#this site and social media in general boil down to like

[shaanks]

while there are definitely like. insufferable people on tumblr (as there are anywhere else that human beings post their thoughts, Annoying is one of the core human conditions), like. I feel like the loss of the Curate Your Own Experience rule has really trapped people into thinking that their poor experience is part of the immutable framework of the universe and not like. a condition of the people and blogs they're following.

if all you log on and see is like. awful opinions and "tea blogs" and things that piss you off and shit that is openly bigoted and guilt-trip content designed to make you moralize not doom scrolling like. unfollow those people?? you do not have a blood pact with random blogs on tumblr dot com. if someone posts exclusively about things you hate or says awful shit about your demographic or your ship or your favorite color like. unfollow them. block them. block posts. block tags. curate your own experience.

sitting around in a fog of malaise pining after a version of the internet that has been dead for at least a decade (and really only exists in the mis-remembrance of nostalgia anyway) will not change the way things are now. only you can do that. by not following people that say shit that shaves years off your life, and finding people you do have community with--or at least that you would WANT to have community with.

there are literally millions of open chairs to choose from. do not sit next to assholes. or at least, if you choose to consistently sit next to assholes, own up to what that's gonna make your dash look like.

[dino--draws]

para!Place and para!Ilse Relationship Headcanons — because I am mentally ill. Also I slipped in a little short written character exchange too

Tbh I think para!Place got manhandled as hell when brought to Site-43. That man was in complete shambles, frightened and sobbing his little heart out. No one is listening to what he’s saying, he can barely hear them over the ringing in his ears. They can’t wrangle him down to get the eyedrops in and end up having to sedate him to avoid 001-A killing the man. This is a horrendous first impression 

Fun fact?? Ilse was only a Year out of the incinerator when the Paradox hits?? She’s not doing too hot.

So they see this frightened, alone man and Majorly see themselves in him. She’s projecting when they first start trying to reach out and connect with him. And he vaguely knows of her from parascientific journals and such, which is better than knowing Nothing (see: not knowing a damn soul in 43)

para!Place is touch adverse as all hell due to the previous shit and para!Ilse is a very touchy-feely person due to being touch starved and this does clash a little initially

They keep trying to physically comfort him or just in general put a hand on him and it makes him flinch a handful of times. He’s bad at communicating discomfort but they pick up eventually and start asking permission 

Place takes a while to warm up to Ilse, but they both end up mutually latching onto the other. He tends to tail her like a lost dog because Ilse knows the site better at first

Him getting injured by 001-A and Ilse helping in his recovery majorly grows his trust in them back when they were still warming up

They are both so mid socially. Ilse stands too close to people and talks a bit too loud, Place will stare at you with wide eyes in dead silence

After a while Ilse ends up as like the only person on site that Place lets touch him, because he knows they’d never hurt him. :))))

You will often find them passed out in one of the labs curled up against each other.

They could have some sort of queer platonic relationship going on. Its moderately co-dependent and theyre not sure what to define it as but they act close. Its just all platonic

Place tells Ilse about all the stuff pop culturally and more mundane that they missed while in the Incinerator. Oh and books. TV shows. Movies. Media themes and modern tropes. They are usually very baffled or confused but the two of them loooove to yap its enriching for em.

They have moderately incomprehensible parascience discussions. They do not always Agree parascientifically and sometimes butt heads, but they respect the others opinions

AND THEN EVERYTHING GOES TO SHIT WHEN NGO DIES AND PHMD STARTS ISOLATING HIMSELF AND BREAKING UNDER THE PRESSURE ✨✨✨

He shuts out everything and everyone, gets some asinine shit thats been boiling under the surface in his mind this whole time and starts to crumble mentally.

It worries the Fuck outta Ilse, because they notice when he starts to deteriorate both physically and mentally but still can barely pry anything from him. They’re the one that prompts the “better story” line from him. 

They get Really strained 

When he abandons the timeline, when she realizes what he’s done and what he’s going to do, they are god damn furious.

Stealing this from Kiku, but Ilse basically jailbreaks her TAD jumpwatch and manages to jury rig it to follow him after some time passes. Taking the Cannon fucked everyone over, and they want fucking answers to what he’s doing.

She’s not going to like those answers.

Other tangential headcanons for these two

para!Place occasionally goes nonverbal. Sometimes stress related, sometimes he just Doesn’t feel like it. He’s gesture heavy or can use a text to speech to bridge gaps from time to time.

para!Ilse loves to draw. They’re mid at it at best and the drawings come out looking more like scientific diagrams, but they love to draw things that she sees in a little book. She looks back on the doodles she did of the outside world before the paradox with solemn nostalgia.

phmd has a damaged little rubiks cube but he struggles with it because half the colors are hard to see now with the red monochromacy 

Here actually have a little drabble because I am insane fun fact:

“How can you even solve that thing, with the monochromacy?” Ilse’s voice cuts through a silence that had previously only been broken by a quiet clicking. Placeholder jolts, and looks over at her. He’s sat on the lab’s floor, back against the wall, Rubik’s cube in his lap.

“Ah— well,” he rubs the bandages on his arm, winces, “truth be told, I can’t. The only colors that are still differential are these two—“ Place taps a darker square, and a pale one, “—blue and white, I think? I don’t remember well what they looked like.” The eyedrops make his vision blurry, anyhow. He can scarcely see, between them and the Paradox’s sensory effects. 

“So what’s the point?” There’s a shifting of fabric as Ilse plops down heavily next to him, adjusting her glasses on her nose. They’d long since popped out the lenses, but kept the frames for ‘nostalgia’. 

Place shrugs, “I like the sounds. I… I need to do something with my hands, HEAR something, or I fear I’ll go batty down here.”

“I can’t stand the silence either,” Ilse nods, she traces a circle on the tile with her finger, “the Incinerator was dead silent for all seventy-eight of those years, if I have to stand another second I may snap.” They give a harsh, bitter sort of laugh. Placeholder frowns,

“I… I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. If this shitfest is anyones fault, it’s Dougall’s, not yours — no matter what he tried to imply.” Ilse would almost rather this hell over their previous, if not for the fact this one affected more than just one person.

“…at least the Cannon works.” Placeholder sighs, “its given the others hope.”

“You say that as if it didn’t give you any,” Ilse arches her brow, “did you ever ask future you anything about what his situation was?”

Placeholder looks away. 

“Place?”

“I don’t remember. Our conversation fades more by the day. But I think he sounded… tired.”

“If YOU’RE saying someone sounded tired, it must’ve been bad.” Ilse frowns, they tentatively reach over to him — a silent ask of permission — and he nods. Ilse gently grasps his shoulder, tugs him closer and Place leans up against her, knees curling up to his chest. 

“And speaking of, you should rest, Place.“

He exhales softly, eyes drifting downwards.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

[e-leohiss]

"Here lies..." || A John Price fan-fiction

Author’s note: This is drama and my first fan-fic of Peepaw. As of now I'm not sure if I'm worth taking requests. Personally, John Price is the most comfortable character to write but I do want to write the others too.

Others being Konig, Simon, Johnny, and Kyle.

**PLEASE DO NOT translate, repost, or in any way reformat my work on this site and on any other social media

~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~~***~~

Title: Here lies...

Main characters: John Price x F!reader Contains: Drama, heartbreak, broken marriage Wordcount: 2.2k Song link: My Mind (slowed & reverb) - Yebba

~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~***~~~~~~***~~

Exposition:

John returned home with a new woman that his wife hardly knew about.

But she’s heard of her husband’s affair with another.

Her husband is a busy soldier, constantly absent due to his line of duty. He would only be home for 2 weeks at most–once almost nearing a month. To think the day had come that he would bring his new lover to their home. Did John even consider this as his home? 

His poor wife doesn’t think that he does. Not when he had just returned only to be leaving with duffel bags in hand filled with the rest of his portable belongings that he packed minutes ago.

As she gazed at both her husband and his muse, innards boiled whereas her exterior was passive.

She blamed herself the most, the ruin of their marriage. 

~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~

Who knows how a woman would react if she saw the personification of her heartbreak before her person.

‘How do you kill your lover without killing yourself?’ A woman thought to herself. She stood still, and so did her heart. What could possibly be going through her head to become so still? 

It didn’t appear to be the “calm before the storm” kind. No. She was the unsettling aftermath of the disaster. 

Jonathan Price stood in front of her–stood between two women. John wasn’t looking at her. Instead he firmly stared at the floor. He chose to be a coward than to look her in the eyes as he spoke blunt blades of poison.

She broke her stillness to cut him off, “Jonathan.” He paused, but still refused to look her way. The new woman behind him shifted her eyes between the couple, discomfiture transparent on her face.

The heartbroken woman continued to focus on the visitor’s face; a tinge of satisfaction sparked in her when she noticed the new woman’s shoulders caving in from unease. ‘At least this one is looking at me,’ she thought.

Her low, toneless voice spoke again, “End this.” Jonathan’s head dipped down and heaved a generous amount of air through his nose. It took him a few seconds, but she saw the white sheets of paper in his grasp. Her limbs moved on their own accord. She lightly took the sheets from his hands and walked to the study to get a pen. Jonathan followed her a couple paces behind, his steps heavy and slow. As if it were the ticking seconds of a clock counting the duration of the dying home.

She placed the documents neatly on the desk as she sat feeling her muscles lose their strength by the second. Hell, the words seemed alien-like. She couldn’t read the damn content of the sheets. Her eyes skipped to regard the blank lines that remained unsigned. From within, more fragments fell off that made her chest more hollow.

She felt herself perish further.

Why would she sign it first?

She didn’t want this marriage to end. She did her best to nourish it. Thoughts of her husband always filled her mind. She would never seek feelings from another, not when she had Jonathan as hers.

But Jonathan did not think of her the same way. He did not think of his wife’s awaiting arms back home. He didn’t think of the constant worry his wife would always endure while he was away.

He did not remember his loving wife. 

There were no lies in their marriage and it was only now that she came to terms with those odious facts. Jonathan didn’t love her, not anymore.

And so it is.

Jonathan entered the study wrapped in solemnity. His face, however, stoic. Well, he was drenched to the bone with a captain’s ego, one of the traits she respected about him, and she still did up to this moment.

She placed a pen on top of the sheets. Jonathan understood immediately–a signal for him to make the first move. With three long strides he stood by the desk, pen in between his strong fingers. Her body stilled again when Jonathan’s hand raised but stopped midair. He readjusted the pen in his hold, his mind ran which caused him to falter.

“Dear–” he began, but his words got caught when he finally looked her way. He took in the sight of a broken woman. He couldn’t recognize his wife anymore. It’s like the color from her body faded into shades of gloomy greys. She would’ve looked serene in the yellow glow of the desk lamp weren’t it for the apparent wreck in her eyes and posture. Then her eyes laid on his. There it flickered: resentment. The tired look on her face crumpled as the corner of her lip raised.

“You should damn well treat her far better than you did me. Do you understand me, Jonathan?” Her silvery voice is tight. There it was, spoken anger. “She doesn’t deserve to feel this way–failure as a wife.” 

She placed her wedding ring on the desk with such care that it looked graceful to the speechless Jonathan, who had yet to sign the papers first. “In another life, I could have probably given you the family you deserved,” her voice cracked and her chest swelled with gradual pain at the sensitive topic. 

“How I wish I could provide that for you right now, John. But, nothing. I’m sorry.” 

She wanted to yell at the woman standing in the threshold of their home that she would not take him away from her. She refused to let another muse earn Jonathan’s attention; her role as his wife, as his equal. ‘You won’t take him away from me,’ she wanted to swear. ‘May these promises be written on stone, how much I want to remain by his side, by my John.’

Her mind went off alarmingly, ‘Damn her. I won’t leave him. Not John.’

Yet no such arguments came out from her.

How could she, when she blamed herself the most for her shortcoming as a wife.

A defect, unable to make John a father.

“I’m sorry we ended up like this. I’m sorry for hurting you so much when I vowed to put your happiness first.” Jonathan spoke thickly. He gulped, then surprisingly took a knee by the seat she sat on. “Our marriage may not have worked the way we promised it would, but I will take our memories together till the end of the line. I’ll always be grateful for your constant patience and effort. In another lifetime, we…” Jonathan’s words hung in the silence of the night as the endless possibilities ran in his head. Anything could have happened.

“If it makes you feel any better…curse, yell, scream, hurt me,” he said instead. “You can do whatever to lessen the pain–”

Her hand cupped his bearded jaw softly. With words full of conviction she said, “I won’t do that to you. Never you, John.” She smiled. She had the audacity to show him a smile.

The stoic mask of Jonathan Price fell apart the longer he looked at his wife. The longer he observed her the more he was convinced that a saint sat before him.

His left hand found itself atop hers to place it against his cheek. His rough digits massaging her smooth ones. “I don’t…” John whispered, his voice wavered with no trace of the soldier they knew him to be. He groaned, expressing his displeasure.

However, with a new-found purpose he stood and signed the papers quickly. He held up the pen for her to take, his face facing the other direction. Again with avoiding. She took the pen delicately. It took her a moment to follow-through but, at last, her signature appeared on the opposite side of John’s.

Her stare locked on the sheets that John collected hastily, his feet rooted to his spot. ‘Move. Move. Move.’ He chanted in his mind. 

“John,” the meek voice of his ex-wife called to him. He peered down at her seated form. Maybe it was the glass paperweight on the desk, or the picture frame, but something shattered. 

John bent down to capture her in his arms. Her body racked with pure heartbreak. Tears of blood could’ve been mistaken for the thick tears that cascaded down her cheeks. She cried so bitterly the back of his eyes boiled as he cradled her head on his collar.

Words tumbled out her mouth, “I hate you. You lied. Don’t leave me, John. John, please,” she begged, fisting his shirt. He pulled her tighter against him.

“I’ll always protect you, love. I’ll always put your safety first. Remember that. This, I swear. Don’t forget that.” He said to her with intensity as she kept calling him a liar.

“I have to go. Always take care of yourself. Put yourself first. I’m so sorry, dear.” And with one last kiss to her wet cheeks he unclasped her hands on his shirt and left the house, signed sheets crumpled in his fist.

He left her again, only this time it was painful. It was the last.

The woman waiting outside the door recoiled as the door slammed shut. John stood with his back to her and his head low with the doorknob forcefully in his grip. He didn’t wait for her as he began to walk towards the car. The woman felt the atmosphere shift when he walked past her. It was burning, and menacing. 

He hurriedly threw his bags to the backseat before stepping into the passenger seat. The woman moved swiftly, getting on the driver’s seat and revving the engine to life. She’s taken by surprise when he suddenly pounded the side of his fist onto the door. John’s breathing was deeply filled with aggravation as he tried to forcefully control his temper. 

“John?” She addressed the soldier without looking in his direction. “Step on it.” He seethed roughly as he glared out the window. With no further questions, she does as she’s told and stepped on the gas. 

John Price was known for being stoic most times, flashing a close-lipped smile occasionally, but how that changed when a silent tear trailed down his cheek. He had just left the love of his life back home drowning in despair. She wasn’t his wife any more and that made the damage in him a thousand times worse. 

================================================

An umbrella in hand, the sky wept sorrowfully as you.

Your mind flitted back to when Laswell appeared once again at the threshold of your home.

“I’m sorry we hid the truth from you.”

Who would’ve thought that the woman from before would be standing outside your home–your new home of almost a year–saying the most shattering news to you. You swallowed thickly. Mind still not fully comprehending the amount of information that Laswell had told you. 

“It was never supposed to be this way. However, a previous enemy had threatened to hunt you down in exchange for John executing his wife,” Kate took in a breath. “For the life of me, I don’t know how he knew that John had a wife. Turns out we had a mole who found John’s file and broke into his office.” Kate pulled out a picture from the folder she brought, a picture of a foreigner and a soldier wearing the familiar U.S uniform. The words began to construct in your head and they got heavier the more you listened.

“He managed to threaten John a couple of times but we weren’t convinced, calling it a bluff. Roughly a year before John and you…he was threatened once again, but this time we couldn’t risk it. Which led him to decide that cutting ties with you would be the best diversion.” Kate’s voice became softer as she continued. 

“We also had to convince you, so you wouldn't set foot at base. Rumors were spread about John having a different woman back at base so the mole wouldn’t discover your real location–” 

“Where’s John?”

Kate’s eyes snapped to yours when you spoke up. She noticed the atmosphere around you had changed. “When will he be coming here? No – when can I see him? I’m sure the mission’s done because you’re here.” You held your hands together, begging Kate to see how much you want to see John again. 

“I want to see my husband again. Please, Kate.” 

You continuously begged, and with that Kate’s shoulders appeared to sag from the pressure. She did not know how to tell you the terrible news. 

“You are a liar,” you said to John. “A horrible one.”

Chin quivered with another sharp intake of air. Nose is clogged, cheeks tear-stained, skin cold, eyes swollen and red rimmed. You kneel on the wet ground, sitting on the heels of your feet. You rearranged the flowers by your knees.

“You don’t like flowers, dear. Nothing to worry about this time though.” A choked laugh slipped through but vanished as another set of sharp breaths racked your lungs. John’s dog tags clinked against each other from the motion. 

“How I miss you, my love, it hurts.” Your fingers dig into the soft soil, reflecting your vulnerable state. “Wait for me. This time I won’t let you leave me so easily.”

The handwritten letter that came with all of his belongings burned in the back of your mind. The last paragraph you could recite word-for-word.

‘This is the only way, love. How I wish it wasn’t. But for you, I’d do anything. Even if it means leaving you in exchange for your protection.’

‘HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY 

CPT. JONATHAN PRICE 

BRITISH SAS

1985

PRESENT YEAR’

And soon, a new gravestone settled right beside it, with your name, year of birth and death. The promise written in stone.

‘WIFE OF CPT. JONATHAN PRICE’

~~end~~

[transmutationisms]

do you think that the notion that ppl w eds are able to make other ppl with eds "sicker" (esp in communities like edtwt/blr) holds true?

this is common in 'explanations' of eating disorder etiology that basically boil down to some variant of a social contagion theory. i've said before that i think it's a bit unserious to try to make a rigid distinction between 'behaviours that are learned and transmitted socially' and 'behaviours that are arrived at by pure individual discovery'—like, we're social beings; nothing about us is exempt from that. and it's certainly true that people who are already engaging in eating disordered behaviours can easily be triggered by one another, learn new behaviours from one another, &c, & that this can occur online as well as in person.

but when i hear a lot of people's fears about ed and 'pro' online spaces, there's often a pretty fundamental disregard for the fact that these are social settings a person has to seek out on purpose (the same cannot be said for, eg, an ed ward of a psych hospital, which is another major site of 'eating disorder contagion'!) and people in these spaces stay in them for a reason. it's worth noting there's often a parental fantasy here that a child's eating disorder can simply be 'cured' by removing the malign influence of such an online community—with little willingness on the parent's part to question how their own beliefs, eating habits, and general treatment of their child may be contributing to the child's need to engage in the disordered behaviours.

it's also true that there is a genuine harm reduction function of some parts of these online communities, much like many other patient / sufferer communities. in general, i would say the severity of a person's eating disorder depends on the circumstances of their life (access to food, access to fat liberationist politics, the stressors / anxieties that may have contributed to them engaging in the eating disorder behaviours in the first place) rather than on peer communities or social media. to me there are much more serious problems with online ed spaces, like the fact that they are white supremacist (because the valorisation of thinness is itself part of how whiteness has been constructed and bolstered) & trade on those aesthetics. or the ableism that is, again, a structuring force here. it's honestly a travesty that talking frankly about eating disorders is so dangerous for sufferers that it often gets relegated to these spaces.

[sunfoxfic]

A lot of pro-TikTok arguments boil down to this notion of accessibility on TikTok - that video content is easy to pay attention to and therefore good. Without getting into the complexities of the way that TikTok is inaccessible (and really, predatory to disabled people) in many ways, another reason that this notion of accessibility is a myth is because no single type of content will be accessible.

Yeah, a video can have subtitles and audio descriptions (and let's pretend for a minute that TikTok does have audio descriptions, and that the subtitles on TikTok are generally adequate - which they're not, but that's beside the point). But some people still won't be able to enjoy video content no matter what, or maybe they can't enjoy video content for very long.

If TikTok were trying to fill a niche then it would be one thing, but the way modern social media is set up just doesn't really let them fill a niche - every social platform is trying to be The Only Social Platform. It wants to be everything. It wants to suck you in and never let you leave.

I'm not trying to single out TikTok as the only example of this phenomenon, because TikTok is a lot like every other platform. Twitter also does this, but instead of video content, it's microblogging (with some allowances for pictures and video). Instagram does this with images. Etc.

If there's only One Type of Content supported on a platform, and that platform is trying to corner the market, then no matter what that Type of Content is, it will be inaccessible. Variety is the spice of life and all that, but more importantly, no type of content is accessible to everyone.

I'm not saying Tumblr supremacy for the sake of Tumblr supremacy - even Tumblr is ultimately geared toward text, and has a lot of problems - but Tumblr's support of other types of content is much higher than you see. It doesn't compartmentalize different types of content into different portions of the app/site (except Tumblr Live, but that's another thing). It supports image ID's without much hassle (although admittedly Twitter does the same). As someone else pointed out, Tumblr is one of the only "mainstream" social media sites that supports audio without video. Even culturally, it's very typical to see video transcripts below videos, and people who add on image descriptions in the content of a reblog when it's not available embedded in the image.

Ignoring all the other accessibility issues on major social platforms (inability to filter content, reliance on apps when many people can't adequately use apps, the dopamine trap), the general pursuit of becoming The Only Social Platform alongside the way most platforms do not adequately serve to host more than one type of content makes any platform in this zero sum game inaccessible, and I think TikTok really epitomizes that issue.

[mybiasisexo]

https://www.tumblr.com/mybiasisexo/745260650725572608/hi-hope-u-had-a-great-day-can-i-just-vent-for-a

My advice for OP: you should stop using/reading any kind of social media where ‘fans’ are posting to avoid these kind of rumours or whatever they are… I don’t know about what solo stans saying or ppl saying in general about the concert, the members, etc. because I filter them. For my own good and wellbeing. I get you’re frustrated but it’s not your problem but theirs. Just chill, relax, don’t read twt or other sites where toxic fans are. I do it so I’m out of any unnecessary drama 😎

to add on (which they def was stating nothing but facts), idk how people can solo stan a group like exo esp. i thought we chose biases and got wrecked by other members later on. idk how they just pick one and go with it 😭😭 which they deserve the support even from solo stans but yea some of them gon have to calm down about the members relationship w other members

Fair. Curating our timelines to keep out all the negativity is the smart move, but it is sometimes easier said then done. Lord knows I’ve stumbled upon stupid ass takes that had my blood boiling. In those instances I either rant on here or to my poor cousin lmfaoooo

And we all know Twitter is the WORST when it comes to negativity 🙄🙄

Nah fr. Solo stans aren’t exol-ing right! Idk how you can discover one of the boys and not end up in love with all of them it make nooooo sense!!!! But alas, there are some strange ppl on the internet lolol

It’s such a strange hill to die on, but go off ig solo stans 😬

[nickgerlich]

When Life Hands You Lemons

The semester is starting to wind down these days, especially for my grad students, whose term lasts only 13 weeks. It may seem like it is long at times, but it really is fast. And like many other semesters before, we have been treated to some very newsworthy, sometimes amusing, other times anger-inspiring, events that cause us to stand up and pay attention.



Like the ongoing worries over TikTok and whether it should be banished not just in individual states and on their government-owned devices, but nationwide. Australia just announced its complete ban on government-owned devices. In the US, in a rather odd come-together moment for the Right and Left, there is momentum to ban it here as well.



It’s just that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has more ammo in its case. The top apps right now for lifestyle and video editing are owned by them: Lemon8 and CapCut. Take that, you pompous lawmakers. We’re not just going to roll over and die.



CapCut is a handy tool for creating the reels that users post to TikTok or elsewhere. I only learned about it this last weekend from my oldest daughter, who said that “everyone’s using it” at the digital marketing agency she calls her professional home. Me, I use Mojo, which, for all I know, could be owned by ByteDance as well. She says it is much better than Mojo. I messaged Oldest Daughter yesterday about CapCut’s owner, and I could almost hear her gulp all the way from Dallas.



And then there’s Lemon8, the new social media app that is designed to take on both Instagram and Pinterest. But in the case of Lemon8, it’s only new to the US. Launched in 2020 to little fanfare, ByteDance kept it in limited circulation until now.

And now we know why.

Lemon8 is not an exact Instagram clone, however, focusing—at least for now—on fashion, food, wellness, and travel, among other general interest topics. Like BeReal, it shuns pretense, and urges users not to stage photos like many we see on Insta. The site also encourages users to include direct links to where viewers can buy featured products.

My question now is whether a ban on TikTok would also include a ban on Lemon8 and CapCut. And even if it does, what’s to stop ByteDance from continuing to roll out new apps to dodge federal bullets? Will it boil down to banishing all Chinese-owned apps, like Pinduoduo and Shein? This could lead to war, you know.

Which makes me begin to wonder if all this pomp and circumstance, this drum-beating, is an exercise in futility. Short of erecting a massive firewall around us, like the Chinese do to keep out western media, there’s little that can be done. Worse yet, it leads to frustrations among the people, especially when we live in a place that espouses First Amendment rights and freedoms. Fire up the VPN, as I have said before, and hope you don’t get caught. I hear that Chinese citizens can be in serious trouble if they do so. The last thing we need is a similar clamp down.

The other part of me wonders how people can continue to absorb so many social media sites. I am not opposed to the development of new ones at all. It’s just that there are still only 24 hours in the day, and I have a hard enough time just attending to Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. I have work to do, you know. Heck, my LinkedIn looks like a ghost page. I guess if I were looking for a job, I’d hop on it.

All of which means we are continuing to slice the market into ever smaller pieces, and as long as it can be done profitably, new sites will continue to roll out. Stir on the controversy of Chinese ownership, and Ima gonna have things to write about for a long, long time.

Let the user beware. There may be someone in Beijing looking over your shoulder.

Dr “But Still I Must Check It Out“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[elipseon]

@staff​

I usually stay fairly quiet because things are otherwise working the way I expect and like them to. However this myriad of idiocy of changes is certainly showing you're not paying any attention to the actual majority of your userbase. I already see you turned off replies on this post, and people are either reblogging with commentary like this or flaming you in the tags for the trouble.

So I pray you actually have a brain cell or two to read those tags and reblogs of actual feedback that are quickly proving your users actual opinions on this. I also hope you're not assuming all those little hearts on this post are for the original, as many are for reblogs like this tearing into the absolute travesty you're trying to commit.

Like many other artists I've noticed in the tags I'll give some feedback to this dumpster fire you're trying to light.

Tumblr's literal top marketed differences from other social media are boiled down to the LACK of forced algorithm, the reverse-chronological dashboard, and being able to CURATE your feed to what you specifically want to see.

The happy bonuses are being able to PREVENT excessive email notifications, see people you follow reblog the same post with different tags while enjoying the humour, and overall customize your experience.

You're going to hurt small creators and niche ones with an algorithm, completely piss off the massive Roleplay community of writers by messing with their dashboard in any way, and generally just make many users leave the site.

And if they don't then the add-ons you allow and maybe even don't allow for your site will get functions added onto them to fix your "improvements".

Like many others, I'm going to emphasize the fact that you really need to instead be fixing:

The Search Function to improve blogs discoverability

The Tag Function to prevent the bots from spamming unrelated tags to their posts

Improving your Anti-Bot set up to stop all the damn Porn Bots

Those three things are what you should really be focusing on first before you get it in your heads that the minority of your userbase wants Tumblr to be like every other social media. People come here to personally curate what they see on their dash for their own experiences, and because they like that tumblr is not like every other social media.

If you can't see that @staff, then there really is a bigger problem here with you. The ones asking for tumblr to change are a vocal minority, who I swear are losing the ability to have critical thinking on their own, and you really shouldn't be listening to them.

And while I understand that you need to make revenue on this site to keep it running, pissing off the actual majority of your users in one massive planned update like this will only put you in the same position as Twitter is. If not to the destination faster. It's a literal contest of how stupid you want to be fucking with what has been your literal brand difference for your side for over a DECADE.

I am praying that your team is actually reading the real feedback here and not disregarding it.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[stevensavage]

No Sympathy For Tech

So as you may have just seen, some insiders at big companies (Zuckerberg, etc.) sold off stock. That tells me the sign that things are slowing down in tech. Well, one of many signs:

Everyone’s all in on AI, which means that there is going to be some shakeout when it doesn’t all work out.

Plenty of sites that are a little unstable, like ol’ Kotaku’s pivot (ha!) to guides.

Whatever embarassments crypto still holds for us.

Venture Capital looking for quick profits (See Ed Zitron’s latest).

This tells me that at some point we’ve got a shakeout in tech. As in something bad - and something earlier than I expected. This isn’t a surprise - for the last six months I’ve seen people make predictions that boil down to some combination of:

A big name takes a hit.

A lot of not-as-big-names fail because of a mix of bad ideas, low ad rates, and so on.

AI doesn’t pan out like people hope.

General enshittification.

VC money moves away fast.

I’ve been trying to puzzle out what’s going to happen myself. But there’s something else I want to address - how people react. See, I think there’s going to be little sympathy, and plenty of schadenfreude when the inevitable “big fall” happens.

People regard tech different than they did ten years ago or twenty years ago. Sure there’s some interesting stuff, but it’s often pricey, questionable, or not much more beyond interesting. Beloved sites are enshittified. Nothing seems new, often because it’s not.

Gone are the days of breathless waiting that felt like there was something worth waiting for. Ads are everywhere, websites are overclogged, products might be fourth-rate knockoffs with AI generated images. New gizmos ape SF concepts while planned obsolescence takes the fun out of the new. Annoying bad features are a joke among social media users.

A friend of mine of well over two decades has noted they feel things were better back when we first met.

So when the “big fall” happens, in whatever forms (I expect a kind of cascade collapse), I think people won’t care and many will enjoy watching things burn. When they do care it’ll be more how they’re personally impacted for obvious reasons - but there’s so much less “loving tech together” these days.

That’s also going to make everything from economic recovery to new products to potential government regulations harder to predict. Watching people fall out of love with tech (and tech has done plenty to shoot itself in the foot) isn’t quite like anything I’ve seen in my life except one thing.

Watching how the reputation of smoking collapsed in my lifetime. No, it’s not exact - tech has benefits smoking’s benefits were mostly social, but still the “feel” is there.

Perhaps that’s something for me to explore later. Just writing the above was exhausting, because so much has changed over the nearly three decades I’ve been in tech. Looking back over half my lifetime feels like several.

Steven Savage

www.StevenSavage.com

www.InformoTron.com

[zexwebtech]

Embarking on a Digital Odyssey: A Beginner's Blueprint for Crafting an Enchanting Website

UNVEILING YOUR DIGITAL DESTINY:

Make a list of your abilities. You will require knowledge of HTML and CSS if you want to create a website from scratch on your own. The level of complexity of your website will determine whether you also need to learn PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. You can still make a website if you lack these abilities, but you will require assistance. You have three options: employ a content management system (CMS), engage a professional, or work with a website builder.

GET INSPIRED:

Be motivated. Examine websites with eye-catching designs. Consider what makes these designs so excellent. Generally, everything boils down to the available data, sources, connections, and usability. Look at websites that accomplish similar things to gain ideas for how to design your own.

Don't forget to write your first page. You should make your website simpler if a visitor can't tell in a matter of seconds what your company does. You run the danger of losing potential clients who leave your page out of frustration when they can't figure out who you are and what you offer. Instead, visitors should know who you are and what you offer right away.

Among these, accessibility is the most important. If a particular piece of information isn't immediately apparent, make sure that accessing it is rational.

Don't make your design too complex. If there are few clicks required by the user, it will function better.

One of the most crucial steps in the website planning process is coming up with a clear vision for your website. Why will it be put to use? Is it to set up online booking automation, run your e-commerce site, or market and generate leads for your professional services?

CHOSE YOUR TOPIC:

You can skip this stage if you already know exactly what your website will be about. If not, you can use the following resources to determine that. To begin with, realize that billions of people use the internet, and a sizable portion of them maintain websites. You will never start if you restrict yourself to unfinished projects.

Upon thinking of "The Internet," what immediately comes to mind? Online shopping? Soundtrack? Breaking news? social networking platforms? Writing a blog? All of those are excellent starting points.

You may make a website devoted to your preferred band and include a discussion forum on the internet.

You can create a page only for your family but use caution with such details. There are many of shady persons on the internet, and whatever you post about your family could be used against you. Take into consideration securing your family's website using a password.

In case you are an avid reader of news or prefer unfiltered content over traditional media, you can create a website and obtain publicly available feeds from news organizations like Reuters, BBC, AP, and so on. Construct your personalized news aggregator (formerly known as a "newspaper"), and then view and display all of the news that is suitable for digitization.

You can write about anything you want to write about on a blog if you're excellent at it. If your readership grows, you can make money from it.

You can write about anything you want to write about on a blog if you're excellent at it. You can monetize it and make some money if you have a sufficient number of readers.

SET YOUR FINANCIAL BUDGET:

Creating a successful website involves strategic financial planning. While basic websites can be developed for free, achieving a polished and commercially viable platform often requires budgeting for essential elements. These include web hosting, domain registration, software tools, and potentially, professional services such as web design and ongoing maintenance. Marketing efforts, miscellaneous expenses like SSL certificates, and a contingency fund for unforeseen costs should also be factored into the budget. Careful consideration of needs versus wants, researching service providers, and weighing the benefits of DIY versus professional services contribute to an effective and balanced financial plan for your website.

CREATE A STRATEGY:

 Establish a budget for both time and money before you begin the process of building your website. The plan should not be an elaborate graphic presentation or a large, complex spreadsheet, but you should at least think about what the website will do for you and your guests, what you will put on it, and where it will belong on the webpages.

GATHER A WRITE CONTENT:

Compile the information. Numerous content categories exist, and each has its own set of considerations. You'll have to determine what works best for your needs and website. Because search engines adore it, information that is current and informative is crucial. Maintain engaging and new material if you want Google to index it and for your customers to come back often. Among the topics to think about are the following:

Web store: You'll need to decide how you want your products to be available if you want to sell them. Have a store with a hosting service if you don't have a lot of products to sell. You can sell goods and determine your prices on reputable store hosts like Etsy, Amazon, and Cafe Press.

Media: You may now effortlessly publish your music and films to SoundCloud or build a channel on YouTube. Your website can have your music or videos embedded.

Images: If you are a photographer or artist, you can host your photographs on websites like Flickr and Imgur. Also, you have the option to upload and host your photographs.

Accessories and add-ons:  These little apps operate on your website. Additionally, widgets for scheduling appointments, showcasing a calendar or Google Maps, showcasing postings from social media, running an online forum, and more are available. Investigate anything that may be helpful to you. Simply ensure that the widget originates from a reliable source.

Contact details: Would you like your webpage to include your contact details? You should exercise caution when selecting the information at your disposal for your safety. Never post personal information online, such as your home phone number or address, as this can be used to steal your identity. If you don't have a company address, you might want to set up a P.O. box or a unique email address so that others can get in touch with you.

MAKE A FLOW DIAGRAM: This graphic shows the path taken by users when they navigate between pages. The home page of a website is where most users begin their visit. When someone visits the URL of your website for the first time, they land on this page. To which pages does your home page link? Which pages are linked from those pages? Making navigation buttons and links will be a lot easier if you take some time to consider how users might interact with your website.

CONSIDER USER SCENARIOS AND DEVICES:

Create your website with smartphones and tablets in mind, as these are the devices that people use the most to view websites these days. Use responsive web design or produce separate versions of your website for desktop and mobile users if you want to build a website that will be there for a long time and be available to as many people as possible.

How ZexWeb Technologies can help you build a website:

Expertise and Experience: ZexWeb Technologies has a team of experienced web developers and designers who have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the latest web technologies and trends. They can help you create a website that is not only visually appealing but also functional and effective.

Customized Solutions: ZexWeb Technologies understands that every business is unique and has different needs. They offer customized web development solutions that are tailored to your specific goals and target audience.

User-Centric Design: ZexWeb Technologies places a strong emphasis on user-centric design. They create websites that are easy to navigate and use, providing a positive user experience for your visitors.

Responsive Design: In today's mobile-first world, it is essential to have a website that is responsive and looks great on all devices. ZexWeb Technologies can create a website that adapts to different screen sizes and resolutions.

SEO-Friendly Websites: ZexWeb Technologies can help you build an SEO-friendly website that is more likely to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This will help you attract more organic traffic to your website.

Ongoing Support: ZexWeb Technologies does not just build your website and disappear. They offer ongoing support and maintenance to ensure that your website is always up-to-date and secure.

Here are some of the specific services that ZexWeb Technologies offers:

Website Design and Development

E-commerce Website Development

Content Management System (CMS) Development

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Social Media Marketing

Website Maintenance and Support

If you are looking for a reliable and experienced web development company to help you build your website, ZexWeb Technologies is a great option.

If you are interested in learning more about how ZexWeb Technologies can help you build your website, please visit their website or contact them for a free consultation.

[breezypsyche]

If "Birds of a feather flock together," which bird am I?

Numerous types of birds inhabit our beautiful planet: peacocks, mockingbirds, macaws, puffins, hummingbirds, eagles, and more. Each bird is unique in its location, plumage, eggs they hatch, and their respective bird communities. Regardless of bird species, their communities are outstanding to view, as they all stay by their fellow bird while they look for places to build nests or migrate across the globe.

After all, birds of a feather flock together!

Wait... Did you think I planned to spend this entire post discussing birds?

No, my friends, this is my Psychology of Social Media post for the current week - birds are not in the picture here! But why bring up birds in the first place?

It's all about Social Media, of course!!

Social media can do much for society as a whole, as well as for individual people. If you remember from last week, I mentioned what types of motivations people have throughout their lives and what can motivate people to use social media. Social interaction was listed as one of the motivations for using social media, but there's more to this topic than was previously discussed. Let's dive a bit further!

If you look closely at the numerous ways one can communicate on practically any social networking site, you'll find that it all boils down to creating a community. As humans are social creatures, we are motivated to build relationships and communities with one another. But what encourages us to build, find, or join a community online?

Kim, Wang, and Oh (2016) found that the collective need to belong greatly encouraged social media use among college students, stating that if they had a more significant amount of desire to need to belong in a community that enjoyed their presence, the greater the probability that they will turn to social media for more communication (Kim et al., 2016).

Wohn, Carr, and Hayes (2016) shared that perceived social support is essential to driving the motivations of social media users through likes/favorites, including the depth of the relationship shared by the users who like/favorite the posts significantly increases perceived social support (Wohn et al., 2016). This means the more a user connects with other like-minded users and creates/posts content that their fellow users would enjoy, the more likes/favorites they will receive, building that sense of perceived social support.

Have you ever heard of a term called homophily? No, it isn't a fancy term for the breakfast food known as grits nor a new evolution of humans. Homophily is the tendency to branch out to, or feel attracted towards, people who are similar to you. In other words... "birds of a feather flock together"! (See, I brought it back to birds. There was a reason for that introduction, after all!)

Figeac and Favre (2016) state that online conduct that is geared towards homophily can strengthen the internalized notion of certain relationships becoming enhanced (Figeac & Favre, 2016). In other words, people who continually seek out like-minded individuals through online communities feel a sense of "togetherness" as they interact more frequently through social media. There are many avenues that social media users can utilize to find that sense of community, including online groups (such as ones found on Facebook) and online forums (such as subreddits found on Reddit).

Put some rhythm on that Algorithm!

So, how do social networking sites encourage even further use? Through an algorithm, of course! No, an algorithm isn't one of America's vice presidents playing a beat on the drums (here's looking at you, Al Gore). Instead, an algorithm is actually a set of computer rules and calculations used by various social media platforms to consistently generate content for users to interact with.

When most people think of an algorithm, they think of TikTok, which is famously known for relying on an algorithm to continually churn out content for users to view and interact with. In fact, many users on TikTok joke about the type of content that commonly populates their "FYP" or For You Pages. In fact, I've noticed when my siblings and friends send me certain types of TikToks, I tend to see similar content floating through my own FYP.

Homophily + Algorithm = ?

This means homophily and algorithms work together to encourage users to seek out like-minded individuals through online communities and continually view/share content that is geared toward those communities through social media. Something as small as sharing cute pet videos with colleagues who enjoy pets or something as significant as sharing politically charged content with friends within the same political spectrum can encourage continued social media use globally.

The number of online communities is vast. Some communities can easily blend together, whereas others stand out independently. No matter which online community you feel pulled towards, the algorithm will ensure you view similarly themed content, which will markedly increase your continued use of social media as a whole.

Happy algorithm surfing, everyone!

References

Kim Y., Wang Y., & Oh J. 2016. Digital Media Use and Social Engagement: How Social Media and Smartphone Use Influence Social Activities of College Students. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. (19)4, 264-269. Wohn D., Carr C. T., & Hayes, R. 2016. How Affective Is a “Like”?: The Effect of Paralinguistic Digital Affordances on Perceived Social Support. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 19(4), 562-566. Figeac, J., & Favre, G. (2023). How behavioral homophily on social media influences the perception of tie-strengthening within young adults’ personal networks. New Media & Society., 25(8), 1971–1990. Schroeder, J. E. (2021). Reinscribing gender: Social media, algorithms, bias. Journal of Marketing Management, 37(3-4), 376-378.

[digitalmarketingservices03]

Finding the Right Digital Marketing Agency in Your Area and Beyond: Trends, Strategies, and More

To survive in today's competitive digital environment, businesses need to embrace change and leverage the efficacy of digital marketing dealerships . Understanding the current trends and creating efficient tactics is essential whether you are a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes into the digital waters. In this article, we'll talk about where to find the best digital marketing agency in your area, as well as the latest digital marketing methods, email campaigns, and more.

The Meaning of "Digital Marketing"

Let's start with the basics and define digital marketing. To put it simply, digital marketing strategy refers to any and all promotional activities that take place via electronic device or online. Social media, search engines, email, websites, and other online mediums and services fall under this umbrella phrase. It boils down to making meaningful connections with your target demographic at optimal times and locations in the digital sphere.

Trends in Online Advertising

The use of video material for digital marketing trends purposes is only expected to grow. With the rise of video-sharing sites like YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram Reels, more and more companies are turning to the medium to communicate with customers. Online advertising campaigns often now include short, captivating films.

With the rise of speech-activated devices like Amazon's Alexa and Google's Assistant, it is crucial to optimize for voice search. Businesses must adjust their content to reflect the new way in which internet users find information.

AI is revolutionizing digital marketing by facilitating one-of-a-kind interactions via chatbots and predictive analytics. These resources allow firms to streamline their communication with customers and offer timely responses and support.

With the rise of social business, social media sites are used for more than just communication and interaction. The boundaries between social media and e-commerce are blurring as more companies begin to offer direct product sales on sites like Facebook and Instagram.

Marketing with information: Providing useful, relevant information is still essential in the digital age. Producing high-quality content on a regular basis is a great SEO tactic, and it also helps to establish your company as a thought leader in your field.

Promoting Products Through New Media

Clearly define your objectives for your digital marketing campaign. The first step in accomplishing any goal, be it more website visitors, more purchases, or more subscribers to your email list, is defining that goal.

Get to Know Your Readers: Learn about the likes, dislikes, and struggles of your intended audience. Using this data as a guide, you can craft content that really connects with your target demographic.

SEO stands for "search engine optimization," or adjusting how your website appears in search results. The three pillars of successful SEO are keyword analysis, on-page tweaks, and link building.

Social media advertising involves picking the best social media sites for your target audience and publishing relevant, interesting content there. Maintaining regular communication with your followers via their comments and messages is essential.

Email marketing continues to be an effective method of generating new business and keeping existing clients happy. Create an email list, divide it into subgroups, and send each one customized messages.

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing makes use of paid advertisements to attract a certain demographic. When conducted properly, PPC advertising can produce immediate results.

An In-Depth Look at Email Marketing

Any digital marketing definition plan should provide extra focus to email marketing. It's a low-priced strategy for developing leads into customers and strengthening existing relationships.

Using criteria such as demographics, activity, and preferences, segment your email list. By sending relevant emails to specific subsets of your audience, you can save time and effort.

Customization: Use first names when addressing email recipients, and make sure the material is relevant to what they care about. Open and click-through rates can benefit greatly from personalization.

To automate the sending of emails in response to specific user activities, set up an automated system. New subscribers can be greeted with a welcome email, and customers who have made a purchase can be contacted with follow-up emails.

A/B Testing: Use these tests to make steady progress in your email marketing. Determine what works best by A/B testing email subject lines, body copy, and calls to action.

How to Locate the Ideal Digital Marketing Company in Your Area

If you're having trouble keeping up with everything on your own, a digital marketing agency can be a lifesaver. Find the best one in your area by following these steps:

Start by looking into the many local organizations. Check out their sample work, online testimonials, and company bios. Think about hiring a firm that has experience working with companies like yours.

Consultations: Get in touch with possible consultative agencies. Ask them anything you like, lay out your plans, and get a feel for how competent they are. Focus on how well they convey your ideas and whether or not they get your vision.

Case Studies: Inquire about case studies or other examples of their previous achievements. A reliable firm will have successfully completed previous projects for clients.

Make sure the agency is forthcoming with information such as price, procedures, and reports. The services you are receiving, as well as their success metrics, should be crystal obvious to you.

Think about how well your teams mesh with one another. Since you'll be collaborating directly with the agency, it's crucial that you trust and like working with them.

In conclusion, digital marketing agency near me is a competitive and rapidly developing space where organizations must adapt quickly to survive. The relationship-building and sale-driving potential of email marketing make it a vital part of digital marketing. Finding the proper local firm might be a smart start toward accomplishing your online marketing goals if managing digital marketing on your own is too difficult. Always keep in mind that your business and your target audience are unique, and that digital marketing is not a cookie-cutter strategy.

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted on Tuesdays.

Interview with Lydia Bower

Lydia Bower has written some true classic X-Files fics. Do yourself a favor and dig into her collection! She has 29 stories at Gossamer and 35 stories at AO3.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Actually, yes, it does. With AO3 becoming the premiere spot for fanfic (rightfully so, by the way) I assumed most of the newer fans were unaware of the Gossamer Archive and the few other sites still available for the older fics. So I was delighted to come back into the fandom and see folks reccing a lot of the classics.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

I remember how incredible it felt when I initially found people who got me, who were just as stupidly invested in this weird little TV show as I was. It was like nothing else I’d ever experienced. There were message boards and newsgroup lists and email lists; anything you wanted to talk about, you could find a place to do it. I loved the post-episode discussions and would spend hours at that. We had a week (or months) between episodes, so nothing went undissected. We were all very, um, focused. Yeah, focused is as good a word as any.

And then the fanfic started showing up. That was it for me; I was all in. I can still remember going first to Vincent’s archive and it was like achieving a state of nirvana. The heavens opened up, the birds began to sing, and all was right with the world.

What did I take away from it? More friendships and good memories than I can count. That’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my days. Oh, and the two best imaginary friends a person can have: Mulder and Scully. I carry them too, etched indelibly on my being.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

I was involved with all of it in the beginning. I bounced from newsgroups to mailing lists to message boards to web sites. Around the 5th or 6th season it got to be a bit much since I was also doing a lot of writing then, so I narrowed things down and got the majority of my fix from The Haven message board and the smaller Primal Screamers email group.

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

As I said before, the friendships and the good times with fellow Philes. I also took away a better sense of who I am as a writer and how to use that to hone my skills. I learned how to look at media as a whole with a more critical and analytical eye and to dig beneath the surface of what I was consuming. I learned how to better express myself and maintain a cool head while in the midst of a fiery discussion. I became more confident of who I am and the worth of my opinions. I finished growing up, basically. Most of all, I learned how to just let go and enjoy being a fan of something so incredible that still connects with people almost 30 years later. That’s a legacy to be proud of.

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I’ve always been drawn to the paranormal and the strange, and when I caught an ad for TXF, I made sure to tune in. The Pilot itself was enough to hook me. It was creepy and a little scary and the two leads were incredibly smart. It didn’t hurt that they were also good-looking and had smoking hot chemistry. Like the kind that jumps in through your eyeballs and settles into a low boil somewhere below the waist.

The final act of my undoing came with the episode Conduit. By the end of it I knew the show had a firm grip on my soul. Mulder captured my heart that night, too. He still has it. He’s one of a very small handful of characters I’ve encountered over the years that I just get, at a bone-deep level I can’t even begin to explain. I am him and he is me.

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I’d been writing fanfic since the mid-80s but hit the proverbial wall that is writer’s block right around the time the show premiered. I wanted to write TXF fanfic from the start, but the muse wasn’t having it. She reappeared not long after The Field Where I Died first aired. I hopped around on the web a bit and found much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the shipper front. The muse decided we needed to give my fellow shippers something to make them feel better and give them a bit of hope. So I wrote Games. And the rest is history.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

I reacquainted myself with it earlier this year after an extended absence. I walked away from the show and the fandom after my utter disappointment with the direction the show took after the 7th season. I just couldn’t choke down what TPTB were trying to feed me in S8, and completely tuned out of S9 (with the exception of the finale). I saw IWTB a couple years after it was released in theaters and watched the revival, too. Sadly, nothing I saw there made me want to dive back in. Then one night this past spring I was poking around for something to watch and caught Paper Hearts on a broadcast channel. That was all it took. That feeling I thought I’d lost came roaring back and I settled in for a complete S1-7 rewatch. I poked around looking for a spot to call home and came back to my safe place on Tumblr.

I’m neck-deep now, for however long that feeling lasts, and devoting a lot of my free time (again) to this weird little show about aliens and monsters and two people who love each other dearly. And I’m writing fanfic again - after another bout of writer’s block that lasted almost seven years.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I got pretty deeply involved with the Game of Thrones fandom when the show began. I was already a fan of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice book series and liked what I saw the first few years. I wrote several fanfics in the ASOIAF universe, and I’m still involved, but only from the perspective of a book fan. The show went too far off the rails toward the end of its run and killed my love for it.

Compared to TXF, I think it’s a much more segmented fandom. There are several small groups built around dozens of characters there, instead of what I see in TXF fanbase as a larger, more inclusive community. I think it’s safe to say we’re all here for Mulder & Scully in one respect or another. The other characters get their share of love too, but it’s the MSR that draws us in and helps keep us here. Other than that, fangirling is fangirling. You find your tribe and take it from there.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Well, let’s start with Fox Mulder, with the why of it being what I tried to explain earlier. Dana Scully, because I want to be her when I grow up, but without all the emotional and physical damage she had to endure. I’m also a fan of Sandor Clegane from ASOIAF. Stu Redman from Stephen King’s The Stand. Kevin Garvey and Nora Durst from the HBO show The Leftovers. Olivia Dunham and the Bishops from Fringe. The Three Musketeers that make up the core group of the TV show Evil. I could go on, but I don’t want to bore you. Suffice to say I’m drawn to characters who are complex, damaged, and deeply flawed, but are trying their best to do the right thing and who are ultimately perfectly imperfect human beings.

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

At present, every day. I’m very much back in over my head right now. If I’m not watching it, I’m writing about it, or talking about it. I don’t know how to obsess just a little bit when it comes to TXF and Moose and Squirrel.

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

Absolutely! It’s almost overwhelming how much fanfic I have to catch up on, let alone the new fics being posted daily; and all that while trying to reread some of my old favorites on Gossamer and the other OG archives. I don’t have time to read fanfics in other fandoms right now. Maybe someday.

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

How much room do you have for this? <g> Okay, in no particular order and no doubt forgetting some folks, I’ll read anything by these OG authors: Karen Rasch, Terma99, Nascent, Jill Selby, Madeleine Partous, Meredith, Kipler, MCA, Anne Haynes (Paula Graves), Penumbra (@mashnotesofthemythopoeic), Rachel Anton, Joyce McKibben, Tim Scott, Darwin_xf (@darwin-xf), Suzanne Schramm, Prufrock’s Love, Sue Barringer, Mustang Sally, Rivkat, Dianora, Plausible Deniability, A.I. Irving, Rachel Howard, MD1016, Punk Maneuverability (@seepunkrun), bugs, Dasha K (@dashakay​), Khyber, Blackwood, and OneMillionAndNine.

As far as new to me authors (OG or not), these folks are also talented wordsmiths: leiascully (@leiascully), Aloysia_Virgata (@aloysiavirgata), audries, and lepusarcticus (@lepus-arcticus). I’m sure there are more great authors out there, but I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to dig into the newer stuff on AO3.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

TXF: Pass You By, Light Don’t Sleep, Red Letter Day, Primal Sympathy, In the Ruins, Dance Without Sleeping, and Incomplete. I’ll stop there but please understand that they’re all my babies and I love them equally. I’m also very fond of the Let Everything Happen to You series I recently completed.

ASOIAF: These Scars We Wear, The Calling, Beggar’s Banquet.

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I’m doing both. I’ve written and posted 10 new fanfics since I came back into the fold and I’m working on another one right now. I also have a casefile WIP I’m struggling with that I began during the early part of S4 and set aside when the cancer arc reared its head.

I’m also in the process of bringing all my older stuff from Gossamer and my defunct website over to AO3. I think I still have 2 or 3 shorter pieces still to be moved and one post-Fight the Future fic I wrote that’s lost somewhere on the net. If anyone has a copy of my fanfic titled Shift laying around, please give me a holler! [Lilydale note: Fic found! I had a copy and sent it to Lydia.]

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

See above!

Where do you get ideas for stories?

From the ether. Seriously. Something, whether it be a line of dialogue, a question, an image, or a scene, will just pop into my head and demand my time. I’ve written 6,000-word fanfics just to slip in a single line. I don’t know how the muse works or why; I’m just along for the ride.

What's the story behind your pen name?

I always published under my own name until I set up my AO3 account. I went with wonderland there because I’m like Alice when I’m writing: I fall down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and enter a different reality.

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

Yeah, they know I write it but not where to find it. Though I suppose a Google search would make it easy enough to locate. My family and friends have always been supportive of my writing, albeit confused that I’ve chosen to write fanfic instead of “real” fiction. Yeah, I know.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

wonderland on AO3

@amplifyme on Tumblr

amplifyme271 on the bird app

Lydia Bower everywhere else

Thanks for your invitation, Lilydale, this was fun!

[traincat]

I know the comic piracy debate is a never-ending cycle, but in India where I live, you can't get western comics (or manga for that matter). There aren't comic book stores. Sometimes on Amazon you can find collected editions worth more than INR 1000 at least, for the paperbacks. Most older collections, even from the early 2000s, will be upwards of INR 6000. And sure, it's because the exchange value is so low for Indian rupees, but that's still a LOT of money to Indian citizens. You can get digital editions of random odd issues for approx. INR 150, so that's there. But overall it's really a huge investment to buy a physical comic. So yes, I pirate. But I get so guilty when this debate rolls around, every time. I just don't see any other alternative.

I debated whether or not to answer this considering I haven't really addressed the comics piracy issue before so I'm not sure I'm the right account to talk about it, and also because my askbox is not a confessional and I am not a priest, but then some Spider-Man news broke that I feels ties into it this so whatever, we're going for it. The comics piracy debate comes up every couple of months and will probably continue to come up every couple of months until forever and all of these points have been stated before by others because nothing in this debate is new. First things first, you shouldn't feel guilty. I'm going to suggest actually that nobody should feel guilty, unless you are like, a millionaire and you're exclusively pirating indie books. The prices you're quoting are prohibitively expensive but I have some unfortunate news for everyone involved: the prices are really bad in the US, too. If you want good collected editions, especially in hardcover, they're going to run at similar if not quite equal prices. Comics have gone from a cheap hobby to an overwhelmingly expensive hobby.

This is a good article comparing to the cover costs of American comics since the 1960s adjusted for inflation which I think puts some things in perspective. Comics currently cost roughly $5 USD per issue, which doesn't sound that bad, even though most of my monthly streaming services are roughly that price for a whole month's access to a library of content. But it only doesn't sound that bad if you're not buying special issues (the Marvel Pride book retailed for $10), and if you're only reading one or two books a month. The problem is, American superhero comics are specifically designed so you're not reading just one or two books per month -- this is why we have events! And crossovers! Not for the story potential but because it forces the consumer to purchase more product. This is why there's constantly an event running with a checklist of tie-in issues in the back. So now you're spending probably at least $20 a month. If you're a fan with a lot of interest in different titles, and in different publishers, this can easily hit triple USD digits. It's a money pit. It's not affordable to most people. And this is where that new Spider-Man news comes in, because it was announced today that Amazing Spider-Man is going back to a thrice monthly schedule like it used to operate on during Brand New Day. Which sounds good at first -- more comics, yay -- until you realize that's probably going to be $15 USD a month for a one title. That's $180 a year for one title, not including annuals or special issues. That's not feasible for a lot of fans -- young fans, poor fans, fans with other financial obligations etc. And most people aren't reading just one title. I don't know how the X-Men fans are currently financing their Krakoa habit and I'm afraid to ask. There are services like Marvel Unlimited, which make things slightly more affordable, but I imagine the wait for newer issues to hit the service can be alienating for some fans who want to join in current discussions, the library has some incredibly massive holes in it which is unacceptable when it's coming from inside the mouse house, and I believe, although I could be wrong, that it is not available in all countries. Comics are no longer an easily accessible hobby, if you're paying for everything you read.

"But the creatives deserve to get paid" is the common argument and yeah, they do, I'm not arguing that point. They should absolutely get paid and they should get well. I'm a writer, I'm a published writer even, and I want to be a published novelist, and I definitely want to get paid, and I'm reserving the right to be a complete hypocrite about this, as I do with everything in my life, but this is where the difference between indie publications and Marvel publications comes in: Marvel is owned by Disney. There is absolutely no excuse for Disney not to pay their creatives. If they are not getting paid fairly, it's not because you pirated a book -- it's because Disney has a vested interest in not paying their creators, as evidenced by Alan Dean Foster's lawsuit claiming that they are withholding royalties from him. Fans pirating these books are not the reason the creatives are not getting paid fairly -- the creatives are not getting paid fairly for the same reason that Disney park employees experience homelessness, and it's because Disney would rather put that money into the pockets of their executives. There is no debate on that subject. It's easier and perhaps more convenient to blame fans for pirating comics rather than putting all of their money into what has been for years now a prohibitively expensive hobby to keep up with, but the fact of the matter is Disney could pay all of their creatives what they're worth without hurting their bottom line and instead chooses not to. That is not on you, as an individual reader. You have no reason to feel guilty about that, no matter what your circumstances are, and you do not have to justify your actions to either me or the House of the Mouse. I'm with you, and Disney ultimately doesn't care. They're making that money up elsewhere and then not distributing it fairly to the people who create the properties their media empire is built off of. But especially if you're buying older books, you should know that your money is not going to the creative team -- once it's out of publication, they're not going to get any of the money you spent on it. The argument then becomes that you should be supporting local comics stores which yes, is true, but also doesn't apply to everyone, like anon who doesn't have access to local comic book stores. And again, this can become prohibitively expensive -- collections are expensive. Older, hard to find collections can be very expensive. Once something is out of print, all bets are off on what it might be selling for. Buying single issues is only affordable if the single issue isn't desirable or sometimes if it's in exceedingly bad condition. For the sake of transparency, I have a fairly big single issue collection because it's my preferred format, but I had the time to bargain hunt, access to local comic book stores and large comic conventions, and I'm very good at sniping eBay auctions. The most I have ever dropped on a single issue was expensive for me -- and still under three digits USD -- and it's for an issue from the '60s that is not in great condition.

The problem with this debate is that it is generally a nuanced issue that always gets boiled down to "piracy bad" in a way that makes a lot of well meaning and well intentioned fans, especially the ones with extenuating circumstances, feel bad. It's not your fault. You shouldn't feel guilty. There are a huge amount of reasons why someone might pirate something that are not bad reasons and do not make you a bad person who is personally withholding money from the creators -- because you're not. I don't publicly tell people where to pirate comics, mostly because I really don't think it's that hard to find out for yourselves especially because several creators involved with Marvel themselves have, I suspect accidentally, posted pages of their work to social media WITH THE BANNER OF A WELL KNOWN COMICS PIRACY SITE STILL IN THE IMAGE please learn how to crop, so maybe my standpoint on the issue wasn't well known, but there it is. I think readers should, if they are able to financially and otherwise, support the creators they like, but that it should be acknowledged that this is a more complicated issue than it's commonly made out to be on Twitter and that the largest part of the blame needs to be put on the companies making these comics inaccessible to many and who refuse to pay their creators fairly, not on individual fans. Don't feel guilty, anon.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

CC BY: https://creativecommo

ns.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

A letter to #stopasianhate

We’ve all seen the rise and the fading of the hashtag but instead of crying about why it’s not pinned, it’s important to actually talk about the issue and where we go from here.

Do people even know why it started? Who started it? The boiling point was obviously the Atlanta spa shootings in combination with anti-Asian hate crimes and covid but anti-Asian racism has existed long before the hate crimes of 2021 and 2020 and long before covid in 2019. It’s just that mainstream media attention has only picked it up over the last year and a half or so. Some of y’all, or perhaps most of y’all just haven’t been paying attention to your fellow Asian human beings.

Like any other form of racism, it’s an experience over a lifetime and shapes the quality of life for both individuals and groups over the course of generations in a triple constant state of time in the past, present, and future AND is committed by individuals, groups, societies, and the social systems that keep our current world going. It’s like air, it’s everywhere. Now obviously, we can’t get into everything since this isn’t an extensive history lesson but Anti-Asian racism isn’t just something that started a year ago nor is it exclusive to western countries, which is something we’re all really fucking tired of saying and arguing over.

#stopasianhate is a grassroots, on-the-ground-street movement that was started by Asian people that were new to the activist scene and also had little to no activist knowledge, many that were getting involved (or had the courage to) for the first time. It was not born from large political or organizational think-tanks. It was born out of sadness and anger at the most basic human level by the most basic, everyday people. And because it was born in such a way, it didn’t gain much traction or support among some groups, such as the right-wingers that don’t think racism hinders the quality of life nor from the leftists that demand more from new activists who don’t even know much to begin with. The attacks and insults come from both sides.

#stopasianhate was and is still plagued by ignorance, erasure, and elitism. And let’s not act like racists, non-Asian individuals, and Asian leftists haven’t been trying to discredit the movement since the very beginning. Who it did bring in and appeal to however, were the larger, semi-apolitical masses that wanted to do something—anything. Thus we started to see the bridge and coalition-building between the masses that may not have known much, through no fault of their own, and between those that did have some knowledge and were willing to educate or spread awareness. Of course, we are still seeing that now and in my opinion, it’s better to bring in and teach folks than to discredit or even degrade them before they even begin the journey into something as complex as race and racism, as simple as it may sound.

Though the movement is still on-going, it has largely faded from mainstream attention and tumblr is probably one of the only social media sites where some people still use it on the daily, though there are pocket communities that still use it on Twitter and Facebook for example. In my opinion, it was a missed opportunity for us Asian folks to build the movement into something far beyond ourselves. If we can’t even push a movement that was made by us and for us, what changes can we expect in the long run?

Too often have I seen Asian folks fighting over the fucking name of the hashtag instead of building on it into a larger mass movement to address the reasons as to why it even came about in the first place, reasons that stretch back years, decades, and centuries even. It ain’t just the divide-and-conquer tactics of white supremacy that break up or stagger movements, sometimes it’s just the little petty in-fighting bullshit like that.

Now this isn’t to say #stopasianhate has failed or anything, not even close. I’ve seen people across the US, to Canada, to Australia, across Europe, even folks in Asia and elsewhere that have pushed the movement. For the basic, everyday person to come together with others to create a movement spanning one part of the globe to the other is amazing and highlights the power that people wield when they are united on something. It shows that we as Asian people regardless of country, ethnicity, nationality, gender, class, sexual orientation, political and religious beliefs, and everything else, could come together on one thing if nothing else. Who says we can’t come together because we can, we did, and we will.

Movements don’t stop just because a hashtag gains less traction or because the mainstream media ain’t reporting on it as much. Movements have always been here and will continue to be built so long as people come together as we always have. So sure #stopasianhate isn’t as mainstream as it once was but who’s to say that Asian people aren’t organizing, building, and rallying as they’ve always done in the past, present, and future, and across the US and other countries across the globe? There are movements all across the world right now if you pay a bit more attention.

So where do we go from here? That’s up to us, simple enough. We don’t need to be activists to do something or say something. We don’t need qualifications to speak on something that we know is morally, ethnically, and just plain humanly fucking wrong. And we certainly don’t need to set a goal so fucking high, it can’t even be done in our lifetimes. I really hate this toxic elitism in social justice spaces where people only want to do something or celebrate when society is completely fucking destroyed or something. Honestly, that shit ain’t happening anytime soon so shut the fuck up about it and find ways to navigate and change shit, if not for yourself then for people beyond you and ultimately for society as a whole.

Who cares if someone is only concerned about politics and signing bills? Who cares if someone is only concerned about media representation and movies? Who cares if someone is only concerned about opening up a small business or owning something for themselves? Who cares if someone just wants to draw or make music or write stories or play sports or something else? Let people do what they do best in THEIR field or passion.

When it comes down to it, we need ALL people across ALL fields and passions to contribute to the larger means of human rights and social justice. It ain’t about grooming everybody to adopt some grand utopian self-destruction plan that doesn’t have any fucking sense of reality. It’s about compassion, rebirth, discovery, change, creation, and whatever other shit that comes about when basic, common, everyday ass people come together to do something beyond themselves. And in the grand scheme of things, #stopasianhate is just one of the many proofs of that.

Regardless of where we go and what we do, #stopasianhate is part of human history in the year 2021 and for that, even with all its criticisms and support, you as a movement have my love and this letter is being offered to you.