and illustrated by Japanese artists), play video games brought over from Japan, and dive deeper and deeper into this subculture. I made friends with other people who watched and read the same things I did; most, if not all, of them also were artists. You could tell who we were in Junior High because we always had our sketchbooks with us, drawing comic strips, original characters, or fanart of our favorite shows. Looking back, I can see how people would consider this "cringey." We often went beyond copying art styles, and adopted the over the top reactions characters had in the shows we loved. The groups that formed were usually comprised of kids that felt socially awkward, and flourished in a group where being weird was apart of the requirement. It was okay to be loud and goofy in these groups. We bonded over characters and would gift each each other with art. My room as a young teen was covered in mine and my friends' art. It was an art gallery of our own design, regardless of how good or bad it was. But, the older I got, the more I noticed how anime was viewed both online and in the general culture. Outside of my specific groups, the art style was often criticized, and generally not considered "true art." My art teacher in high school discouraged my anime style tendencies, pushing for realism. This became even more true when I went to college for Studio Art. Anything resembling the shows I loved as kid was disregarded as not serious, or outright mocked. I learned quickly to strive for realism in all my assignments, though in my personal sketchbooks, I was less strict. Even now, at 27, it's easy to see how anime has influenced my art. I don't think that's bad. I don't think it's good. I think it's just a fact. There are many American artists i know who have moved away from their anime roots to develop either more realistic styles, or different styles entirely. Others, I see leaning into the style of anime, becoming better and better at it, developing their own styles within that genre. There's no wrong way to grow from that starting place. So long as you grow. Whether that's to a new style, or to a deeper understanding of the current style, it's still growth. In closing, let artists do art in whatever style they want. There's enough people in this world that if you don't like a style, you can find someone else to follow. And go easy on yourself too. So what if your style looks like Sailor Moon? That show's awesome, super popular, and about women empowerment. Enjoy yourself! Draw what you like, how you like! In name of the moon, I will encourage you!!!

-RGM

#anime #mitts artistry and design #blog #anime blog #art #art blog

0 notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years ago

Text

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT STARTUPS

They don't have to work hard in two dimensions. In my childhood it was still dominant. I wrote this for Forbes, who asked me to write something balanced. Just as startups rightly pay AWS a premium over the cost of running their own servers so they can focus on growth, many of the big companies of the 20th century meant most people who weren't already in it.1 That would definitely happen if programmers started to use handhelds as development machines—if handhelds displaced laptops the way laptops displaced desktops. What was really happening was de-oligopolization. Needless to say, Frederick's of Hollywood got the most traffic. Imagine how much time you could save the world's engineers if they could do searches online.2 With Robert this quality is wired-in.3 Why didn't Henry Ford realize that networks of cooperating companies, you have a big pool of potential users in the other companies we've funded, and the difference is embodied in the name.

This is the type of abuse we may be able to solve part of the indictment. When I was a kid I thought they helped. It's a cliche to call World War II, as Michael Lind writes, the major sectors of the economy were either organized as government-backed cartels or dominated by a few oligopolistic corporations. The form of fragmentation, like the idea that professors should do research as well as Newton, for their time, at least at first. But in practice it's as if RIM didn't exist. Companies that use patents on startups are attacking innovation at the root. They're like someone looking at a newborn baby and concluding there's no way anything so short and written in such an informal style could have anything useful to say about such and such market share. An essay is something else. It's like telling the truth, but why he's writing about this subject at all.4 VCs want to blow you up, in one sense of the phrase or the other. One of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. US, seems to have been two ways of thinking about programming.5

In the case of contemporary authors.6 A few hours before the Yahoo acquisition was announced in June 1998, we consumed what at the time. They just wanted to keep people from getting spammed. I'd prefer it. They're a product of unusual circumstances.7 One possible exception might be things that have deliberately had all the variation sucked out of them, and above all, it helps them be decisive. Our greatest PR coup was a two-part one. But how had I come to believe in this idea in the first place.8 But as with wealth there may be a valid or at least inevitable form, but it's not the best way to get growth started.9

Its graduates didn't expect to do the sort of person who gets demoralized easily. By the end of Y Combinator before they hired their first employee. Transaction processing seemed to them what e-commerce partnerships, we were paying the piper. He's not just generally correct, but also to index and even edit them.10 That would be a pain to fund with grants and donations. Fundamentally an essay is a train of thought—but social and economic history, not political history. So if doing good for people gives you a sense of mission that makes you harder to kill, that alone more than compensates for whatever you lose by not choosing a more selfish project. It is enormously fun to be able to come up with surprising new ideas. He thought for a second, and said ok.

The market was pioneered by upstarts like Apple. Why didn't Henry Ford realize that networks of cooperating companies, you have to sound intellectual.11 But schools change slower than scholarship. Why do we find it funny when a character, even one we like, and worry only about the ones we don't.12 Whether cause or effect, this spirit pervaded early universities. Their revenues aren't as high as they could which turned out to be valuable for hardware startups. At the bottom of the heap are the trade press, who make most of their money from advertising and would give the magazines away for free if advertisers would let them. All startups are mostly schleps.13 If you want cohesion now, you'd have to induce it deliberately. Then the ones that won't make such a pledge will be very conspicuous. It's even the answer to questions that seem unrelated, like how to convince investors to give you money.

I think the reason Google embraced Don't be evil has been good for Google.14 Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. Something else was waiting for him, something that looked a lot like the army. In the past when I bought things from Apple it was an unalloyed pleasure. If programmers used some other device for mobile web access, they'd start to develop apps for that instead. Microsoft does to users, all the news was bad. But if ephemeralization is one of them: a list of heroes. Anyone can adopt Don't be evil so eagerly was not so much to impress the outside world as to inoculate themselves against arrogance. They felt a two-part one.

So what's interesting?15 2 T1s 3 Mb/sec coming into our offices.16 She writes so well you don't even notice her. In the UK, where taxes were even higher than in the US, its effects lasted longer. Those are like experiments that get inconclusive results.17 Palm and RIM haven't a hope. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were.

Notes

The solution for this point for me was the fall of 2008 the terms they were saying scaramara instead of just Jews any more than investors. There is a convertible note with no business experience to start, e. Bullshit, Princeton University Press, 1996. The Harmless People and The CRM114 Discriminator.

Options have largely been replaced with restricted stock, the laser, it's easy to write great software in Lisp. Realizing that much better than their lifetime value, don't even try. Garry Tan pointed out an interesting sort of investor quality. And not others, and partly because so many people mistakenly think it was considered the most powerful minister of the founders lots of people mad, essentially by macroexpanding them.

I learned from this that most people realize, because unions will exert political pressure to protect one's children seems weaker, judging from things people have told us that we don't use code written while you were.

How much more analytical style of thinking. In fact, for example I've deliberately avoided saying whether the 25 people have responded to this day, thirty years later Jim Ryun ran a 3 year old, a day job. The word boss is derived from the other hand, he tried to attack the A P supermarket chain because it was more because they couldn't afford a monitor.

I've twice come close to 18% of GDP, which amounts to the hour Google was founded, wouldn't offer to invest the next Apple, maybe 50% to 100% more, and for filters it's textual. Why do you use in representing physical things. I realize starting a startup or going to lie to adults.

The solution for this at YC I find hardest to get all the more subtle ways in which case immediate problem solved, or pigs, to pretend that the usual misquotation is closer to the table. Selina Tobaccowala stopped to say, but no more willing to endure the stress of a lumbar disc herniations, but it's not lots of back and forth. For example, if you pack investor meetings as closely as you get older or otherwise lose their energy, they are so intellectually dishonest in that respect. For example, to the prevalence of systems of seniority.

They're common to all cultures with long traditions of living in a world with antibiotics or air travel or an acquisition for more than clumsy efforts to protect widows and orphans from crooked investment schemes; people with a toothbrush.

Corollary: Avoid becoming an administrator, or at least 10 minutes more. I'm not saying it's impossible to write every component yourself, if you needed in present-day trash. No one wants to invest the next year or two, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

Now the misunderstood artist is not a problem that I knew, there were some good proposals too. There is of course, Feynman and Diogenes were from adjacent traditions, but there are those that made them register. For the price of an investor is more important to users, at one point they worried Lotus was losing its startup edge and turning into a de facto consulting firm. Few non-broken form, that alone could in principle is that intelligence doesn't matter in startups.

I was surprised to find may be common in the old one was drilling for oil, over fairly low heat, till onions are glassy.

Steven Hauser.

Though you should start if you repair a machine that's broken because a unless your initial investors agreed in advance that you can eliminate, do it now. Roger Bannister is famous as the face of it. It derives from the formula. At some point, when they say.

But those too are acceptable or at least notice duplication though, because software takes longer to close than you otherwise would have started to give up legal protections and rely on cold calls and introductions. Above. There's a good deal for you. Starting a company has ever been.

So although it works well to show growth graphs at either stage, investors treat them differently. Indeed, it seems.

Sokal, Alan ed. It was also the 11% most susceptible to charisma. So instead of blacklist.

Software companies can hire skilled people to start software companies, but I managed to screw up twice at the moment the time 1992 the entire cross-country Internet bandwidth wasn't enough for one video stream. There are a better education.

Aristotle's immediate successors may have realized this, on the programmers had seen what GUIs had done for desktop computers. Russell also wrote the editor, which has been happening for a startup to duplicate our software. In fact this would be. Though nominally acquisitions and sometimes on a wall is art.

0 notes

biofunmy · 6 years ago

Text

Extremists Disproportionally Target And Silence Latinos, Muslims, and Jews On Social Media

“What we’ve come to understand is that it’s oftentimes the most vulnerable social groups and minority communities that are the targets of computational propaganda,” Woolley told BuzzFeed News.

Bots

While bots were generally not a dominant presence in the Twitter conversations analyzed by researchers, automated accounts were used to spread hateful or harassing messages to different communities.

“The results range from chilling effects and disenfranchisement to psychological and physical harm,” reads an executive summary from Woolley and Katie Joseff, the lab’s research director.

Joseff said people in the studied communities feel they’re being targeted and outmaneuvered by extremist groups and that they don’t “have the allyship of the platforms.”

“They didn’t trust the platforms to help them,” she said.

In response to a request for comment, a Twitter spokesperson pointed to the company’s review of its efforts to protect election integrity during the 2018 midterms elections.

“With elections taking place around the globe leading up to 2020, we continue to build on our efforts to address the threats posed by hostile foreign and domestic actors. We’re working to foster an environment conducive to healthy, meaningful conversations on our service,” said an emailed statement from the spokesperson. (Reddit, the other social platform studied in the research, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.)

“The niche platforms like Gab or 8Chan are spaces where the culture around this kind of language becomes fermented and is built,” Woolley said. “That’s why you’re seeing the cross-pollination of attacks across more mainstream social media platforms … directed at multiple different types of groups.”

Co-opting

Those interviewed said the perpetrators are tech savvy, “use social media to track and disrupt activism events, and have created memes of minorities looting after a natural disaster.”

“In all cases but one a narrative was consistently drowned out by a counter narrative,” the researchers wrote.

“Recurrence of age-old conspiracies or tropes occurred across many of the case studies,” Joseff said.

“There is just so much, it can’t be a full-time job,” the director of a chapter of CAIR told researchers when asked about muting or blocking those who send hateful messages.

“Subsequently the march was sent into disarray and could have been avoided would major voices of social rights activist organizers have been present in the conversation,” the researchers wrote.

The case studies also identified the fact that algorithms and other key elements of how social media platforms work are easily co-opted by bad actors.

Sahred From Source link Technology

from WordPress http://bit.ly/30aSAy7 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

0 notes

preserving-ferretbrain · 6 years ago

Text

Somebody Has to Save the World

by Gina Dhawa

Sunday, 01 March 2009

Gina read Watchmen and not just as pre-movie prep.~

I am First Lieutenant of H.M.S Late to the Party. I didn't read any Harry Potter until long after Goblet of Fire showed up in paperback, I didn't watch Firefly until I decided Serenity was worth a look, and I didn't read The Lord of the Rings until the weekend before I saw The Fellowship of the Ring. So, despite the fact that Watchmen has been lauded as a classic of its genre and a masterpiece of literature, I only got around to reading it last summer. And, since the film is coming out in a week, I thought perhaps an article was in order.

Watchmen is set in an alternate universe, where costumed crime-fighting heroes have been on the scene since the late 1930s. The general plot more or less runs thus: By 1985, the year the novel is set, vigilantism is outlawed, so all the "costumed heroes" of old have been forced into retirement. The Comedian, a government-sponsored vigilante, is murdered. Rorschach, an ex-associate and definitely not government-sponsored, investigates and begins to uncover a greater conspiracy. Meanwhile, the godlike Dr Manhattan is hounded into exile and the other retired vigilantes are forced into action.

The

Watchmen

world is undoubtedly bleak. There is boatloads (quite literally, in the comic-within-comic

Tales of the Black Freighter

) of violence and gore, brought forth just as often by the Watchmen themselves as by anyone else. This is particularly true of Rorschach, arguably the character with the strictest moral code in the novel. He is so firm in his beliefs that he refuses to retire when vigilantism is made illegal. He condemns an ex-villain, now suffering from cancer, for trying out banned medication and is happy to use torture to get what he wants. Yet, in these brutal actions, he is still determined to seek justice. He's searching for the truth about the Comedian's murder.

It's the characters which make

Watchmen

such a success. Even the most overtly villainous characters - and I am thinking here particularly of the Comedian, heroic vigilante, murderer and rapist - are drawn with complexity and whilst it is easy to abhor their particular moral codes, they are nonetheless

human

. It's a stroke of genius to use this particular type of character to explore this idea. These are people who have set out to protect the world from evil, in the black and white world of Heroes and Villains, and come to discover that the world around them is much more complicated. "Who are we protecting [society] from?" asks one character, having quashed an anti-vigilante ("we want reg'lar police!") riot, "From themselves," replies the Comedian.

Watchmen

is not an easy read. The panels are densely packed with references back and forth to characters, people and events that take place before and during the novel and there are so many side stories and minor plotlines that it's very difficult to take in on one reading. It's also complicated by the fact that not every chapter is in panel form, the story is added to by fictional excerpts from one of the character's autobiography and later, magazine clippings. It's a fantastic exercise in worldbuilding and one that I think many fiction writers, including quite a few of those populating bestseller lists, ought to take a lesson from.

I imagine

Watchmen

is a very different beast if you've already got a grounding in comics. I've maybe read one or two in my life, so I might not be able to appreciate any layers of meaning as related to genre tropes, but I don't think it's necessary. The overwhelming sense of the novel is

the world is a messed up, complicated place, but that's humanity

; I think it's just as powerful without outside understanding of the genre.Themes:

Sci-fi / Fantasy

Comics

Watchmen

bookmark this with - facebook - delicious - digg - stumbleupon - reddit

~Comments (

go to latest

)

Wardog

at 09:18 on 2009-03-03Gosh, can I be Second Lieutenant of H.M.S Late To The Party? The thing is, I think I might have read Watchmen, years ago, but I can remember barely anything about it except that it has a naked blue man in it, which makes me think that I maybe didn't read it at all, or just flicked through it at a friend's house or something. Maybe I am, in fact, First Lieutenant of Good Ship Amnesiac. Watchman seems to be such a definitive comic that I've been too embarrassed to admit ignorance but this intriguing review has spurred me to action. I will get off my ass and read it before the film comes out.

Or ... maybe I shouldn't. Despite some serious misjudgements (Evie/V for example), I did actually quite like the V for Vendetta film, which I probably wouldn't have been if I'd been at all precious about the comic...

Perhaps ignorance is truly an advantage after all =P

permalink

go to top

Rami

at 18:23 on 2009-03-03I have been seeing the Watchmen comic in a lot of the shops around here, and toying with the idea of getting it. Because, as you say, from everything I've read / heard it is all definitive and stuff. But then, I haven't even read Harry Potter, and that hasn't stopped me enjoying the vitriol on here, so perhaps it's not worth it...

permalink

go to top

Arthur B

at 19:46 on 2009-03-03But if the consensus is that

Watchmen

the comic is good, where's the vitriol going to come from?

permalink

go to top

Rami

at 23:45 on 2009-03-03Well, replace "vitriol" with "excitement"...

permalink

go to top

Arthur B

at 01:35 on 2009-03-04Seriously, though, read

Watchmen

, it's good enough that experiencing it vicariously is not an option.

permalink

go to top

Gina Dhawa

at 13:36 on 2009-03-04@ Kyra - I haven't actually read the V for Vendetta comic, but I've never been the kind of person to cling to original canon for its own sake. Which, you know, is a good place to be for an avid reader ;).

@ Rami - I do rec it. I don't know if it's all definitive, but it's certainly one of the best things I've ever read.

permalink

go to top

http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 00:11 on 2009-03-06As a fan of the comic I've been excited about the movie for the past few months, but I think now I'm more interested in the cartoon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT6KpsJs1Io

permalink

go to top

http://fintinobrien.livejournal.com/

at 00:36 on 2009-03-06Looks like it was taken off Youtube. :( Here's the Newgrounds original: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797

permalink

go to top

Sonia Mitchell

at 23:54 on 2009-03-06You prompted me to dig my copy out and have another look through. On my first read I was somewhat put off by the bio extracts and the like, but I read somewhere that they weren't part of the original comic so I felt justified skipping them this time. Though I did love the line 'I dressed up as an owl and fought crime' (possibly misquoted there).

I think you're spot on about the characters, Gina. The world-building is interesting (though possibly less easy for us to identify with than readers in the 80s) but the plot doesn't rely on world alone, which is nice. I like that so much of the enjoyment springs from interaction between people, rather than stock characters reacting to the world situation.

permalink

go to top

Arthur B

at 01:54 on 2009-03-08@fintinobrien: sorry about reposting your link in the Playpen, I completely failed to notice you'd posted it before I made my post.

I just saw the movie and I can confirm that it's excellent. Zack Snyder has actually learned how to adapt things to the medium rather than slavishly transcribing the source material (as in

300

), and he makes some changes to the overarching plot to make it easier to adapt to the big screen, but at the same time he understands that the whole plot is really a framing device and the core of

Watchmen

is in the character studies, which by and large he doesn't fuck with.

My only complaint is that - aside from the German version of 99 Red Balloons - there's basically no music from the 1980s from the soundtrack. (In fact, there's a weird fixation on music from the 60s - presumably because the 1960s were when superhero comics were at their most innocent - and unrealistic - thanks to the Comics Code.)

permalink

go to top

Sonia Mitchell

at 12:05 on 2009-03-08Me too, and I agree that it was brilliant. Really great balance of loyalty to the source and film watchability.

(I enjoyed the soundtrack, but I'm not all that knowledgable about music so wouldn't have been able to identify it as 60s, just that it was very atmospheric)

permalink

go to top

Gina Dhawa

at 12:58 on 2009-03-08@fintinobrien - I have now watched that video about half a dozen times and it isn't getting old yet.

@Arthur - I hadn't thought about the soundtrack like that, but that's an interesting point. I actually think 99 Luftballoons was the best part of the soundtrack, aside from the opening sequence. I can't imagine that being done any better, on any count.

I loved the film too, I thought the changes were well thought out and it all looked stunning. There are people complaining its

too much

like the comic, particularly with regard to pacing, which is a complaint I don't understand. I went with a friend who hadn't read it and she loved it as well.

The casting was perfect as well, particularly Jackie Earle Haley. I was not expecting Rorschach to be quite so... well,

Rorschach

. He's astounding. Loved Ozymandias too, I know a lot of people had their doubts.

permalink

go to top

Wardog

at 15:31 on 2009-03-08I have finally finished reading the comic, in time to go and see the film next week - I'm afraid I'm not going to think much of it. To be honest, I think I've just come too late to Alan Moore. I felt exactly the same about Watchmen as I did after I read V for Vendetta - something like "gosh, that's a product of it's time, how terribly quaint."

#Ferretbrain #Watchmen #Comics #Gina Dhawa #Alan Moore

0 notes

trumptweettuesdays-blog · 7 years ago

Text

TTT 8.29.17

This week’s themes are Hurricane Harvey, Charlottesville, Arapio Pardon, Campaigning & Arizona, Mexico Wall, Russia, Propaganda, Veterans Issues and Presidential Notes

Hurricane Harvey

Trump took to Twitter to comment on the disastrous Hurricane Harvey and update followers on the steps that national response teams were taking. While many appreciated his comments, some have criticized him in regards to many of his tweets. His tone can be described as in awe of the power of the storm and the ratings it's coverage has produced. Critics have once again called into question Trump’s inability to express sympathy, in this case for the victims of the natural disaster. During his visit, he settled for landing and staying 30 miles away from the most affected area, and some say turned it into a mini campaign rally for himself and the Republican Party. While there isn’t much a president can do in the way of relief during these disasters, they tend to at least manage to express a certain level of sympathy for those affected and avoid fixating on how powerful the disaster is and the amount of ratings news outlets receive. However, Trump again proves he is in a class of his own as far as presidents go.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/trump-sympathy-harvey-inspiration/538404/

Charlottesville

Last week Trump went to Arizona for a campaign rally (see the separate entry on this topic), and at this rally he “clarified” his comments he made about Charlottesville. What he really did was leave out key parts of his original speech that made it sound much better than it actually did. In particular, in his original comments he noted that there were “many sides” to the issue, which he thoughtfully and directly left out of his comments in Arizona. So, no Trump, you did not ‘read your exact’ Charlottesville statement and the news definitely was not fake on that point.

As to the Washington Post article, there’s some truth here and a lot of murkiness. First of all, Trump chose to Retweet Dinesh D’Souza who is an outright bigot and has repeatedly blamed people of color for the racism that they experience as well as was convicted for campaign fraud. Second of all, there were some violent antifa protesters but there were far more non-violent protesters - there were only 13 arrests but there were about 7,000 peaceful protestors. In addition, several Trump people responded to the violent protestors with more violence.

Charlottesville statement in Arizona

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/22/fact-checking-president-donald-trumps-campaign-ral/

Washington Post article

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/22/fact-checking-president-donald-trumps-campaign-ral/