#these shitty pieces of media would not have a market to sell to

[edwardseymour]

‘… but at least it gets people into tudor history’

tudor history is a historical/historiographical field… you’re not actually entitled to a popular fandomisation of it.

[castlebyersafterdark]

who from the main cast do you think will have the most successful post ST career?

Very interesting!! Now, I don't know all of the cast's careers equally as thorough, but these are my thoughts from what I do know. Would love to hear other's takes as well to fill in where I might not know the cast as well! I'm going to do the older teens and the party. In no particular order:

Finn - Already a huge star. I think he'll continue to be successful if he stays acting, but I do see him stepping more into directing/writing maybe. And working on his lil indie music hobby. If he acts more, maybe he'll take a role here or there, and I hope he takes more interesting things as he gets older (not that he's been in a string of duds, but I'd hope he branches out into something fresh and not another IP style franchise media immediately). A while ago I remember talking about him maybe doing a cool period piece or a retro comedy movie. I wish he was a lead in the SNL movie, I think that's his sweet spot. I think he's going to be very successful and remain publicly in the industry. I will be following his career the most out of everyone here so, admitted bias.

Noah - very difficult to say at this point. I think it depends on if he decides to continue school, lean into his entrepreneurship and business ventures. He's a very good actor, but I really don't know what kind of roles he's actually looking to take. I think he's said he's more interested in drama movies and I know this is a little type-casty, but I would adore if he becomes a new scream king. Dramatic horror/thrillers but quality, smaller films. I'd love for him to lead an era of queer horror films but I honestly don't really think that's what he'd be into, as much as I personally would love that. He has the range though! It's really hard to say how good of an acting career he'll have because I have to be honest - if he curates his craft he could find a lot of success but I can also see him fading a bit in the acting world and please don't get upset with me for that!! It's just an analysis of the career he's had so far and the crossroads he'll face once the series is over if his role choices are off. An honest read.

Millie - She's gonna have kids with baby Jovi and sell her skincare and ghostwrite shitty books. JK JK sorry for the shade, I'm just not a Millie fan haha oops. But I'm super not sure about her. She's a huge celebrity with a huge fanbase, but now that her Netflix contract is up, right?? Is she marketable and good enough of an actress to land lead roles in things? I think she's going to have a few big roles and those movies will be critically panned and she'll fade away for a bit, and then a decade or so later after a huge flop she'll land something surprising and fall into the spotlight again, but only for a little while. I could be wrong and misunderstand the Millie effect, bit that's how I feel.

Caleb - I feel like he's got talent, he's going to get a steady stream of work in film and other campaigns. He has the makings of being a really good dramatic actor when he's a little older, we'll have to wait and see. But he has the low-key acting chops and needs a little more meat on his resume. He's got promise.

Gaten - I don't know much about him and I love him but I also share the same worries that he himself has expressed in interviews I believe. Nerves about the future after the show. I see him more in television over movies. I don't actually know much about broadway so I'm not sure what his career there was like or if he could break back in. Big difference between child actors on bway and adult acting if I would guess correctly.

Sadie - Promising career, I feel like she could be up for the awards show circuit if she lands decent roles in the future. She could have an Emma Stone type career. Depends on the right roles. But I think she'll have longevity in the industry. Interesting, pretty redheads with dramatic acting chops and high fashion leanings tend to have the potential to go really far.

Charlie and Natalia - I'm putting them on the same page because I equally don't know much about them and I think they'll equally get the same amount of work. I think they're just kinda fucking around and traipsing lazily through Hollywood. Unsure. They're so weird. But, good for them?

Joe Keery - I don't know much about this man and I always refer to him by his full name for some reason. He's a singer? No idea the popularity level there, wasn't my type of music so I never looked too deep into it. No idea what he does outside of Stranger Things. He is an enigma but not one that captivates me. (I have nothing against him I just never really felt an interest in him as an actor even if I really do like Steve).

Maya - Well, she's industry famous already, she'll have a career as long as she wants it. She'll have steady work, unsure how big she'll be. But I think it's as big as she wants it to be personally, what type of projects she wants to work on. I think she's one of the better young actors in the cast. She's probably the one with the most choice in terms of future career.

[burning-moths]

That was the reason

Noelle talks repeatedly about how they had to subtly weave Catradora into the very fabric of the story to the point where without that kiss, the story would not have a satisfactory conclusion. So that without Catradora as endgame, the story could never have ended the way it did when it did, and still made SENSE. Anything less, and we would never have gotten that kiss

But those are high expectations for a fictional relationship. Sure it worked for She-Ra, but not every story caters to that kind of focus on the romantic relationship. Not every relationship should bear the fate of the world on its shoulders. Queer relationships should not have to fulfill those standards to be allowed to exist

And that's where you run into the lack of queer relationships among main characters in other shows. You cannot reasonably expect every showrunner to do what Noelle did. Not only would that be ridiculous, it would undermine the stories they are trying to tell, and diminish queer people's right to just. Be themselves. To exist without purpose. To just. Be

And of course corporate homophobia is always there, a looming weight on our shoulders. As one post (which I unfortunately can't find rn, if I do I'll rb with a link) so rightfully said, when we see media with good queer representation, we tend to praise the corporation that media is under. But it's not the corporation's doing. That media doesn't exist because of them. It exists in spite of them.

It exists because of the writers and artists and showrunners who fought tooth and nail to get even the tiniest lines or hints of something more in there. It exists in spite of the fact that at every turn the corporation was there beating them back down. And they still did it. They still fought for us and gave us those little crumbs of representation

The corporations don't care about making art and telling stories, all they care about is the money. They think queer stories don't sell. So they refuse to back them again and again and again. And when a few sneak past and manage to thrive? They take credit for it as if that was their plan all along

But they have to sneak. What happens if a piece of media dares to be blatantly, unapologetically queer? Well you get Strange World which was given virtually no advertising, and left to flounder in a sea of sharks. Most creators can't afford to take that risk. So they don't. They hide their queer characters, and in a way, haven't we gone back to the times of the Hayes code? Queer characters existing, but never clearly, never in plain sight (this does not refer to queerbaiting, that is a shitty marketing strategy, and even queercoding nowadays is more a mockery of our community than an attempt to include us)

We're watching the regression of society and art all around us and all the mergers, media being taken down and removed forever, binge culture, and even fandom's tendency to jump and point fingers and be at each others' throats at every perceived "problematic" thing only contributes to the problem. But here's to the queer creators who persevere, who keep striving to give our community what it deserves, and to give the world so many more incredible stories, because it is those stories that make us human <3

This is just me theorizing but i’m pretty sure the only reason She Ra lasted as long as it did was becayse ND long conned Netflix and saved Catradora till the very last season. Which was torture becuase i didn’t think there was going to be a catra redemption arc let along catradora. but we got both. and i thank ND for holding out as long as they could in order to do that. but it’s a shame that any creators have to do that in order to get theri show to las longer. 

[paradox-time]

People (idiots) tell me not to let my autism affect my daily life, but they never have to deal with the intense visceral horror of spending five minutes inside a TJ Max store. I mean this with every fiber of my being, fuck that place. TJ Max is a clothing store, all the places like Target and Walmart and shit give the clothes they can't sell to TJ Max to sell at a discounted price. Sounds pretty good right? Kinda like a thrift store? (thought past me like the absolute fool they were) But there's just one single problem that my funky little brain just couldn't handle about the hell that is this store in particular.

The place isn't fucking organized in the slightest.

"So what? That doesn't seem like such a big deal. I think you might be overreacting." Is what you're probably thinking right now. But when I go into a little more detail you might begin to understand why I have such strong feelings about this.

The second I walk in I look to my right and see nice little rows of bags sorted by size and type, the backpacks are very clearly in their own section, then the purses, and so on. This gave me the sense that I could navigate the new environment easily with such nice little visible defined sections. I walk a little farther and see dresses, this is not the section I would like to be in so I continue on my journey looking for cheap T-shirts. I turn left and see jewelry, a little odd to have here but I figure someone must have decided that dresses and jewelry needed to be close together because mainstream media's lazy depiction of femininity is dress+necklaces=marketing to women. I continue on and find what I'm looking for, or so I thought. See, I thought what I had found was shirts, instead what I found was sensory hell. As told above, it was not organized in the slightest. It wasn't organized by color like at Good Will, not by shirt type like at St Vinnies, not by brand like any clothing store that sells multiple brands, it wasn't organized by similarities like at Old Navy, that place fucking sucked. It was barely organized by size. The worst of the worst was that it wasn't sorted by fabric type/texture. I wanted to rub the skin off my hands after feeling a cotton shirt and then a fucking lacey blouse and then one of those awful velvet monstrosities followed by goddamn wool. I'll say it again, sensory hell. Not to mention all the clothes there were ugly as fuck, no wonder none of the other stores could sell them.

Oh but the worst was still to come. I exit the clothing half of the store and turn to find the motherfucking décor. I didn't think it could be done, but somehow it was even less organized. I already have issues with shitty decoration in general. It needs to be balanced, it needs to make sense, it needs each piece to look nice on its own but it also needs to look nice all together as a whole. That fucking store looked like a hoarder's storage container. Everything was jumbled and mixed up next to things that had nothing to do with each other, everything felt like it was too close to me. I was already in a ton of distress but this straight up made me feel like I was going to throw up.

Needless to say, I got out of there quick without buying anything.

[arcticdementor]

Media Twitter does not hate Substack because it’s pretending to be a platform when it’s a publisher; they don’t hate it because it’s filled with anti-woke white guys; they don’t hate it because of harassment or any such thing. I don’t think they really hate it at all. Substack is a small and ultimately not-very-relevant outpost in a vastly larger industry; they may not like it but it’s not important enough for them to hate it. What do they hate? They hate where their industry is and they hate where they are within their industry. But that’s a big problem that they don’t feel like they can solve. If you feel you can’t get mad at the industry that’s impoverishing you, it’s much easier to get mad at the people who you feel are unjustly succeeding in that industry. Trying to cancel Glenn Greenwald (again) because he criticizes the media harshly? Trying to tarnish Substack’s reputation so that cool, paid-up writer types leave it and the bad types like me get kicked off? That they can maybe do. Confronting their industry’s future with open eyes? Too scary, especially for people who were raised to see success as their birthright and have suddenly found that their degrees and their witheringly dry one-liners do not help them when the rent comes due.

…

Life in the “content” industry already sucks. A small handful of people make bank while the vast majority hustle relentlessly just to hold on to the meager pay they already receive. There are staff writers at big-name publications who produce thousands of words every week and who make less than $40,000 a year for their trouble. There are permanent employees of highly prestigious newspapers and magazines who don’t receive health insurance. Venues close all the time. Mourning another huge round of layoffs is a regular bonding experience for people in the industry. Writers have to constantly job hop just to try and grind out an extra $1,500 a year, making their whole lives permanent job interviews where they can’t risk offending their potential bosses and peers. Many of them dream of selling that book to save themselves financially, not seeming to understand that book advances have fallen 40% in 10 years - median figure now $6,080 - and that the odds of actually making back even that meager advance are slim, meaning most authors are making less than minimum wage from their books when you do the math. They have to tweet constantly for the good of their careers, or so they believe, which amounts to hundreds of hours of unpaid work a year. Their publications increasingly strong arm them into churning out pathetic pop-culture ephemera like listicles about the outfits on Wandavision. They live in fear of being the one to lose out when the next layoffs come and the game of media musical chairs spins up once again. They have to pretend to like ghouls like Ezra Klein and Jonah Peretti and make believe that there’s such a thing as “the Daily Beast reputation for excellence.”

I have always felt bad for them, despite our differences, because of these conditions. And they have a right to be angry. But they don’t have much in the way of self-awareness about where their anger really lies. A newsletter company hosting Bari Weiss is why you can’t pay your student loans? You sure?

They’ll tell you about the terrible conditions in their industry themselves, when they’re feeling honest. So what are they really mad about? That I’m making a really-just-decent guaranteed wage for just one year? Or that this decent wage is the kind of money many of them dream of making despite the fact that, in their minds, they’ve done everything right and played by all the rules? Is their anger really about a half-dozen guys whose writing you have to actively seek out to see? (If you click the button and put in your email address, you’ll get these newsletters. If you don’t, you won’t. So if you’re a media type who hates my writing, consider just… not clicking that button.) Or do they need someplace to put the rage and resentment that grows inside them as they realize, no, it’s not getting better, this is all I get?

It’s true that I have, in a very limited way, achieved the new American dream: getting a little bit of VC cash. I’m sorry. But it’s much much less than one half of what Felix Salmon was making in 2017 and again, it’s only for one year.

You think the writers complaining in that piece I linked to at the top wanted to be here, at this place in their career, after all those years of hustling? You think decades into their media career, the writers who decamped to Substack said to themselves “you know, I’d really like to be in my 40s and having to hope that enough people will pitch in $5 a month so I can pay my mortgage”? No. But the industry didn’t give them what they felt they deserved either. So they displace and project. They can hate Jesse Singal, but Jesse Singal isn’t where this burning anger is coming from. Neither am I. They’re so angry because they bought into a notoriously savage industry at the nadir of its labor conditions and were surprised to find that they’re drifting into middle age without anything resembling financial security. I feel for them as I feel for all people living economically precarious lives, but getting rid of Substack or any of its writers will not do anything to fix their industry or their jobs. They wanted more and they got less and it hurts. This isn’t what they dreamed. That’s what this is really about.

…

My own deal here is not mysterious. It’s just based on a fact that the blue checks on Twitter have never wanted to accept. I got offered money to write here for the same reason I got offered to write for The New York Times and Harper’s and The Washington Post and The LA Times, the same reason I’ve gotten a half-dozen invitations to pitch since I started here a few weeks ago, the same reason a literary agent sought me out and asked me to write a book, the same reason I sold that book for a decent advance: because I pull traffic. Though I am a social outcast from professional opinion writing, I have a better freelance publishing history than many, many of my critics who are paid-up, obedient members of the media social scene. Why? Because the editors who hired me thought I was a great guy? No. Because I pull traffic. I always have. That’s why you’re reading this on Substack right now.

…

A really important lesson to learn, in life, is this: your enemies are more honest about you than your friends ever will be. I’ve been telling the blue checks for over a decade that their industry was existentially fucked, that the all-advertising model was broken, that Google and Facebook would inevitably hoover up all the profit, that there are too many affluent kids fresh out of college just looking for a foothold in New York who’ll work for next to nothing and in doing so driving down the wages of everyone else, that their mockery of early subscription programs like Times Select was creating a disastrous industry expectation that asking your readers directly for money was embarrassing. Trump is gone and the news business is cratering. Michael Tracey didn’t make that happen. None of this anger will heal what’s wrong. If you get all of the people you don’t like fired from Substack tomorrow, what will change? How will your life improve? Greenwald will spend more time with his hottie husband and his beloved kids and his 6,000 dogs in his beautiful home in Rio. Glenn will be fine. How do we do the real work of getting you job security and a decent wage?

…

But how do things get better in that way? Only through real self-criticism (which Twitter makes impossible) and by asking hard questions. Questions like one that has not been credibly confronted a single time in this entire media meltdown: why are so many people subscribing to Substacks? What is the traditional media not providing that they’re seeking elsewhere? Why have half a million people signed up as paying subscribers of various Substack newsletters, if the establishment media is providing the diversity of viewpoints that is an absolute market requirement in a country with a vast diversity of opinions? You can try to make an adult determination about that question, to better understand what media is missing, or you can read this and write some shitty joke tweet while your industry burns to the ground around you. It’s your call.

Substack might fold tomorrow, but someone would else sell independent media; there’s a market. Substack might kick me and the rest of the unclean off of their platforms tomorrow, but other critics of social justice politics would pop up here; there’s a market. Establishment media’s takeover by this strange brand of academic identity politics might grow even more powerful, if that’s even possible, but dissenters will find a place to sell alternative opinion; there’s a market. What there might not be much of a market for anymore is, well, you - college educated, urban, upwardly striving if not economically improving, woke, ironic, and selling that wokeness and that irony as your only product. Because you flooded the market. Everyone in your entire industry is selling the exact same thing, tired sarcastic jokes and bleating righteousness about injustices they don’t suffer under themselves, and it’s not good in basic economic terms if you’re selling the same thing as everyone else. You add that on to structural problems within your business model and your utter subservience to a Silicon Valley that increasingly hates you, well��. I get why you’re mad. And I get that you don’t like me. But I’m not what you’re mad about. Not really.

In the span of a decade or so, essentially all professional media not explicitly branded as conservative has been taken over by a school of politics that emerged from humanities departments at elite universities and began colonizing the college educated through social media. Those politics are obscure, they are confusing, they are socially and culturally extreme, they are expressed in a bizarre vocabulary, they are deeply alienating to many, and they are very unpopular by any definition. The vast majority of the country is not woke, including the vast majority of women and people of color. How could it possibly be healthy for the entire media industry to be captured by any single niche political movement, let alone one that nobody likes? Why does no one in media seem willing to have an honest, uncomfortable conversation about the near-total takeover of their industry by a fringe ideology?

And the bizarre assumption of almost everyone in media seems to have been that they could adopt this brand of extreme niche politics, in mass, as an industry, and treat those politics as a crusade that trumps every other journalistic value, with no professional or economic consequences. They seem to have thought that Americans were just going to swallow it; they seem to have thought they could paint most of the country as vicious bigots and that their audiences would just come along for the ride. They haven’t. In fact Republicans are making great hay of the collapse of the media into pure unapologetic advocacy journalism. Some people are turning to alternative media to find options that are neither reactionary ideologues or self-righteous woke yelling. Can you blame them? Substack didn’t create this dynamic, and neither did I. The exact same media people who are so angry about Substack did, when they abandoned any pretense to serving the entire country and decided that their only job was to advance a political cause that most ordinary people, of any gender or race, find alienating and wrong. So maybe try and look at where your problems actually come from. They’re not going away.

Now steel yourselves, media people, take a shot of something strong, look yourself in the eye in the mirror, summon you most honest self, and tell me: am I wrong?

[winchesternova-k]

Iden is right there. Want a lead with color? Play Battlefront 2. Stop lying and saying that was the most requested thing. It never was. If so, how comes Jedi Fallen Order did as well as it did with a white lead? Despite you people claiming you was going to boycott. How comes it’s getting a sequel? How comes that same white lead is getting a whole franchise? How comes it was nominated for a BATFA. I don’t even want to come across as rude but they gave you a game with a WOC and people ignored her and now she’s barely even talked about. It’s about the money. Disney are business people.

this is a lot of assumptions for someone who doesn’t seem to know what they’re talking abt. have u spoken to star wars fans of colour recently bc yes, it is the most requested thing. did u see what happened w finn? or did u ignore that?

u have literally no idea whether i’ve played battlefront or not. i haven’t, but that doesn’t change the fact that there should be more than one lead of colour. if i had that wouldn’t change the fact that i can still criticise other parts of the franchise. i adore tfa but im incredibly critical of the rest of the sequel trilogy and it’s mess of bigotry and abuse apologism bc surprise! i can like things and be critical of them at the same time!

this is the first star wars game i’ve played and there WERE a lot of requests for the lead to be a poc. i literally saw it. i don’t recall anyone saying to boycott but sure keep that victim complex up 😋

and what the fuck do u mean by “you people”? bc that feels distinctly racist. leave poc alone and let them be upset w disney (i’m white too which just shows that u assume everyone who calls out racism must be a poc which is interesting, and by interesting i mean racist)

also, i literally fucking said in my post that cameron monaghan did a good job. i love him as an actor and he did a good job. disney still should’ve hired a person of colour.

i said NOTHING abt the game’s content. the plot is sound and the chs are good. doesn’t change the fact that disney’s fucking racist. even if i agreed that them hiring another white man wasn’t problematic, there’s still the whitewashing in game and the cultural appropriation woven into the entire canon. and the second sister who is acting as cal’s foil is a woc! having a single person of colour from any race or ethnicity in a piece of media and making them evil and have to be defeated by a white person is always racist! and that’s just from where i am at chapter three.

battefront is a completely different type of game. i literally didn’t know abt it until recently. disney also did next to no ads for it so when it didn’t do as well bc of the lack of ads shitheels like u would say white leads r more popular. then they can say “ooh look! white ppl sell better!” that’s a pretty common marketing technique amongst racists. netflix has done it repeatedly. the lead for battlefront should be more popular, but do u know what i saw the last time i saw an ad for battlefront? rey. and the time before that? obi wan. this is literally the first i’ve heard abt there being a woc as the lead. the only ads i ever saw for it emphasised the fighting rather than the story, which from a quick browse was apparently badly written. the ads made it sound like it was in a similar style to injustice

also r u rlly saying that poc should have to play a shooter game as opposed to an action game to have a lead of colour bc that’s racist pal. poc should be able to play any genre of star wars game (or any franchise) and find a ch of colour and guess what! they can’t do that! bc disney!! r racist!!

ur right the battlefront lead should be more popular and well known and fandom should acknowledge her more. she should’ve gotten better from both disney and fandom. that doesn’t change the fact that cal should’ve been played by a moc.

and srsly, ONE lead of colour? as opposed to HOW MANY white leads of the years? get over urself. poc deserve better than that and u know it

also pal, if u think going “but,, but the money!!1” is going to make an ANTICAPITALIST sympathise w disney u came to the wrong fucking blog. everyone should do the right thing even if it costs u profit.

anyway disney know that poc leads r just as profitable as white ones. y’all r v quick to forget how profitable black panther was

and surprise surprise sometimes ppl who want more diversity still play games that don’t have it. what exactly is ur point?

but sure, keep telling urself that a man of colour wouldn’t have done as good a job 🤷 ur racist and lying and it shows and YES ur rude

tldr; disney didn’t advertise battlefront having a woc lead which is shitty. fandom also erased her which is equally shitty. one lead of colour in the entire franchise is not enough and cal should’ve been a moc. fuck disney and their corporate greed.

eta: tfa is also a goddamn racist mess, i meant to say that i was critical of it as well as the rest of the sequel trilogy and my adhd made me forget fvgfvg

[leviathan-supersystem]

what is lesswrong and can you summarize why it's bad? I'm new to the term and Google results are kinda vague

it’s the blog joined at the hip with MIRI, the machine intelligence research research institute, which is a weird-ass AI doomsday cult which is seems grimes has gotten mixed up with. you know roko’s basilisk? that’s them. 

anyways to save time i’m going to copy-paste an earlier response to this kind of question from this post:

so have you ever seen someone saying in their blog description that they’re a “rationalist”? well that’s the self-descriptor used by people who come from a site called “lesswrong.com,” which is run by a guy named Eliezer Yudkowsky, and which purports to teach people the methods of “bayesian rationalism,” which is basically just a method to pretend you’re using math to help make your decisions, but since it involves guesstimating the probabilities you’re calculating, it’s not noticeably any better than just guessing without math. the whole thing traces it’s roots back to the site Overcoming Bias, which was wirtten by Eliezer and a man named Robin Hanson, who was involved in several Bush-era scandals [link]. going back further, the community can be traced to the Extropians, a techno-libertarian group from the 90′s.

oh, also Eliezer wrote a terrible Harry Potter fanfiction to promote bayesian “rationality” as well, called “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.”

anyways, aside from teaching people bayesian “rationality,” lesswrong is also an extension of MIRI, or the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, which is based around the idea that we are inevitably headed toward the creation of an all-powerful computer dictator, and that the only course of action is to make sure that we create a good computer dictator, and not a bad one. the whole thing has a decidedly quasi-religious undercurrent, and at one point that undercurrent burst through to the surface in the creation of Roko’s Basilisk, which was when someone on the site posited that when the all-powerful computer dictator comes into being, it will eternally punish anyone who didn’t do enough to help it come into being by donating to MIRI, so to avoid being punished forever people should donate as much as possible to MIRI, like some kind of modern incarnation of Pascals wager. while most of them don’t still subscribe to this belief, a small percentage of them do.

at any rate, besides the bad logic and AI worship, they also have really shitty politics- Eliezer Yudkowsky is a right-wing libertarian, as is Scott Alexander, who runs the closely related site SlateStarCodex. among the other nonsense, they both constantly try to use their sites to try to sell right-wing libertarianism to moderate progressives, perhaps most explictly in the slatestarcodex post “Right is the New Left”[link] which is basically dedicated to trying to convince progressive liberals that they should shift politically rightward and become libertarians. there are a whole bunch of really shitty conceptual frameworks they’ve come up with as part of this, including the ��blue tribe/red tribe/grey tribe” framework, which is this really weak shoddy framework based around broad stereotypes about left-leaning people being snooty wealthy cosmopolitan democrats, right-wing people being simple working class rural people, and techno-libertarians being smart free-thinking genuises, and trying to use this framework as a sales pitch for libertarianism. probably the best illustration of how the concept is used by people in that community as a sales pitch for libertarianism is this post by pax-dickinson [link]. the fact that lower-income people actually lean leftward, thus contradicting their whole framework, doesn’t seem to phase them. you can straight up show them the statistics and they’ll still insist that it’s the gospel truth that left-wingers are all snooty rich whole-foods shoppers.

at any rate, besides being partially an effort by libertarians to recruit progressives and shift them rightward, the whole thing is funded personally by wealthy right-wing CEO Peter Thiel, who is known for his various statements about how democracy should be abolished and women should have never been given the vote, as well as his association with the neofascist alt-right sub-movement “NeoReaction,” specifically Mencius Moldbug, who Peter Thiel is also funding.

the sad thing is that Eliezer Yudkowsky doesn’t even seem to realize the extent of what Peter Thiel is using him to achieve by shifting people’s politics further rightward. Eliezer was shocked, for instance, when Peter Thiel endorsed Trump, instead of Gary Johnson.

so basically the lesswronger community is liberals being played like suckers by right-wing libertarians who are being played like suckers by neofascists. chain of fools.

as a result of this, the lesswronger community exemplify everything rancid about liberalism. very “the free market is sacred!” type politics. very “but fascists have feelings too!” type politics. people who think of themselves as progressive, but actually act in every capacity toward supporting right-wing causes.

which brings us to how I first encountered them

so i was just minding my own business, being a communist, saying unkind things about fascists on the world wide web, when these dipshits started dogpiling me and my friends for being communists, and saying unkind things about fascists, and screaming at us that we’re evil and stupid, etc.

but of course, then when we responded to these critiques, and offered our own critiques of the politics of lesswrong, they absolutely lost their shit, and acted like the victims.

also when i pointed out that one of their dear friends was in fact Wesley Eugene Rian, better known by his nom-de-blog Nydwracu, a well-known neoreactionary and utter piece of shit, and that this was perhaps relevant information to the debate, they similarly lost their shit, accusing me of victimizing him, since apparently being a prominent neofascist theorist is just “words on the internet” but me pointing out that someone is a neofascist theorist is terrible and dangerous. Nydwracu, incidentally, still engages in all the kind of douchebaggery you would expect, including recently trying to create a media hoax framing someone for murder [link]. the lesswrongers will constantly make excuses for this, and say the real bad guys are the leftists, and if they were just nicer to Nydwracu, he wouldn’t even be “fascist-ing on the internet” [link]. this of course is bullshit.

EDIT: oh, also, i almost forgot- around this time the lesswrongers began shipping me with nydwracu. like in the fandom sense. they came up with a name for the ship and everything. it was really really really really really creepy.

anyways, in spite of their constant whining about how left-wingers need to be more “charitable” toward right-wingers in debates, the lesswrongers themselves have absolutely atrocious conduct in debates, are extremely prone to flying off the handle and acting like assholes. anyways here’s some posts where i got trapped in debates with these assholes which pretty much sum up what they’re all about:

(links for desktop): [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]

(links for mobile): [link] [link] [link] [link] [link]

Addendum: you can also get a feel for the overall vibe of the community by checking out the reddit board r/slatestarcodex, which is a board for fans of the blog slate star codex, which spun off from lesswrong. you can also check out it’s rival community r/sneerclub, (name’s a joking reference to a post Yudkowsky made whining about people who didn’t like his harry potter fanfic) which is for critics and ex-members of the community, and has case after case documented of former members burning out under the weight of the overwhelming right-wing bias of the community beneath their thin pretense of “neutrality”.

[thedragonsexcalendar]

The Great Re-Branding (Logo) of 2019

Stupid Font

Back in 2015, when the first edition of the Dragon Sex Calendar (DSC) was released—I had designed the whole thing with zero anticipation of longevity. The calendar was simply a silly concept, yet one that might have a chance of succeeding, due to its stupidity alone. So I hired artists to paint gorgeous images of dragons banging, designed the calendar, built an accompanying Word Press website modeled after a Harry’s Razor’s website (LoL). I did all of this just to prove to myself that I could do it. Nike status. It was one of those ideas that if I didn’t follow through on I’d beat my self up for eternity about. Just like not telling that special someone you loved them, or not being able to apologize for something wicked you said to someone in your youth and you have no way of finding them now to properly apologize. I never anticipated that the 2015 Dragon Sex Calendar would sell out—elevated to cult status thanks to a post on Reddit in a subreddit called r/thisiswhyimbroke (thanks Adam at thisiswhyimbroke.com, BTW). So, all this to say that in that hustle and bustle of creating the first DSC I went with one of the first fonts I found on dafont.com that I felt worked. Times have changed. And I hate my current font. Sorry, "Motion Picture" font! I will always appreciate you.

Branding Crisis

Ever since the aftermath of the success of the Dragon Sex Calendar, I’ve had a branding crisis. I’ve been battling between two different "company” personas. How do I present myself? How seriously do I take myself? Do I position the calendar as a super-serious piece of art and market it that way? Or position it as a silly product, filled with subversive humor—marketing it under the guise of “seriousness,�� (and everyone is in on the joke). These types of questions have had a big impact on the overall design over the years—everything from the printed calendar itself to the website, and especially the logo. The results have been a weird hodgepodge of both ideas. A deformed hybrid. This is what the homepage looked like back in 2015. Quite charming actually.

Sad Interlude

Short interlude. I’ve had a rough 2019. My wife and I miscarried twice. In May of this year, my brother Philip died in a car accident. He left behind a pregnant fiancée, who gave birth to my nephew Sullivan a month ago (he’s the spitting image of his dad BTW and I’m going to spoil the fuck out of him). The grief around the loss of my brother and our miscarriages has drained me mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. It’s impacted my relationship with everyone in my life. I’m quicker to anger than before. Things stress me out easier. I’ve had trouble focusing. But, I’m getting better. I’m aware of my grief and my “new normal” and am trying to forgive myself for setbacks but also work harder on loving those around me. All this to say I haven’t able to focus on the calendar or put much energy into it at all. For the last few years, and during all the heartache this year, I’ve known that I’ve needed to fully dive into the Dragon Sex Calendar as a brand. I’ve been ignoring it and taking it for granted. And in a way, refocusing on it has been a bit healing for me. It’s a place to put all this energy. And the first step in diving back in has been to get some professional help.

Re-Branding

Yes, I’m seeing a therapist but I’m talking about a BRANDING therapist. Enter Seafoam Media out of St. Louis. One last thing—my brother left me some money when he died. His best man speech at my wedding he spoke about how proud he was of me, at the man I’d become, and how I’d always followed my dreams, no matter how stupid. This was a direct reference to the Dragon Sex Calendar. The only way I could have ever afforded to work with a creative agency was through his grace. Thank you, Philip. I love you.

I’ve met with the agency, Seafoam Media, a few times now—most recently this last month. I a 4-hour brainstorming session with their team of experts; the social media person was there, along with the google analytics person, the copywriter, and mega supervisor who knows everything. They gave me some insanely solid advice. I’ll go into that in another post. Needless to say, the Lil’ coal in my heart was ignited by the kindling of creativity. (Barf-worthy analogy).

I’ve been making updates to the website over the last month. Which, if you’re a regular visitor you’ve probably noticed. This will continue to be updated as I come up with more and more ways to optimize and bring you guys value. Because that’s the whole point. To build a community of people who love this stupid-ass calendar and return time and again to look at my content. I can’t wait to engage with you people.

via GIPHY

On to the crux of the branding crisis. In many ways, the logo IS the product. It IS the company. "It is known." (said like Ygritte from GoT).

A good logo adds an extreme amount of value. Knowing this and not doing anything about it is something I’ve been struggling with for 5 years. And it’s finally time for a change. So this font is what I’ve been using since 2015. I want to take this “logo,” wood-burn it into a baseball bat, wrap the baseball bat with barbed-wire, and pay someone to shove the barb-wire-wrapped baseball bat up my ass 3X.

Although I’m an Art Director by day, I’m shitty at logo design. Super shitty. And tbh, sometimes the last thing on earth I want to do when I get home from designing things all day is to do more design work. So….I’ve hired an amazing agency to design a new logo for the Dragon Sex Calendar. Check out their website https://coldcastlestudios.com. This shit is amazing. Here are some samples of their logos:

My direction to them in this process was literally, "We realize how stupid the product is but we're positioning ourselves as if we take ourselves completely seriously.” With that in mind, here is a sneak peek, guys, of the preliminary look and feel of the logo. I put a bunch of ridiculous watermarks over the logo for some reason. The next round is going to include a design with a frame around the logo, a la the World of Warcraft logo—to see if that looks good and serves the logo.

I simply cannot fucking wait to reveal it to all of you. I will finally have a brand. This brand will live across all print and social media. It’s the next chapter in my company. And I couldn’t be more excited. This logo will provide the base for future, ridiculous calendars, pins, coloring books, electric cars, personal spacecraft, and dolphin tattoos. Let me know what you think of the preliminary design in the comments below. I love you all!

[badasscrossstitch]

Channeling My Rage...

Good Morning Friends:

I am going to channel my outrage into what I hope will become a positive public discussion around copyright in the social media and digital age. Let me start by saying, in most cases I believe people either don’t know or just don’t think about their use of other people’s art, images, words when it comes to “sharing” on social networks or online. I never assume malintentions. I do my best to gently educate folks on copyright and crediting when I see my work used without a shout out or some acknowledgement that I created it.

In this new era, I believe we need to be having conversations about how to respect the creative work of others while also uplifting it and honoring it – through sharing. Plagiarism is an important thing we teach in school. You can be kicked out of college for plagiarizing someone. I believe we should be deeply considering and having meaningful discourse about “sharing” on social networks. What does “citing a source” look like today in terms of social media?

These insidious little moments of sharing without citing the source might seem silly to some, but I argue they lay the groundwork for much more egregious plagiarism or just straight up theft. Let’s explore a case study that is happening right now and has led me to want to write this article.

LASULA boutique is an online clothing store that seems to cater to both the UK and US markets. It is “home to the latest fashion flashes from across the globe.” 

Based on my research, they appear to make what I call “disposable clothing” that is modeled after whatever some celebrity wore that week. I call it “disposable clothing” because it’s made cheap and fast in developing nations in order to create clothing that is “in fashion” for a moment. It’s not meant to last as it is usually “out of fashion” in a few weeks and you dispose of the items and have to buy more. 

Their online reviews, depending on where you look, range from 5.8/10 starts to 1.7/5 stars; most reviewers speaking to the shoddy quality of their products. But hey I’ve never bought anything from them so who knows.

What I do know, is that they took my design and stitched it onto jeans, used my name in the product description, and sold them for 22GBP (roughly $30 USD) on their website.

I also know that they posted a photo of said jeans on their Instagram, which has 723,000 followers, which earned them 3,329 likes, without crediting or tagging me (gee I wonder why). That doesn’t even include the posts by their paid brand ambassadors. I spoke with one and she had no idea the design was stole and then graciously archived her post. 

To be clear: I DID NOT know about this. I DID NOT give them permission to use my design or my name. I DID NOT sign a licensing agreement. I DID reach out to them via Instagram yesterday and have not heard back from them.*update: I heard from them...more on that in a few days*

Perhaps now you can see why I want discourse around this.

The piece of art I made that is now “famous” I guess, was created when our shitbag president said “grab ‘em by the pussy” on film AND STILL GOT ELECTED PRESIDENT. But that is not when that piece got famous. That happened when celebrities shared it when fuckbag Harvey Weinstein got called out and taken down.

I got over 1,000 requests via Etsy and Instagram from folks who asked me to stitch them one and/or “put it on a shirt” so they could wear the message around. That led me to: create a FREE embroidery pattern so that those thousands of people could stitch their own to wear or gift to others. I also created a RedBubble shop with some products with the design/expression on it so folks could wear it loud and proud – I have always clearly stated that I make NO PROFIT off of this. I donate all of the proceeds (which is like $2 an item because I chose to keep the price point as low as possible for buyers) to the nonprofit Advancing Justice | Chicago. To date, we have raised just over $1,000 for the organization through the sales.

Profiting off of this message and this moment is NOT something I am willing to do. I have been very clear about that. So the fact that LASULA (and many others as you will see below) are stealing my work to attempt to profit off of is UTTER BULLSHIT. They are slapping MY ART onto jeans and are selling them to you as a “fashion flash”… whatever the fuck that means.

They used MY NAME in their product description without my permission…no doubt thinking that was them being “thoughtful” or “citing their source”.

Here’s the deal, I teach classes at Columbia College on how to protect creative works, write licensing agreements and contracts, and how to protect your name, brand, and art. I would be a really shitty teacher if I didn’t use this moment to bring this to light.

I am angry that my art and my name have been coopted to make this company money.

I am angry that they are selling women the idea that a piece of my art that represents the women’s movement should be stitched onto the butt of skinny jeans and paired with “a bodysuit and some boots for the ultimate babe vibe.”

The part that I am grateful for is that I know my rights and I have a digital community that regularly has my back. So many artists do not have that. They are making incredible art and are REGULARLY being ripped off and their work exploited by fashion companies who apparently can’t seem to afford to hire artists.

I MUST stand up; not just for me but for every other creator whose work is being bit-for-profit and their objections aren’t being heard or listened to.  

My website states:

BadassCrossStitch.com™ © 2015, All Rights Reserved Worldwide

What does that mean?

It means that I created this art for you to use to make your own art. If you share your art with the world all you have to do is credit my art too. If you post it on Instagram for example, you would say something like: Pattern by: @BadassCrossStitch – it’s like citing your sources. And you know I’m going to double tap that and share the love! (win/win)

It also means that you can’t sell the work without my permission. Here’s the deal, if you are an independent artist or crafter and you want to stitch a piece or two to sell at a craft fair or on Etsy – you have my permission so long as you clearly state the pattern is mine. I extra approve if you give a portion of your profits to a nonprofit doing great work for women.

No one has my permission to use my work on a large scale (making more than 3 pieces to sell, or any advertising, or commercial applications – you know billboards, t-shirts, jeans, mugs, and shit like that) without my written permission. Businesses, brands, ad agencies, and the like (should know better) and should definitely not be biting my work. That said, I’m totally down to talk about all sorts of applications but it will require a contract, licensing agreement, and dollar bills y’all. 

Cool? Cool. Thank you for supporting and respecting the work of artists! You are badass.

I am not an unreasonable human. I create art to inspire other people to create art. I do NOT create art so companies can exploit my work and profit from it.

Think I’m exaggerating? Check this out:

That is just from a simple google search that took me 3 seconds. I still have $40,000 in student loan debt. You think I couldn’t use the money? OF COURSE I COULD!

*takes deep breath*

My friends, thank you for reading this. The only call to action I have for you right now is to please have an IRL conversation with someone today about this idea. Talk about how you share things on social media. Talk about what you think crediting a creator looks like. Talk about plagiarism in the digital age – what does that even mean? Let’s have conversations around this NOW. Let’s work together to define what we believe is just and equitable.

Thank you. I love you.

Shannon

[robonomics]

Robinhood vs. Wall Street

Yesterday, social media and the news was full of thoughts about the stock market. It all had to do with shares of GameStop and what happened with it over the last couple weeks.

GameStop is pretty clearly in a shitty situation as a going concern. It’s has billions in sales, but hasn’t had a profit in a couple years. Unless it changes it’s brick and mortar business model will cease to exist. It’s main business is game sales after all: just a piece of software that can be digitally transmitted. As a result, the shares have been heavily shorted by tons of hedge funds, making it one of the most shorted stocks on the Street.

Many retail, or mom and pop investors, didn’t see the picture that way. Some even thought that bringing on a new member to its Board, a guy originally from an online pet supplies company called Chewy, would revamp the model back toward profitability. They started making bullish bets, both buying the stock and placing call options. Nothing unique here. Then they went and sold their idea like a salesman on a popular Reddit forum for traders call wallstreetbets. Again, nothing unique here. However, something was different this time about this particular idea. It actually caught on. It then lead to a short squeeze for the hedge funds. What’s that? A short squeeze is where a short position loses (the price of the stock went up), and the seller of the short position has to buy out stock at a higher price than they expected because the options contract ended and they have to deliver shares to the person they borrowed the shares from. Just like that, the little guy outplayed the big guy. It may have had something to do with the fundamentals.

But this is where things went awry. That wallstreetbets forum at some point figured out that if they collectively work together and place tons of call options and buy shares of the stock, it would continue for force another short squeeze come the next Friday expiration (options always expire on Fridays for whatever time period they last, whether weeks or months). Because the stock was so heavily shorted, unlike most other stocks out there on the market, it wouldn’t take much pushing up of the price in order to create a snowball effect. More sinisterly, the faceless, nameless people using Reddit openly talked about how they wanted to manipulate the stock in order to force another short squeeze. Then another. Then another. Unlike normal market manipulation, where a single or small number of people with large leverage push their weight in order to drive a stock’s price one way or another, this was being done by a huge number of little guys. And they weren’t being quiet or tacit about it. They blatantly said what they were doing.

The price of GameStop’s stock went from $17/share on the first day of trading in January to $347/share by January 27th. Nothing at all changed about the fundamentals or information pertaining to the company’s future performance in this time. Sure, maybe some investors became aware of the information about the stock that they didn’t know before. Hey, who’s looking at GameStop on a normal day anyways? But we’re not blind, and the Reddit forum wasn’t quiet about it either. This was pure and unabashed market manipulation. Not even speculation! Just flat out pump and dump. Seeing how high the wave can ride and get out before it crashes.

In the last two days, broker trading platforms, like mine at TD Ameritrade, put a stop to trading in GameStop and various other “meme stock” securities, the group of heavily shorted positions favored by people on the wallstreetbets forum. Volatility was too high to deal with, and I suspect they are worried regulators will soon be down their backs for allowing it to happen, given the high risk that mom and pop investors lose it all, and possibly then some, when the bubble eventually bursts. The brokerages took a beating yesterday for it. The target of all the outrage was Robin Hood, a relatively new brokerage app that is popular with Millennials and retail investors. It’s reputation is for hosting mostly unsophisticated investors attracted by the ease of the platform’s design, making it easy to buy and sell stocks, and importantly options, with zero commission fees. People on the Street refer to stocks popular on the platform as “Robin Hood stocks”, a snub at the stupidity of the cheap investment that only gains in price because of retail investors buying name brands that they know, completely detached from the fundamentals of the company’s future earnings prospects (Hertz, airlines, Nokia... GameStop). I understand that I now sound like a Wall Street snob without the income to back it, but after 20 years of researching stocks and understanding how they work, the analogy to ignorant investors during the Dot Com bubble of the late 90′s and early 2000′s shows why Robin Hood stocks are named with such disdain.

Anyways, retail investors, and populist political pundits were pissed that Robin Hood halted trading. (Robin Hood specifically halted buy or call orders, but not sell orders, which is a fair criticism, but that’s not the main focus of the outrage). The reason: this was the little guy getting even with the big guy, and the so called democratizing force in trading, Robin Hood, caved to the evil hedge funds. While I certainly love a David win over Goliath, this is not the same, at least there isn’t publicly known proof or evidence yet to confirm the suspicions. First off, people who can afford to trade in options tend to be well capitalized given all the margin requirements necessary. Sure, they are still a retail investor, but they aren’t struggling for cash to begin with. So David is usually doing fine financially to begin with, even though he isn’t even close to as big as Goliath.

Outside the comfortable lifestyle most of the traders likely already have, it’s not clear why the particular Goliaths they went after were targeted. Citadel, Citron, Melvin Capital, and the other hedge funds that lost billion from this appear to be grouped together as bad simply because they are hedge funds. What did they specifically do? Well, they are accused of a host of things, but none seem to be specific to them, just to hedge funds generally. It’s an attack on their status. Now I’ve hear a few accusations about these hedge funds, Citadel in particular, front-running orders; that is, having a buy or sell order sent to them to broker a deal for, but then doing the exact order request for themselves and then doing it for the order that was placed with them in order to take an extra cut of money on top of the bid/ask spread they get for commission from their market making activities. Confused? Look it up. Anyways, they are accused of front-running, which is illegal. They were even fined for it in the past by regulators ($700,000 for what I expect was a lot more in profits). Citadel is certainly not playing fairly. They are an evil goliath. The others, I don’t really know, and have not researched too far into.

What I mostly see though, is public justification for one bad act because of the past bad acts of another (Citadel), or another group (hedge funds generally). The little guy got it’s chance to attack the big guy for all the years of its parasitic behavior. And while I don’t have too much sympathy for the goliath hedge funds in this story, I don’t likewise think the traders here are members of the Boston Tea Party. Why is it bad when a goliath manipulates the market, but not when a group of small investors do it? Is it just because of the concentration of wealth? I assume it has to do with the redistributing effects of wealth from the goliaths to the victorious Davids, but the story hasn’t quite ended. The manipulation will eventually stop it’s momentum, and once it does, the people who will be hurt most are the late comer mom and pop retail investors who can’t get rid of their losing shares quick enough. Then the wealth transfer ends up benefiting only the early arrivers, but screws over all the late players to the game. Hell, there’s a good chance that hedge fund will be able to spot the top better and place put orders magnifying their gains on the crazy volatility in the shares. So in the end, it may just be ignorant Robin Hood investors who get screwed because the smarter small players fixed the game to their advantage.

How’s that for democratizing trading? On that point, the whole idea that Robin Hood was wrong for stoping trading because of it’s goal to “democratize trading” is stupid. Robin Hood is new to the game in the brokerage industry. Fidelity, Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade, etc. have all been around for decades. Just because a new player entered the market with a slogan to democratize trading doesn’t mean they did anything revolutionary. In fact, the only thing they did of note was be the first to introduce free trades. Otherwise, everything they do has existed for years. Marketing to millennials better than the existing firms doesn’t mean you’ve democratized Wall Street, it just means you’ve gotten more people to join the club than previously existed. And the club was open to anybody to begin with! So the cries about how they halted trading is anti-democratizing wall street is dumb. To me, it’s a fair attempt to pull the punch bowl as the party gets going to prevent the sloppiness and ensuing hangover the fun lovers have blinded themselves to in the heat of the party.

But we will see how things go in the coming days. I could be wrong.

I’m most interested to see what the SEC and DOJ do with this. Market manipulation is illegal. But is it really market manipulation if a large group acts? Sure, there is always a tidbit of truth to the original decision to buy or sell an eventually price manipulated stock, but we know this wasn’t fundamentals driven trading. But how do you go after a group of nameless, faceless user names in a chat room who’s identities are potentially difficult to come by? There’s a strong chance that silent observers of the Reddit forum got in on the action, so how do you know if they tacitly agreed to the collect action or not? Importantly, how do we stop this from happening again? It may make it scarier for short sellers to pile so heavily into stocks in the future knowing that a group of mischievous investors working together can force a massive snowballing short squeeze on small stocks with relatively low trading volume.

I wouldn’t care so much about this event (so what, a bunch of hedge funds lost billions; I’m not particularly upset). But the strong favorable reaction towards blatant market manipulators upsets me. One bad act is not remedied by another bad act. Two wrongs don’t make a right. That whole thing. I think people have conveniently blinded themselves to what happened because of how good the story of the little guy beating the big guys sounds. But in this case, the little guy is also doing a wrong thing. So they shouldn’t be celebrated, encouraged, and heralded for it. After all, they were simply acting in a way that made them rich, for all the convenient societal righteousness they may claim. But alas, maybe they see themselves as modern day Robin Hoods (even though the “poor” they’re giving to happen to be themselves).

I’m sure there will be cool interesting articles that come out of this event in the future. Maybe even a sweet documentary or episode in a mini series. I’m eagerly awaiting to see what they have to say, especially from an author who actually understands how stocks work and can explain what’s happening from anything but a politicized view.

[ymd3signs]

Best Motivation Article Ever

Hey there, are you trying to find some sweet ass motivation? Well, you're in luck, because I got the foremost awesome, most unoriginal motivational content you've seen 100 times before.

And what does one know? It happens to be 'exactly what you're within the marketplace for. So here is that the ultimate 3-step program for shaping yourself into a winner you usually knew you'll be (despite never actually doing anything to become one).

Okay, a couple of paragraphs are enough for an obligatory intro. It's, nobody reads this shit anyway. Let's dive straight into it so you'll get yourself overvalued for about 20 minutes, then return to procrastinating and reading generic self-help advice which tells you precisely what you would like to listen to. Ready? Alright, let's go.

STEP 1: YOU'RE AWESOME

Do you sometimes feel bad? Are people mean to you? Are you frightened of taking chances and doing what indeed causes you to be happy, so you regularly conform to other people's opinions to suit in? Aw shucks that sound sad.

Don't be sad. Be happy instead. Happiness is what everyone should achieve in life while avoiding stressful situations, uncomfortable emotions, and challenging obstacles. Despite what people that study the human mind and behaviour say, these aren't things that strengthen your mindset, develop quality habits, shape your personality, and cause you to a healthier individual. Some call these people scientists, some call them experts, but their real title is haters.

Important note: Criticism is some things very, very bad. It's not something you'll learn from to enhance yourself. It's not significant if 90% of individuals hate what you're doing. It's not essential if you'll do things differently and achieve a far better effect. Why?

Because you're awesome, everybody is fantastic. If you're alive, you're incredible. You don't become an extraordinary person by doing good deeds, advancing your skills and knowledge, fixing diligence, and developing yourself into a sensible, capable, and exciting individual. Heck no!

If people hate to lecture you and avoid social contact, don't think something could be wrong with you. Maybe you talk too much? Perhaps you're too judgmental? Perhaps you don't have anything important to say? Forget this stuff. Remember, you're fantastic only for being you. You don't have any bad traits. There are not any flaws in your behaviour. there's no room for improvement.

You're perfect just the way you're.

STEP 2: YOU'RE GONNA BE SUCCESSFUL

Do you have a thought for a project? Thinking of writing a book? Starting a business? YouTube channel? Blog? Choose it. I'm sure it's a singular, never-been-done-before idea. And if you think that it'd suck, don't. Your every idea is fantastic because, as we've learned, you're fantastic and criticism is terrible. If you know something from criticism, it might mean that it's not necessarily bad. And that's just crazy.

Statistics say that 9/10 startups fail which almost half they fail because there was no market need for his or her product or service. In other words, nobody was curious about their shit within the first place. But those brave souls refused to concentrate on haters and kept going. The outcome isn't relevant.

Let's pull up some statistics of our own. Spoiler alert – they're getting to blow your mind:

Walt Disney was fired because his boss felt he "lacked imagination and had no good ideas".

Oprah Winfrey was publicly fired from her first television job for getting "too emotionally invested in her stories".

Steven Spielberg was rejected by the varsity of Cinematic Arts multiple times.

Thomas Edison's teachers told him he was "too stupid to find out anything".

Jay-Z couldn't get any record label to sign him.

All these people later went on to become extremely successful and well-known in their respective fields. They didn't hear what others told them and that they didn't let the haters discourage them. They kept pushing until they achieved their dreams.

This, of course, doesn't mean that they failed many, many, repeatedly before succeeding. It doesn't mean that that they had many shit ideas before finding one that was good. It also doesn't mean they're exceptionable people that spent endless hours, months, and years perfecting their craft, thinking of latest ideas, learning and evolving from criticism (although we prefer the term hatorade) and making sacrifices for a far better future.

The only thing that we will learn from these fun facts is that they were just average, ordinary people – such as you. If they might roll in the hay, why couldn't you? If you would like it hard enough, you'll achieve success at some point (regardless of what proportion work you put in).

Why? Because you're awesome.

STEP 3: EASY SOLUTION

Now that we've gotten your blood pumping, brooding about the badass you're getting to become, making it rain within the clubs, living during a mansion, doing what you're keen on, hanging out with celebrities, having a stable (?) personality and a winner's mentality, let's mention the way to get there.

The first step is quite apparent – read articles like this a day. Otherwise, you won't have the mental strength to realize what you would like. I mean, all those successful people's vision and dedication are indeed not enough to motivate them. Merely wanting it's not enough, you would like people like us to inform you that you want it.

So here may be a general outline of our life plan:

Read motivational articles.

?????????

PROFIT!

Now, people that are successful put in thousands of hours working and learning and failing and improving and failing and perfecting and failing and hustling. That's all good for them, but let's be honest – does one want us to inform you ways to achieve something truly? That it takes years, hard work, sacrifice, and adapting new and foreign ideas?

Fuck no. We all know you're not trying to find actual change. That shit's hard. You would like the straightforward solutions, the fast methods, the "5 Steps to Gaining Respect" and "3 Ways to Become a Winner", the "How to urge the simplest Boyfriend" and "6 Best Places for Meeting DTF Chicks".

As Dom Mazzetti so eloquently put it:

“I don't want someone to compliment my life. I want someone to reassure me that my shitty life is adequate.”

And when it involves haters who attempt to offer you all the detailed, scientific-based information on how our minds work and the way to form real change:

“It's an equivalent reason I don't read books because books intimidate me and job my memory how dumb I'm. Why should I waste time getting smarter or making peace with my insecurities, once I can level the playing field and watch Digimon reruns with my [mentally challenged] cousin? That seems like a Saturday to me!”

So don't fret about the haters and experts. We're here to carry you tight, tell you you're fantastic regardless of what, which whatever path you select in life is excellent. As we've established in Step 1, you'll do nothing wrong.

Life isn't about learning from mistakes. It's about disregarding the notion of a "mistake" because you're fantastic.

STEP 4: DO NOTHING

"What's this? Step 4?" – a fanatical reader exclaims. – "But i assumed you said it had been a 3-step solution?"

Well, my avid motivation approval-seeking friend, if you're ready to read through all the shit advice we offer on a day to day without vomiting, then you've proven you'll garbage down anything we throw at you. So let's call this the "Bonus Chapter", which we included because we're just nice like that.

Some writers take time to research and copy what they say…but who the hell has time for that? I can fart out another "Top 10 Reasons You're Awesome" fluff piece in half an hour, and you'd still eat that shit up. You don't care about the standard of the content you read, so why should we?

Have you seen our "motivational content" sites? We've got like 13 different sidebars with subscription boxes, social media links, advertisements, share buttons, and every one the shit we're trying to sell you. Since actual "content" makes up about 15% of any page, I'm surprised you're even ready to find it. It's like playing "Where's Waldo?" whenever you open up a replacement post.

If you did have a winner's mentality, you'd be reading something with actual substance in it (like this or this or this). you'd be working, learning, and improving yourself, not leaving bland comments like "OMG that's so true, I do got to respect myself (because, like, I didn't know that before reading this)".

But you continue to read our unoriginal posts because we tell you what you would like to listen to. We inform you that everything about you is great, and if something happens to be a touch off-balance, you'll fix it in five easy steps. Because if you were curious about changing yourself during a meaningful way, you'd be smart enough to ascertain through our bullshit.

Because if you were fantastic, you wouldn't need us to inform you that.

(Un)Truly Yours,

Every Generic Self-Help Writer Ever

***

P.S. Apparently, tons of you don't realize this text is making fun of generic self-help bullshit. Even worse, a number of you share this thinking it's a real motivational article — probably because you didn't even read the fucking thing.

If that's you, I would like to inform you something. Reading empty motivational articles telling you exactly what you would like to listen to will never get you anywhere. Instead, I've put together a touch ebook which will teach you ways to start indeed improving your life. No bullshit, only proven methods and actions. Click here to get it (it's free).

Like this article? Please share it with somebody who might need it.

[eclair]

Some random thoughts about art and making a living

I should be working but I might have sounded offensive to someone without meaning to. Social media is indeed sometimes a hard place to interact, especially when character count is a limit.

In any case, certain things that frustrate me in my country in terms of performing arts:

* To be a book gigs as a performer, you have to be the most ideal looking as you can and be skilled too. Age can also factor in. Weight factors in. Nobody would believe that I can dance with a hula hoop with how I look. I was able to book some hoop dance gigs in the past when I was in my relatively leaner days. But I’ve gotten rejected because I was too old, too short, too fat, etc for a certain gig. And I was also told that getting me booked for gigs is a challenge because, well, looks and I don’t dance as well as many other people. * Call times can be shitty af. You have to be early but you are not given the space to practice in. You have so little space to change clothes in, do your make up, etc. And you’re running out of time.  * Some will want to book a gig at the very last minute. Or almost the very last minute. Or they book you early but give you so many additional details at the last minute. If you’re doing a performance gig by yourself or if you were doing this full time and your group has a lot of set performances - it wouldn’t be as troublesome. But a lot of my friends and I haven’t really been full time when this happened. Granted that it was a bit doable, tracking this is a bit hard. And yes, the client should have informed us of all the specs as soon as they can in order to coordinate a big group quicker. Maybe it was also inexperience on our end, partly, but still. That’s a bit hard. * The client sometimes wouldn’t understand why there are additional fees or why rates are higher for certain things. Isn’t a performance the same, regardless? Not really, since some performances require special props, etc.  Sometimes you even need one more person to come along as a safety but usually clients would only pay for the performers so you might have to take turns as safeties for each other. * Performers are not always respected. Just because you wear something a bit sexy, you get hit on by some people or treated differently. And it’s just so awkward but you take it as part of the job. Because you can move your body a certain way, it doesn’t mean consent for people to harass you or ask you out. When I was in a gig in a big posh place, we were reminded to not take drinks offered, etc while we were working. Just to avoid any untoward incidents is important.

* Sometimes you don’t even get a talent fee for appearing on tv. Even if they invite you etc, they just give you exposure, a decent meal and a ride home. That’s it.

And when it comes to graphic arts:

* People don’t expect to pay you so much. To be honest, market research on pricing and stuff is hard. It’s like how low can you go versus how high quality can you get when it comes to getting physical merchandise made. And factoring in the time you spend on the artwork itself.

* If someone commissions you to do something, you also end up looking at market prices and how much people generally charge. It’s not like you want to be dirt cheap to get your work out there. But it usually feels like it. Imagine seeing an artist friend sell framed artworks but wouldn’t be willing to pay you a particular amount for yours hurts a lot but I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it. It sucks so much. Or you have friends who are amazing, they open their commissions and their price is honestly so low but they’re also comparing it with other existing prices. You wanna pay them more and sometimes they feel too shy to take your money because they feel they don’t deserve it even when they do. There are also artists who are aware they of their value but they get frustrated because the market cannot see this because of other artists who have undervalued their work.

* Some people have the right connections, the right timing and the market is oversaturated with a lot of artists as it is. Because the market is tiny and there are just so many artists as it is, sometimes if you were able to get there early, people remember you a lot and you could get their attention more. Or if there’s something totally unique about your art and your timing is right, then people would also remember you quite a lot and might flock to you for your style.  

In general:

* The economy sucks and we can all feel it. But yeah, our current local scene doesn’t seem friendly to artists in making them transition into making art for a living. No matter how much a lot of artists I know and love are trying, I personally know a bunch of them who either have day jobs or have other side businesses or small jobs here and there.

* People need to get educated about the value of art. As artists, we could say no when people undervalue us when they ask our rate sheets and negotiate for much lower fees. That is a way to let people know that we value ourselves too. 

* Should artists never ever do things for free? I think artists can do things for free. But it should be something that they strongly believe that they’re ok with doing for free, and it shouldn’t be something that they’d be coerced into at all. They have a choice. If that’s a cause they want to champion, or an event they strongly feel about - why not? 

* We should all get into our heads that artists also need to feed themselves, nourish themselves. If we can’t afford their art, maybe we have friends who do. We could refer these artists to other people who can help support their art. In a way, we could be helping them too, albeit indirectly. 

* If we find an artwork that we like, but cannot afford at the time we find it, we can save up for it. We can follow the artist on their social media and watch out for prints instead of the original piece until we can possibly afford them. I don’t know if there’s an etiquette to negotiating prices for artwork, but really, I don’t want to negotiate lower pricing for an artwork. It feels so awkward. When it comes to commissioned pieces, I get it why some people prefer smaller sized not so complex works because they’re more affordable, or just the right size for their room, etc. But yeah, it feels so weird to negotiate down a price since it feels like putting a low value to the time and effort that has already been made for a piece. If you cannot afford the specific piece you asked about, you could also check their commission rates. If there is a size of artwork + style that you can afford to commission, why not go for that? It will be unique and it will be just for you.

* But also note when commissioning an artist that you might have to think about the details because revisions take time and effort. Usually the artists are transparent about their process. If the thumbnail/study/rough sketch they show you is not quite how you envision the piece, think about it harder and try to describe the details in such a way that they could picture it better. Hopefully this will save you both time and it will be more specific, so this might help make the piece. Artists would usually also mention their terms regarding the number of studies/thumbnails they can make, and also the number of revisions. Please make sure to remember those details and don’t be rude to artists when things are within those terms.

* I know some people have had bad experience/s with commissioning artists too. But please don’t think that all artists are the same. Instead, use that as a way to learn and maybe someday that could help you when discussing the details of a commissioned piece, as well as possible terms before finalizing it. Most artists I’ve met seem to be amenable to discussing details so just open the topic if needed.

* Making art for a living is a valid thing. In this country, it seems that it’s not.  And that’s why I have friends who don’t do it for a living. Or if they do, it’s not full time. Or if they do it full time, they’ve sacrificed a lot. Either they’re young enough to take a risk or something. But really, most people I know seem to do this on the side because of the unstable nature of it. It’s just that we can hope to make a difference by making sure artist friends don’t just get exposure but also get paid for this. If someone’s art has helped you get through the day, if they made you smile, if they made you feel things, why not show it in a tangible way like buying their art, promoting their art, etc? At some point, we’re going to have to do things to also help artists feel they are valued too and if we can start today, let’s do it. Ok?

/steps away now that I am able to explain my thoughts on the matter without a limit to character count

[doomedandstoned]

How To Sell More Merch

~Bacon's Blog~

Photograph by Randy J Byrd

So this is a big one that no one really has mastered but which will completely change the game for your band time and time again – and that is being able to sell merch properly. If you can take advantage of a few hacks your merch game will be dramatically improved and consequently you will find yourself with all manner of new opportunities because your band will have money for things. I wanted to outline these in depth below, but it really comes down to having quality products with good designs that are priced fairly. Then making sure that you have merch bundles to give your super fans the best bang for your buck then you know that you are on the path to real and meaningful success. After all, who doesn’t want their band to make more money?

4. Quality Products Matter!

So this is a big one. A lot of people order shirts that are just designed for shitty promotional stuff like corporate events. This isn’t actually helpful to anyone as the shirts just feel like shit and don’t compel anyone to buy. While I understand that yes, for DIY bands merch is just as much a lifestyle product as it is a piece of clothing, it still can’t be shitty. Even if people aren’t going to wear it they need to feel like the shirt is something they would wear. The same goes for packaging for other products. If the packaging sucks people aren’t going to be interested in it. If you have good packaging though then you are much more likely to entice buyers.

3. Have Good Designs!

This is another key that people don’t understand. Just because your bassist got a degree in graphic design does not mean that you are going to sell merch next to your peers. This is a crucial point people frequently miss out on. If your designs are bad no one is going to want to check out your merch in depth or buy -- especially when you are lined up in a row of merch stands with a bunch of other DIY bands. You want to have the designs that stand out. Let the cost of a good design amortize out though. Essentially, if you spent five dollars a shirt for a hundred shirts, and the design cost you two hundred bucks, you didn’t buy shirts at $5/piece and then spend another two-hundred on a design, you just spent $7/piece on shirts. This is how you gotta view it if you want to optimize sales and think about things in a sustainable way.

2. Find The Optimal Price Points!

There is a lot of testing that goes into finding the optimal price points for your band. I usually like to start with shirts at $20, CD’s at $15, vinyl at $20, patches at $5 and koozies at $5 but this can change depending on your market, genre and region. I don’t have all the answers here but it’s something that you need to think about a lot as you map your path forward. Also don’t be afraid to change price points day to day on tour – who is going to know after all? If your cassette was priced at $7 and didn’t do too well mark it down to $5 the next day. If it did great then try pricing it at $10! See what happens, you can only test and optimize until you find the price people seem stoked to buy it at. Remember, the best price for your band is the maximum price that the market will bear. Try and find that.

1. The Importance Of Merch Bundles!

This is the final big one and the one that separates the men from the boys as it were. Having good merch bundles is crucial if you want to maximize the value that you’re bringing to your most devout fans. These are the people who want to spend more so make sure that you are giving them the most possible bang for their buck. When prepping your merch bundles be sure to keep in mind how much you paid per piece of merch and price with that in mind. Furthermore, don’t be afraid to go for a huge bundle worth $50 or more either – some people might splurge. Also key is the simple fact that stuff like CD’s and patches are so cheap to produce, they are a great add to a shirt for only $5 extra. You need to be cleaning up on the merch bundles because these are your high ticket clients and without them you could be losing money!

Point being I hope these points help – just remember, if your shit is good and you price it right and let superfans take advantage you will make more money!

Matt Bacon (IG: mattbacon666) with Dropout Media is a consultant, A&R man, and journalist specializing in the world of heavy metal. Matt also co-hosts the Dumb & Dumbest podcast with Curtis Dewar of Dewar PR.

[yeah-yeah-beebiss-1]

western vs eastern animation industry. fight.

I’d say it’s difficult to compare them, if only due to the circumstances surrounding the production of different media. Like, late-night anime has dug itself into a hole by depending almost entirely on a small number of Blu-ray sales at a high price - it’s easier to sell 40 copies of a show at $400 for the full season than it is to sell 400 copies for $40 a season. The performance of the TV broadcast run is practically meaningless. But this also means that to even get made, shows often have to pander to the taste of this tiny pocket of big spenders, leading to all these shitty light-novel adaptations.

On the other hand, adult-oriented animated shows in the US get their money in the usual TV route of high viewership leading to higher demand for advertising space. So rather than being molded by what otaku buy, it’s molded by what TV executives think will get high ratings - which is why they’re more likely to back a Family Guy clone or the twenty-seventh season of The Simpsons than they are to back... well, just about anything that isn’t a comedy, really.

Comparing things like Cartoon Network shows to “anime” as a whole is a poor comparison, because when most people on the English-speaking side of the Internet say “anime,” they’re usually thinking of late-night anime rather than mainstream series aimed at kids and families. Something like Spongebob or Steven Universe would be the equivalent of, say, Doraemon or Yokai Watch rather than late-night anime, in that they’re fueled by a mix of ad space and merchandise sales. And there honestly isn’t much of a parallel to America’s enormous market of “big-budget animated features aimed at families,” because said American films are just imported to Japan anyway. You’ve still got yearly movies for things like One Piece and Pokemon, sure, it’s more of an extension of those mainstream series rather than the consistent output of generally-unrelated movies put out by Western studios.

But to sum it up, Sturgeon’s Law. There’s a whole lotta shit wherever you look, the only difference is to how it’s shit. But in the same vein, plenty of creative and well-made content also manages to work its way through the systems and get released on both sides of the globe. Thanks to the Internet, fans of the medium now have unprecedented access to animated content from across the globe - but being able to access everything means that you get to see that it’s about finding diamonds in the rough wherever you look. (That also explains why you get people with misconceptions of anime getting worse over time - it’s not getting worse, you’re just seeing all of it rather than just the good stuff.)

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

Here's what you need to know about those CGI influencers invading your feed

Human influencers like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner might want to secure their positions in the influencer realm before they get ousted by glorified Sims.

That's right: There are now computer generated images that do exactly what human influencers do. There's a human behind each one — coming up with captions and manually generating the content — though it can be unclear who exactly that person is. The financial threads are equally hazy, but you can be sure that someone is making money off of these "people."

According to CBS, the digital influencer market is set to reach $2 billion in the next two years. The scariest thing is just how convincing these artificial influencers really are: 42 percent of people who were following a digital Instagrammer didn't realize it wasn't a real person, according to a recent study by the media company Fullscreen.

SEE ALSO: 'Alita: Battle Angel' is relevant for cyborgs and humans alike

I set out to understand who exactly these new influencers are, and why they exist. That involved interacting with them — or at least trying to. The feeling of being left on read by people who don't exist is a unique one. It also made me feel like they're hiding something. But here's what we know ... so far. 

Rest assured, they'll either save us from the digital malaise we’ve all scrolled ourselves into, or destroy us further. 

Lil Miquela, 1.5 million followers

Lil Miquela, or Miquela Sousa, is a perpetually 19-year-old girl from Downey, California. She has all the necessary ingredients for Insta-success: good looks, flashy clothing, a nonexistent yet bottomless bank account, and a passion for activism. It's easy to forget you're looking at a bot when reading her captions, which are sprinkled with witty remarks and relatable musings. "No lie, I wish I’d been assembled in the ’90s ..." she quips, echoing the very human desire to be from another time. It's part of what makes her so popular — and so uncanny. 

View this post on Instagram

So am I just going to have crushes on everyone this year? That’s how it’s gonna be, huh? Cool, cool.

A post shared by *~ MIQUELA ~* (@lilmiquela) on Jan 4, 2019 at 5:08pm PST

The algorithmic babe was named one of the 25 most influential people on the internet by Time last year, alongside Busy Philips and Logan Paul. (She was the only non-human to make the cut.) It's safe to say the integration of bot personalities into the mainstream has begun. 

In addition to being an influencer, she’s also a singer and merch seller. Miquela has around 52,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. Not bad for someone who doesn’t exist in the physical realm. 

And the merch? Socks from Club 404, Lil Miquela's overpriced swag brand, will run you $30 for two pairs.

But wait a second, why CGI influencers?

Before we introduce more of these new age avatars, it's important to understand how they came to be. Cue Brud. And Cain Intelligence. 

Brud is the LA-based tech startup credited with Miquela's existence. It's described as a  "transmedia studio that creates digital character driven story worlds," whatever that means. Other than that, it's pretty much a mystery. We do know that it was founded by two people: Sara DeCou and Trevor McFedries, neither of whom could be reached for comment. 

Cain Intelligence is even more of a mystery. Founded by Daniel Cain, who may or may not be real, the company is another startup. It describes itself as "the industry leader in Conscious Language Intelligence (CLI), a type of Artificial Intelligence that allows for humans to engage with our specialized robots in free-format, natural language." The website feels bleak and dark, something a villain in a spy movie would create. (It's also pro-Trump.) 

If you're reading this and you're confused, that's sort of the point. Lil Miquela and Blawko, another CGI influencer, are characters created by Brud. Bermuda, also a CGI influencer, was made by Cain Intelligence. Allegedly. But wait: Bermuda now has Brud's Instagram page tagged in her own bio, followed by the message "Look closer"; likewise, Brud's bio identifies Bermuda as a client. Seems like Cain was a marketing hoax to launch Bermuda and her right-wing agenda? As a scheme to get attention for the entire CGI universe Brud has created, it seems to have worked. 

The only person I was able to get in contact with about these three CGI influencers was Jemma Litchfield from Huxley, the creative agency that represents Miquela, Bermuda, and Blawko. In an email, she said she "looked after Miquela." She said they weren't doing interviews, but she'd fact check for me, if I'd like. She didn't offer any clarification about Brud or Cain Intelligence, but instead shifted some sentences around and corrected my first-draft grammar. 

Perhaps the enigmatic nature of Brud and Cain is the reason their influential prototypes have become so successful and so followed. Curiosity today usually leads to a Google search. But when there's no information available beyond what you already know, it can prompt a fascination. Or frustration. 

Anyway, meet Miquela's digital squad: Bermuda and Blawko. 

Bermuda, 133k followers

Bermuda is a controversial blonde known for stirring the digital pot. She's pro-Trump and describes herself as a "robot supremacist." She also once hacked Miquela's page, which gained followers for both of them, pushing Miquela past the 1 million mark, a milestone that opens up a lot of doors in influencer world, including lucrative brand deals with prominent designers. 

Now Bermuda and Miquela are friends who hang out, go to lunch, and put makeup on each other— digitally.

View this post on Instagram

💚💚💚 Decided to give Twitter another try. I’m BermudaIsBae there, too. 💚💚💚 In a great mood today and I hope you all are, too. Mwah!

A post shared by Bermuda (@bermudaisbae) on Nov 12, 2018 at 5:27pm PST

Blawko, 135k followers 

Miquela and Bermuda are joined by another Brud-born character, Blawko, whom they both seem smitten with. Just like Miquela and Bermuda, he offers an eerily authentic personality. He plays video games, goes on dates, and doesn't clean his room. As for the bizarre love triangle between him, Miquela, and Bermuda ... Are we supposed to imagine them in compromising positions? Is this a clear representation of CGI flirtation by default? We're not really sure! 

View this post on Instagram

heaux heaux heaux

A post shared by 🅱️LAWKO (@blawko22) on Dec 20, 2018 at 3:34pm PST

Aside from the Brud crowd, there are other CGI influencers out there in the digital space.

Lil Wavi, 12.1k followers

If you squint, Instagram user @lil_wavi might seem like just another Soundcloud rapper-looking hypebeast, dressed in the latest streetwear and spattered with tattoos. Upon further inspection, you'll see he's a digitally-rendered avatar in human clothing. His graphics give off an edgy early-2000s Sims vibe. Since he "lives in a computer," he can get his hands on expensive pieces of designer clothing that he describes as "the drip" and cites as his main draw. "I’m all about innovation, encouraging creativity, pushing minds to think out of the shitty boundaries," he — or, rather, the unidentified human speaking for him — told Mashable over email. "I want my fans to be influenced in that way. It’s important to me that I am sending positive vibes out to them all." 

View this post on Instagram

Flameboyyyy 🛸🏴‍☠️ yuhhh my $$ fly 💸💸💸 y’all ready for merch?

A post shared by 🛸LIL WAVI🛸 (@lil_wavi) on Jan 28, 2019 at 10:05am PST

Noonoouri, 279k followers

Brand deals and fashion show appearances abound for this influencer. It's unclear how a digital avatar can attend IRL events, but a quick scroll of her page will show her doing just that. Noonoouri takes her role as influencer very seriously. When Vogue Australia asked about her favorite beauty products, she answered, "I love KKW Beauty contour and highlight — they truly work!" Since she's done ads — on YouTube and on Instagram — for KKW Beauty before, it's no surprise that she would plug the products. What's surprising is that a digital persona who looks straight out of a Pixar short is using makeup and getting paid for it. 

Joerg Zuber, Noonoouri's creator, spent several years making her before debuting the influencer on Instagram. A visit to her page suggests she was recently in Africa for a number of fashion-related appearances. And she's from Paris, France, according to her Instagram bio. "I am who I am. If I can help or support others I am very happy. I believe in swarm intelligence. In times like these we need to share and not to hold back," she told Mashable via email. 

"I have a real soul," says Noonoouri.

Image: Joerg zuber

Shudu, 172k followers

Self-identified as "The World's First Digital Supermodel," Shudu was created by beauty photographer Cameron James Wilson as an art project. She blew up when her image was featured on Rihanna's Fenty Beauty Instagram page. In the photo, she's modeling one of the buzzy beauty line's lip products and smizing for the ... computer? Though she's more model than influencer, her likeness is used to sell, too. Shudu doesn't have a personality, per se, but it's because Wilson hasn't come across a human that could do her justice — yet: "Only someone similar to Shudu would be appropriate to tell her story, and really shape who she is as ‘person,’" he mused to Mashable via email. He supports the movement to create more digital supermodels like Shudu: "It doesn’t matter who you are, if you study art and learn how to use 3D programs, you too can be a 6ft tall virtual runway model!" 

View this post on Instagram

Shudu @thesavoylondon trying on beautiful #EEBAFTAs outfits, complete with @atelierswarovski earrings. 6 days to go till she shares #redcarpet looks with you all. . @ee @BAFTA . . #3D #3Dart #digitalsupermodel #worldsfirstdigitalsupermodel #virtualinfluencer #BTS

A post shared by Shudu (@shudu.gram) on Feb 4, 2019 at 11:07am PST

Barbie, 6.2 million subscribers

Here's a familiar face. The uber-popular icon that is Barbie has a digital counterpart, and she's a vlogger. Her first video, in which she introduces herself, went up in 2015. In it, she talks about being from Wisconsin (who knew?) and having a sister. "I've always just been curious about things," she shares earnestly, her huge animated eyes blinking like those of a human YouTuber. Since then, she's uploaded over 75 vlogs, most of which include her sister Skipper and boyfriend Ken, to the YouTube channel owned and operated by Mattel. Barbie is the OG influencer — she's known for doing a million different jobs and having fun while doing them. Why reinvent the wheel?

Balenciaga's digi-models 

While you can't follow these influencers, they're worth mentioning. To show off their Spring 2019 collection on Instagram, Spanish fashion house Balenciaga utilized shape-shifting digital models made by artist Yilmaz Sen. In a series of short video clips on Instagram, the digital models sparked questions about the future of technology in fashion.  With cool haircuts and names like Elsa and Ruben, everything about them screams high fashion. However, unlike human models that walk down runways, these models stand in place and distort themselves like they're made of rubber. Because all haute couture should be shown on computer-generated contortionist models! 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Balenciaga (@balenciaga) on Nov 14, 2018 at 1:53am PST

What's next, then?

Tapping around on these digi-fluencer's pages provides an exciting, if not unsettling, look at the future of technology and the part it may play in pop culture. Some question the validity, appeal, and purpose of these bots. Perhaps it's performance art. Or maybe it's all just an elaborate stunt to leverage consumer action? YouTuber Shane Dawson has a popular video dedicated to uncovering the identity of Lil Miquela. He even calls her on the phone — only to be met with a clearly auto-tuned voice who's careful not to give anything away, or falter at all. 

Liz Bacelar, a tech expert, mused to Forbes that we could potentially find ourselves living in a world in which we all have a digital avatar. And with facial recognition being insidiously installed in mundane places (like gas stations) in order to advertise, secure, and identify us, this may be sooner than we think. Just imagine, we'll be in self-driving cars, scrolling by digitized avatars trying to make us use their discount codes. Or perhaps we'll allow our digitized selves to live for us, like we've seen in futuristic movies like Ready Player One and Wall-E. 

Think of your new CGI friends as the pixelated pioneers of a new, formulated frontier. Who knows? Maybe our human selves could be rendered virtually useless. For now, though, we can just keep an eye on Instagram.

WATCH: Dunkin' and Saucony release running shoe ahead of Boston Marathon

[stralor]

Shitty Gamification

A few years ago, we heard a lot of talk about "gamification". It's pretty intuitive: real life is boring and frustrating -> games are engaging -> make products/ services/ etc. more like games.

Since then, gamification hasn't seen as much publicity.

However, you can see its influence in many industries: it's hiding behind improved customer loyalty programs, social media experiences, and even Unicorn-fucking-fraps.

This makes sense. Much of game development is user experience (UX) development. Games are (interactive) user experience variously in the forms of narratives, spreadsheets, art, and entertainment.

So, naturally, game designers tend to make pretty great UX designers.

What fascinates me, however, is how so many industries have missed the point or failed completely to jump on the bandwagon. What follows is a couple of US-centric examples.

Monopolistic Papercutting Dingleberries

Take, for instance, Albertsons/ Safeway and their million brands. At the moment they're running a "Monopoly"-branded sweepstakes. Basically: buy shit, get tickets, win shit.

Now, the choice of “Monopoly” is, of course, hilarious. The obvious reason I’m amused is because Albertsons was recently under some heat for having too much control over the market (aka, monopolistic powers). Also, Monopoly is a terrible game by contemporary design standards. No doubt, they picked it for brand recognition: it's perhaps the best known board game of the 20th century. But all of this is beside the point.

From a single consumer's POV in the trenches (checkout lanes), I can only imagine that they're losing participants and sales boosts year-over-year; churn is high and replacement rate is nonexistent. Surely the paltry $0.50 coupons aren't seeing redemption beyond dedicated couponers.

I'd love to see the numbers behind the Monopoly sweeps to prove me wrong.

It seems to me to have been designed by some idiotic suits in corporate marketing high-rises who know nothing about actual player engagement. They must have researched as far as an article about how larger prizes create greater sweepstakes player engagement and said, "Fuck it, making a game is easy."

What they've got is painfully menial (not unheard of in games...) while lacking sufficient, regular rewards (whoops, that's the trip; you've gotta do at least one or the other). It suffers from arcane rules like hidden, tiered rarities, and online second-chance sweeps. And it fails to account for human fallibility: even if an active player got that one rare piece they need, will they notice in the monotony of flipping through their collection?

I'm sure someone somewhere thought lower redemption rates were a good thing. In fact, they are not. If no one ever won the prizes on lotto and scratcher tickets, no one would play. Likewise, if no one claims your prizes, you’re not gaining customers who will come back to buy more of your crap.

To Albertsons: Might I point you to the gambling industry and the brilliance of slot machine design? Or perhaps you'll be interested in talking to the mobile F2P giants about Skinner boxes? If you're going to go full skeezy money-grab, you should actually study how to be a piece of shit and do it well.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. That's certainly my opinion and observations as someone dedicated to honing my corner of the craft. Still, I'd be impressed if it weren't floundering this year.

Missed Connection

You know what other experience without a doubt needs a UX overhaul?

Airports and airlines.

Talk about missing the gamification bandwagon. From customer acquisition & retention, ticket purchases, obscene post-purchase legal agreements, TSA checkpoints, the in-flight experience, baggage claim, and customs, it's a shitshow.

I love to travel. I'm one of those rare people that even enjoys the monotonous moments.

I hate everything about having to take a flight.

Airlines feel like they're stuck in 1950s, despite the fact that flying was supposedly more pleasant back then. Cookie-cutter marketing, bland presentation, and peaks of stress in-between a general sense of arduousness:

It's got more rough spots than a sun-blasted hobo sleeping on granite.

No user reward cycle in the short loop

Everything feels like a punishment, without regard to user input or choice

Corporate interests > the service provided

Little to no user agency or engagement

Worse latency than Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle-Cars (heh, sorry Psyonix — that game was actually a gem... for local splitscreen)

And the only interesting aesthetics are: other travelers, clouds as-seen-through-tiny-ass-windows, advertisement posters selling more garbage, various hues of biege or gray decor, and the rare piece of architectural art

Need I continue?

Here's the point, folks

Gamification is here and it makes life pleasant. It's a tool, it's fucking effective, and it's here to stay.

Like any tool: it can be used for evil and it can be used like a dolphin with a pickaxe (poorly). None of that stops it from being effective or being wielded for perfectly good reasons by everyone else.

At least take the time to get a feel for its heft and balance.

Pat out.