#which some people might say is an echo chamber but i think its curating my space. and i had more fun

[natsmagi]

I'm a fandom old, so I'd also say there's a strand of entitlement that's always been around fandom, but it's so much more normal now (for both artists and writers) since fandom's become less of a haven for weirdos and more mainstream. Fan writers and artists create FOR FREE and share with us, so complaining or being an arsehole about it is frankly shit.

YEAH....... ive been in online fandoms for like a decade now myself so 😭

if i were to guess id say its probably because nowadays people grow up online and have their whole identities and social circles online too, and its usually very young people who act this entitled towards creatives. it seems a majority of them believe that what you consume and how you consume it reflects your character because theyve made what they consume such a heavy feature of their identity but thats just. not true? you cannot get an accurate understanding of another person based solely off you stalking their page. it sucks too because young people tend to be more reactionary and react based off emotion so their judgement will be even further clouded. not to mention since theyre so judgmental of anyone who disagrees with this they end up forming an echo chamber which just. oh man.

alot of the arguments i see can basically be reduced to "this makes me uncomfortable so that means its immoral and should be eradicated" and thats just. a Really bad mindset to have..... if you cant handle certain things youre much better off muting/blocking and curating your online experience appropriately. this isnt the real world after all, our creative art and writing does not involve reality, its often an escape from it. it is not us creatives responsibility to ensure your online experience is full of sunshine and rainbows. most you can criticize us for is if we tagged the posts appropriately. and then making sure those tags are muted is YOUR responsibility. please take care of yourselves. we dont want you hurting, but we are our own individuals with our own life stories and we should be allowed to express those

the internet will never be a safe haven for everyone. what you may deem immoral might be another persons way of expressing emotions that are killing them inside, and i think thats the beauty of art. it is a purely subjective medium that can mean something completely different depending on the person viewing it. like fuck man theres so many things i find deeply upsetting so i just do my best in blocking it out of my sight. am i still gonna stumble upon those upsetting things in the wild? of COURSE i am, especially since some of what i find upsetting may not be that big of a deal to a majority of the population, and thats unfortunately the reality we have to live with. all we can really do is ask those close to us to be mindful and choose who we engage with carefully

[cartoonrival]

genuinely glad its over though so i can like actually be done. because i would be lying if i said i didnt itch everytime there was a sam ment on stream and iwasnt watching but i cannot live my life like that again

[nickgerlich]

Pardon My French

Social media sites come, and social media sites go. Since their humble, inauspicious beginning with Classmates.com in 1995, to Friendster and MySpace in 2003, and Facebook in 2004, dozens of sites have hit the scene, with more than just a few to be found along the roadside today, tossed out the window like an empty soda can.

It’s hard to know going in what’s going to resonate, and what won’t. I hopped on Instagram right away in 2010, as well as Twitter a couple of years earlier. Both have survived, but others whose names I cannot even remember now (one involved shooting and posting photos of your dinner, which, unfortunately, Instagram tended to feature for a while) have faded into obscurity.

So when I hear of a new one, at most I give it a careful look before I leap. I realize that some sites take off with young users simply because they don’t want their parents and grandparents essentially looking over their shoulders. While I seldom use SnapChat, and am only a grazer at TikTok, I respect the niches they have carved out.

But the arrival of a conservative-friendly social media site two years ago caught my attention in a very different way. I had never heard of a site dedicated to political preferences, but that’s what it is. And if you haven’t been paying attention, it has suddenly jumped into prominence, thanks to the election outcomes. Say hello to Parler, the place to be if you are a “patriot” and wish to vent in uncensored glory.

The name is from the French for “to speak,” which is pronounced “par-lee,” and actually has nothing to do with the parlor in which we might converse with visitors to our home. But foreign word pronunciation has never been a thing here. We are equal opportunity butchers.

While the app stumbled along the last two years, amassing about two million downloads at the Apple and Google app stores, in the last week it has skyrocketed to become the number one download on both.

Founded on the principle that speech should be unfettered and free from the watchful, filtering eyes of fact-checkers and approvers, it allows for the dissemination of beliefs that may or may not be backed up in fact. Actually, my quick scan of public posts suggests to me I should modify that last sentence to say “probably not backed up.”

Oh, and they have the same nickel-variety bimbos who send us friend requests every day, but that’s another story. Maybe they are conservative bimbos.

In fact, Parler is basically an echo chamber, or as the French would say, “chambre resonnante,” consisting of users who feel that Facebook and Twitter have gone a little too far in their fact-checking. They feel discriminated against, that there is a liberal bias. In Parler they have found a new home.

Of course, Parler is not perfect, and for all its bluster, they actually do have some strict guidelines. They also do not have much (if any) of a revenue model going forward, which is critical if they wish to succeed in the long term. You don’t just host sites like this out of the goodness of your heart.

As a courtesy for my students and anyone else reading my public blog, I downloaded and posted their Community Guidelines, Privacy Policy, and User Agreement. My hunch, though, is that this seemingly benign revolution is little different from the Orwellian farm animals who sought a new existence, and in the end, wound up looking a lot like that which they had sought to replace.

Which means I probably won’t spend a lot of time on the site, even though I have an account, and even though a lot of my Facebook friends made a big deal of announcing yesterday they had established accounts on Parler. Besides, you should always claim your username as early as possible, just in case you think you might find yourself using it later on.

Unless those people are really disaffected Facebook users, though, they probably won’t ever really leave the social media giant, simply because the brand-switching costs are too high. Unless you just crawled out of your cave and joined Facebook in the last few months, you have spent years curating a friend list, groups, pages, etc.

You can’t just copy/paste all of that into a rival site, which also explains why I will probably never abandon Spotify for Apple Music. I have spent countless hours amassing my playlists, and I don’t want to have to do that again.

Knock yourselves out on Parler. Vent. Rant. Preach to the choir. But in the end, I have only one thing to say: Bonne chance avec ça.

Dr “N’importe quoi!“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[vuelie-frost]

F2: How do we cope?

So I’m someone who has a moderate dose of anxiety in her life, which is being combatted through therapy, medication, & learning healthy coping mechanisms. I’m no expert, but I have some experience dealing with strong negative emotions. One strategy I’ve been recommended is asking yourself, in any given anxiety-riddled situation, “What’s the worst-case scenario that could happen?” This brings you out of your own head- out of hypotheticals- and into the concrete.

Don’t get me wrong, it can be painful to think about. But it can be helpful to see where our biggest fears lie. And if you’re interested in alleviating those strong negative emotions, it’s a necessary step.

I’ve said before that I’m trying to stay open-minded and optimistic about this movie. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have fears and concerns. For me personally, my biggest "worst that can happen” theories for the ending of Frozen 2 are:

- The sisters never see each other again (with a heart-shattering goodbye scene that makes us all inconsolable) - Elsa loses her humanity to become a spirit/goddess, essentially intangible and immortal - Elsa is no longer called “Queen Elsa” in the franchise, invalidating a huge historic part of her identity - Elsa doesn’t attend Anna’s coronation because she’s “too busy” doing other shit - Disney+ makes a spin-off TV series with Elsa going on adventures (just please... no.)

(please don’t chime in with what you guys think about those ideas, at least in this post, whether they’re right or wrong... that’s not the point.)

So what if any, if all, of these things happen? What next?

Stuff not to do (I mean, do whatever you want, but these probably won’t be very helpful)

- oversleeping as a defense mechanism - eating your feelings - drinking/using substances to numb pain - stew and ruminate on the internet with people who only get your sadness and anger riled up - spend all day on the internet - engage in maladaptive compulsive behaviors (oh, hello dermatillomania. great to see you again.) - completely avoid feeling your feelings - making impulse decisions (don’t go buy a car just because “Frozen 2 sucks, the world is meaningless.”) - rant to Jen/Chris/the creative team at Disney on Twitter (which is different from an honest review of the movie, which I’m sure they’d be more receptive to)

Stuff to do

1) Grieve the movie we longed for. 

This might sound dramatic and my inner critic is constantly chiding me with “It’s literally a movie for kids, why are you so bonded to it?” But that’s totally unhelpful here. It doesn’t matter why or how, but most of us in the fandom feel a deep connection to the first movie. It’s not exaggeration to say that IF the sequel crushes us, it could be emotionally devastating. Grief is complex, individualized, and weird to work through... but it’s real, and if it’s something we need to face in order to move forward,  2) Decide how tightly to hold onto the franchise. 

Something being canon doesn’t mean we have an obligation to internalize it. How many franchises before have whittled their stories down to C-rated TV shows and average spinoffs? Do we accept all of them wholeheartedly?

Granted, this is hard to write about because there’s a slight cognitive dissonance that has to happen for us to disbelieve the sequel of any story.  But regardless, determining your relationship to the narrative is a deeply personal choice- one that can’t be decided for you. If my worst-case scenarios happen for F2, I’m probably going to maintain my complete love for the first movie... and pretend the sequel is an AU. Or extrapolation. Accept that it exists as the canon progression, but reject its meaning in my life.

3) Get off the internet. 

This is probably the best possible thing to do when the online world is causing you strife and stress. Tumblr has a tendency to be an echo-chamber; I actually only recently rejoined after a long loooong hiatus for that reason. Despite what boomers want you to think, the internet’s not inherently toxic. But despite all its good, it’s also highly curated, completely biased, full of half-truths, and a fantastic vehicle for rumors.

Also realize that until November 22, anything and everything Frozen 2-related that’s released by Disney is going to make you psychoanalyze the content for clues on how to feel. We’ll all become obsessed, deranged Sherlocks in our own right. Don't let it consume you.

4) Creatively output your thoughts & feelings

Headcanons, AUs, derivative work, fan fiction, fan art all serve us well (and are way healthier than like, downing an entire chocolate cake in sadness.) I’m an artist and you bet your biscuits I’ll be sketching Elsa for weeks and WEEKS before & after the premiere. It’s just how I process things.

Another thing I’ve decided I’m going to do if any of my worst-case scenario fears are realized is: write letters to the sisters as if they were real people. Talk to them about the ending. Jen Lee kept journals writing to/from the girls when they were conceptualizing the movie; I think there’s merit in letting the characters speak for themselves.

5) Employ your favorite coping mechanisms

These are personal to you, but could include:

- meditation - working out or exercising - yoga - writing/drawing (see above point) - making coffee or tea & relax in bed with a book - talk to someone about it, bonus points if it’s someone in the “real world” - take a walk outside - use breathing exercises - take a hot bath or shower - clean your room/house/apartment - put on music - cook - play with a pet - do something with a friend Note that all of these have to do with the external world. Distraction doesn’t heal us by itself (which is why denial is a poor way of dealing with shit,) but it helps our brains reset in the background. It sets the rest of the world into perspective, so that we can more effectively face our negative emotions later.  Remember, there’s nothing wrong with putting off processing until you’ve done something helpful or enriching. “Listen brain, we can cry later, right now I’m going to bake pumpkin cookies and you can’t stop me.”

6) Remember story is told to connect us with the real world

The idea of escapism is a bit paradoxical, because in pursuing a fantasy world, we’re only working to realize our desires in the real world. The reason we love Frozen so much is because we want that kind of love in our own lives... and the fairy tale reminds us that it’s real. Idealized and sanitized by The Mouse, sure, but it’s real. 

It may be painful to acknowledge but: we don’t need Elsa, Anna, Kristoff, or Olaf in order to flourish. Fiction exists to affect us in the real world. Frozen is one story among many- MANY!- that have the potential to sculpt your own personal future. That’s not to say it doesn’t retain a deep meaningful significance for us. I’m going to hold the first movie in my heart forever, that I know for sure. But its reasons for being great are because it plants us in reality. Can you imagine a beautiful young woman with the ability to freeze ice? Maybe that’s not plausible. But an undying, fiercely loyal commitment between two women? Hell yeah. 7) Recognize idolization & parasocial relationships where they may be... and start to heal them

This is heavy stuff that might require a professional to help you sort through- but if you’re truly suffering, paralyzed, or flung into a depressive episode due to any life circumstance (including a movie sequel,) it’s not silly to seek help in order to move forward. 

Parasocial relationships are perceived relationships where the other party (usually a celebrity, in terms of celebrity worship) doesn’t know you. Fictional worlds can fall into this category as well. It’s a one-side relationship that feels unbalanced when the other party does something we don't like. This is a studied topic I’m not super knowledgable on, but here are some links to more information if you’re interested: Why We Get So Attached To Fictional Characters by Kimberly Truong 

Parasocial Relationships with Fictional Characters in Therapy by Kathleen Gannon

Parasocial Break-Up from Favorite Television Characters: The Role of Attachment Styles and Relationship Intensity by Jonathan Cohen

Our fictional friends: Parasocial interaction and relationships in an evolving media world by Carri Romm - - - Also: I love you guys. <3 I love being in the Frozen fandom. It’s all going to be okay.

[sebastiianstan]

Tumblr content school: why you don’t always get notes and how to (potentially) get a bit more

So in recent weeks, I’ve seen quite a few posts floating around that centre around the same subject: content creators, mainly gifmakers, not gaining followers as quickly as they would like to and/or not getting as many notes on their original content as they would like to. Most recently I’ve seen people share their like-to-reblog ratio, with a call to users to also reblog content instead of just liking it, which would result in more exposure and recognition for the creator.

Now, while all of those feelings are perfectly valid and you’re obviously allowed to post whatever you like on your blog, the conversation around this is quite unnuanced and, at times, a bit uninformed. I’m not claiming to be some kind of expert, but having been a content creator (gifmaker) on this platform for quite a few years, with my own small share of popular gifsets floating around and having built both my own blog an two fansites/group blogs to at least moderate success, I do think I have a certain degree of insight re: getting notes, so I thought I’d put in my two cents. Please note that I’m not making this post to be condescending in any way, or even to tell you what to do/how to create content, but I thought I’d help as much as I can, based on my own experience.

Below the cut are 1. reasons why I think gifsets don’t always get the number of notes you wanted/expected them to, and 2. tips on creating and posting content in a way that will potentially get you more notes.

Why you might not be getting (a lot) of notes

So let’s start with some general trends re: gifsets not getting as many notes as you’d like/expect, and not as many as they would have maybe a few years ago.

1. Tumblr is past its peak

Based on experience, I’d say fandom Tumblr reached its peak in 2015-2016, and was riding that out in 2017. I’ve mainly been a Marvel blog in recent years, so I can’t speak for other fandoms, but Tumblr was... wild in the lead-up to and aftermath of Captain America: Civil War (2016). Wonder Woman (2017) was a similar situation on the DC side of things. 

New Marvel releases (like Ant-Man & The Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War and probably most notably, Black Panther) still get a lot of traction and fandom definitely isn’t dead on Tumblr, but I feel like 2015-2016 were definitely peak years. I only recently returned from a year-long hiatus; I stopped being active in late 2017 and even then my dashboard wasn’t quite as active as it was a year before that. Upon returning here about a month ago, most of my mutuals from back in the day had also become inactive and a lot of gifmakers I used to follow were not creating content anymore.

So it boils down to this: I think it’s very likely that the amount of active users within your fandom has diminished significantly as compared to two years ago. A set that may have gotten 10k notes within a few days in 2016 might now only get half of that.

2. The URL thing

This is a sad truth, but it does seem that having a semi-canon or canon url does at least help with getting a larger amount of notes on your content. I have no tips on getting a canon url (I got very, very lucky with this one), but this is a simple observation I have from over the years. Url trading/selling has basically become a genuine business due to this - canon urls are in high demand.

More importantly, what I can say is that it’s smart not to change your url too often. Becoming a popular content creator on this platform is basically the same as building a brand - and a brand has an easily recognized name. Once you have a url you are happy with, try to stick to it for a while. When you change your url, links break on reblogs of your old gifsets, by the way.

3. The like-to-reblog ratio has always been unbalanced

For as long as I can remember, posts have gotten more likes than reblogs. If your ratio is 2-to-1 or 3-to-1, trust me, you are doing perfectly well for yourself! Again, as with my first point, this might have gotten a bit more extreme since 2016, but it’s not a new thing.

4. Popular users support each other

Obviously there’s nothing wrong with this (in fact, I love that we all support each other), but yes, in general big/popular blogs are friends with each other and tend to reblog each other’s content, which can be discouraging for smaller or aspiring content creators on the platform.

However, please be aware that these big blogs built up the following they have by posting content for years and it just takes time. Also, know that most users on here actually really enjoy being tagged in your posts - so if you gif a movie or tv show you know a popular user (that you follow) likes, tag them in it and if it’s high quality content (I’ll touch on this later), they’ll probably reblog it.

Tips on getting more notes

Alright, on to part two: my personal tips on getting more notes. These are strictly based on my own experience, and as a repeat of my disclaimer earlier: I am genuinely trying to share my knowledge; none of this is with the intent of being a condescending know-it-all.

1. Don’t look like you’re complaining

No matter what the intent behind your post about your lack of notes and/or followers is, it’s very likely you’re going to come off entitled or ungrateful. I’ve personally unfollowed multiple users who post consistently about reaching their next thousand, who make angry/frustrated posts when their followers don’t increase as quickly as they’d like to, when they lose followers, etc. I understand that the hustle is frustrating, but posts like these are really quite annoying for your followers; you’re complaining about followers you don’t have to followers you do have, who are then more likely to unfollow you because it looks like you’re complaining. Your mutuals might understand why you’re posting this, but others probably don’t.

When it comes to posts about like-to-reblog ratios, which I’ve seen a fair few of recently, please consider a couple of things. 

When you ask people to reblog your post instead of liking it, you are essentially telling them what to put on their own blogs.

A lot of users on here have carefully curated content; while some users simply blog about everything they like, others stick to a certain set of subjects/movies/tv shows. If they see a post they like that doesn’t fall into those categories, they’ll give it a like to keep track of it and show their appreciation, but won’t put it on their blogs. You can’t tell people to reblog something they don’t want to.

You’re essentially asking people that you do not really personally care about to do something for you. Most of the likes you get on your post are likely from people that you do not follow yourself. I’m not saying that you hate your followers or don’t care for them, but you can’t really ask anything of a user that you don’t even follow yourself.

Look at it this way: Tumblr is basically a mini society, with its own market in the form of content creation. The ones who have a few thousand followers, and who get a few hundred or a few thousand notes on their posts are already the lucky ones. If you’re a user who gets hundreds/thousands of notes on their posts (even if it’s not as many as you like or deserve), you should keep in mind that the vast majority of users on here are small blogs that don’t have the traction that you have. If you post a screenshot of the like-to-reblog ratio on a post that has 2k notes, they’re going to think, “what on earth are you complaining about?”

Posts like these can really only backfire. I don’t think it’s likely that a lot of users will suddenly start reblogging instead of liking because of them. I know those posts are getting traction, because your mutuals and fellow content creators understand your frustration (believe me, I do too!), so they reblog/like/comment on it, but you’re essentially in an echo chamber of content creators. Anyone outside of that circle will not understand it and might unfollow you because of it.

2. Quality

Another disclaimer: I’m not implying that the people who have made posts about notes/followers don’t make HQ gifs. This is simply the “tips on getting notes” section of this particular post, so that’s what I’m doing. Veteran gifmakers can skip this section because I won’t be presenting anything new here.

Here’s the thing: high quality gifsets get notes. I know that what constitutes a HQ gif is subjective, but there is a consensus on this amongst big blogs, so I will summarize it below.

Make gifs from high-quality video sources. If 1080p is available, use that. Don’t gif from videos below 720p. Also, the larger the t*rr*nt file, the higher the quality. If a 1080p t*rr*nt from a movie is under 2GB in size, it’s probably not decent enough to gif from.

Use the new dimensions. Tumblr changed from 500px to 540px over 3 years ago now I believe, and all the big blogs use these dimensions. I rarely see sets like this anymore, but some users do still hold on to the old dimensions. Obviously, you should do what you like, but know that you’ll get more notes if you make the switch.

Do not skip frames. If you use screencaps, extract 25 frames per second. If you are an ‘Import video frames to layers’ kinda gal, like me, import all frames.

Sharpen your gifs! It makes an insane difference. My faq section links to a sharpening action.

Your frame delay should be 0.05. If you have a low amount of frames, you can get away with 0.06, but do not make your gif any slower than that. It will look unsmooth.

Go for natural coloring, where you simply brighten up the gif and enhance the colors (beware of whitewashing tho). I know that using PSD’s from resource blogs is tempting, but it’s very likely they will not work for the particular scene you’re giffing. It’s best if you learn to color yourself and adapt your coloring for every set. Also, it’s up to you what you think is pretty, but extremely vibrant and extremely pale coloring isn’t very popular anymore. Natural is the way to go. (This is with the exception of those gorgeous color edits people have been making recently. Y’all are queens & that shit is hard to make yo!)

If your gif is larger than the 3mb limit, NEVER sacrifice colors in the ‘Save for web’ window. Always delete frames to lower the size of your gif.

Just saying, but Photoshop CS5 has been known to make the best gifs.

For beginners out there, please don’t be discouraged. I’ve been making gifs for years, and they were absolute shit in the beginning. It just takes time to learn, but if you stick to it, you’ll get there.

3. Concept over quantity

Allow me to draw a comparison with YouTubers here - I think we all prefer YouTubers who post one well fleshed out video a week (for example, Safiya Nygaard) over YouTubers who post an okay video every day.

I think a lot of users think the way to get notes and followers is to post a gifset every day. This probably does work to an extent, but I personally think it’s better to come up with original concepts that you post every few days.

When you watch a movie, you can make five gifsets out of scenes from that movie, or you can come up with a concept. For example, parallels between scenes, parallels with other movies, the best lines of a certain character, etc. This takes more work, but sets like these are highly appreciated because they’re original, and they tend to get more notes.

This doesn’t apply to new releases, as you are probably among the first to gif a particular scene, but if you’re giffing a scene from a movie that’s been out for a while, you’re very likely not the first to do it. People will see it, realize they’ve already reblogged something very similar, and keep scrolling. But if you come up with a new idea, that’s what’ll get you more traction.

To give you a personal example; I recently rewatched all of the cap films. Now, I could have giffed popular scenes like “I could do this all day” or “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line”, but that’s been done before... a lot. Instead, I came up with this, and got 6.5k notes. I haven’t posted that many new sets on my blog recently, but posting content like that has gained me some followers and new mutuals.

4. Timing

All this requires is keeping an eye on your dashboard and taking note of when most of the people you follow are online. I sometimes see European content creators posting their sets smack dab in the middle of the day. Lemme tell y’all something: the Americans are sleeping.

I’m in timezone GMT+1. My dash wakes up around 5pm. I never post before 6pm - I’ll post anywhere between then and midnight, so feel free to convert that to your own timezone. The scheduling feature on posts comes in handy if you’ll be asleep or at school/work around that time.

If you post when Tumblr isn’t active, your set will drown in all of the other content, so be smart about timing.

5. Strategic tagging

It seems that a lot of users still don’t know this: only the first five tags on your post show up in tags on Tumblr. Anything past the first five will only be useful for your own tagging/archiving system, but will not show up in any tracked tags.

So first point: always use the most prominent edit tag for the fandom you’re posting in. Examples are #marveledit, #hpedit, #filmedit. These are frequently used, and often tracked by big blogs.

Second point: figure out who the big fansites/group blogs are, and if they track a tag, tag them. Make sure you follow them, obviously. If your post is funny, you might wanna tag bob-belcher (#bbelcher) as well - this blog is popular across fandoms and posts content from all over!

Third: tag users who you think will like your post. Don’t be thirsty with this. Again, only do this if you follow them. Tagging 2-3 users is ok, but don’t be out there tagging 8 to 10 blogs on your post. Not only is that a little pointless (because only the first five tags will show up), it also makes you look thirsty. Users might not appreciate this, and ultimately might not reblog your post because of that. Also, try not to tag the same users on every single one of your posts.

6. Popular content

If your fandom is niche, so is your content. That’s perfectly fine; don’t feel pressured to post about anything that isn’t your passion.

But if your goal really is to get more notes and followers, create content from fandoms that are big on the platform. Examples are Marvel, Harry Potter, Star Wars, film blogs, etc.

7. Join a fansite/group blog

Every big fandom on Tumblr has one or multiple fansites/group blogs. I recommend you figure out who they are for your fandom, and apply to one that’s accepting new members. You’ll likely get in if your gifs are HQ.

I know this sounds a bit counterintuitive, as you’ll be posting content on another blog that will be getting the notes and followers from it, but it actually is a good way to gain more exposure. These blogs have large amounts of followers, and they usually allow you to reblog your own content to them, as long as you’re active. I think it’s a great way to get your content out there.

Alright, time to wrap up this post. I’m not personally calling out anyone who has made posts about followers, notes, like-to-reblog ratios, etc. I’ve seen at least 15 of those posts in recent weeks so I’m just reacting to a trend I’m seeing, by presenting a potential solution to a problem people seem to be having. 

My last tip is this: if notes and followers on Tumblr are making you feel down or frustrated, maybe it’s time for a little hiatus or a step back. In the end, you are not getting paid for this and your popularity on the platform has no bearing on your real life. This is supposed to be a fun outlet for your passions and interests, not a source of frustration and anger. Don’t take it too seriously! You’re doing amazing sweetie.

[meeedeee]

Cancel Culture: The Internet Eating Itself RSS FEED OF POST WRITTEN BY FOZMEADOWS

As social media platforms enter their collective adolescence – Facebook is fifteen, YouTube fourteen, Twitter thirteen, tumblr twelve – I find myself thinking about how little we really understand their cultural implications, both ongoing and for the future. At this point, the idea that being online is completely optional in modern world ought to be absurd, and yet multiple friends, having spoken to their therapists about the impact of digital abuse on their mental health, were told straight up to just stop using the internet. Even if this was a viable option for some, the idea that we can neatly sidestep the problem of bad behaviour in any non-utilitarian sphere by telling those impacted to simply quit is baffling at best and a tacit form of victim-blaming at worst. The internet might be a liminal space, but object permanence still applies to what happens here: the trolls don’t vanish if we close our eyes, and if we vanquish one digital hydra-domain for Toxicity Crimes without caring to fathom the whys and hows of what went wrong, we merely ensure that three more will spring up in its place.

Is the internet a private space, a government space or a public space? Yes.

Is it corporate, communal or unaffiliated? Yes.

Is it truly global or bound by local legal jurisdictions? Yes.

Does the internet reflect our culture or create it? Yes.

Is what people say on the internet reflective of their true beliefs, or is it a constant shell-game of digital personas, marketing ploys, intrusive thoughts, growth-in-progress, personal speculation and fictional exploration? Yes.

The problem with the internet is that takes up all three areas on a Venn diagram depicting the overlap between speech and action, and while this has always been the case, we’re only now admitting that it’s a bug as well as a feature. Human interaction cannot be usefully monitored using an algorithm, but our current conception of What The Internet Is has been engineered specifically to shortcut existing forms of human oversight, the better to maximise both accessibility (good to neutral) and profits (neutral to bad). Uber and Lyft are cheaper, frequently more convenient alternatives to a traditional taxi service, for instance, but that’s because the apps themselves are functionally predicated on the removal of meaningful customer service and worker protections that were hard-won elsewhere. Sites like tumblr are free to use, but the lack of revenue generated by those users means that, past a certain point, profits can only hope to outstrip expenses by selling access to those users and/or their account data, which means in turn that paying to effectively monitor their content creation becomes vastly less important than monetising it.

Small wonder, then, that individual users of social media platforms have learned to place a high premium on their ability to curate what they see, how they see it, and who sees them in turn. When I first started blogging, the largely unwritten rule of the blogsphere was that, while particular webforums dedicated to specific topics could have rules about content and conduct, blogs and their comment pages should be kept Free. Monitoring comments was viewed as a sign of narrow-minded fearfulness: even if a participant was aggressive or abusive, the enlightened path was to let them speak, because anything else was Censorship. This position held out for a good long while, until the collective frustration of everyone who’d been graphically threatened with rape, torture and death, bombarded with slurs, exhausted by sealioning or simply fed up with nitpicking and bad faith arguments finally boiled over.

Particularly in progressive circles, the relief people felt at being told that actually, we were under no moral obligation to let assholes grandstand in the comments or repeatedly explain basic concepts to only theoretically invested strangers was overwhelming. Instead, you could simply delete them, or block them, or maybe even mock them, if the offence or initial point of ignorance seemed silly enough. But as with the previous system, this one-size-fits-all approach soon developed a downside. Thanks to the burnout so many of us felt after literal years of trying to treat patiently with trolls playing Devil’s Advocate, liberal internet culture shifted sharply towards immediate shows of anger, derision and flippancy to anyone who asked a 101 question, or who didn’t use the right language, or who did anything other than immediately agree with whatever position was explained to them, however simply.

I don’t exempt myself from this criticism, but knowing why I was so goddamn tired doesn’t change my conviction that, cumulatively, the end result did more harm than good. Without wanting to sidetrack into a lengthy dissertation on digital activism in the post-aughties decade, it seems evident in hindsight that the then-fledgling alliance between trolls, MRAs, PUAs, Redditors and 4channers to deliberately exhaust left-wing goodwill via sealioning and bad faith arguments was only the first part of a two-pronged attack. The second part, when the left had lost all patience with explaining its own beliefs and was snappily telling anyone who asked about feminism, racism or anything else to just fucking Google it, was to swoop in and persuade the rebuffed party that we were all irrational, screeching harridans who didn’t want to answer because we knew our answers were bad, and why not consider reading Roosh V instead?

The fallout of this period, I would argue, is still ongoing. In an ideal world, drawing a link between online culture wars about ownership of SFF and geekdom and the rise of far-right fascist, xenophobic extremism should be a bow so long that not even Odysseus himself could draw it. But this world, as we’ve all had frequent cause to notice, is far from ideal at the best of times – which these are not – and yet another featurebug of the internet is the fluid interpermeability of its various spaces. We talk, for instance – as I am talking here – about social media as a discreet concept, as though platforms like Twitter or Facebook are functionally separate from the other sites to which their users link; as though there is no relationship between or bleed-through from the viral Facebook post screencapped and shared on BuzzFeed, which is then linked and commented upon on Reddit, which thread is then linked to on Twitter, where an entirely new conversation emerges and subsequently spawns an article in The Huffington Post, which is shared again on Facebook and the replies to that shared on tumblr, and so on like some grizzly perpetual mention machine.

But I digress. The point here is that internet culture is best understood as a pattern of ripples, each new iteration a reaction to the previous one, spreading out until it dissipates and a new shape takes its place. Having learned that slamming the virtual door in everyone’s face was a bad idea, the online left tried establishing a better, calmer means of communication; the flipside was a sudden increase in tone-policing, conversations in which presentation was vaunted over substance and where, once again, particular groups were singled out as needing to conform to the comfort-levels of others. Overlapping with this was the move towards discussing things as being problematic, rather than using more fixed and strident language to decry particular faults – an attempt to acknowledge the inherent fallibility of human works while still allowing for criticism. A sensible goal, surely, but once again, attempting to apply the dictum universally proved a double-edged sword: if everything is problematic, then how to distinguish grave offences from trifling ones? How can anyone enjoy anything if we’re always expected to thumb the rosary of its failings first?

When everything is problematic and everyone has the right to say so, being online as any sort of creator or celebrity is like being nibbled to death by ducks. The well-meaning promise of various organisations, public figures or storytellers to take criticism on board – to listen to the fanbase and do right by their desires – was always going to stumble over the problem of differing tastes. No group is a hivemind: what one person considers bad representation or in poor taste, another might find enlightening, while yet a third party is more concerned with something else entirely. Even in cases with a clear majority opinion, it’s physically impossible to please everyone and a type of folly to try, but that has yet to stop the collective internet from demanding it be so. Out of this comes a new type of ironic frustration: having once rejoiced in being allowed to simply block trolls or timewasters, we now cast judgement on those who block us in turn, viewing them, as we once were viewed, as being fearful of criticism.

Are we creating echo chambers by curating what we see online, or are we acting in pragmatic acknowledgement of the fact that we neither have time to read everything nor an obligation to see all perspectives as equally valid? Yes.

Even if we did have the time and ability to wade through everything, is the signal-to-noise ratio of truth to lies on the internet beyond our individual ability to successfully measure, such that outsourcing some of our judgement to trusted sources is fundamentally necessary, or should we be expected to think critically about everything we encounter, even if it’s only intended as entertainment? Yes.

If something or someone online acts in a way that’s antithetical to our values, are we allowed to tune them out thereafter, knowing full well that there’s a nearly infinite supply of as-yet undisappointing content and content-creators waiting to take their place, or are we obliged to acknowledge that Doing A Bad doesn’t necessarily ruin a person forever? Yes.

And thus we come to cancel culture, the current – but by no means final – culmination of previous internet discourse waves. In this iteration, burnout at critical engagement dovetails with a new emphasis on collective content curation courtesies (try saying that six times fast), but ends up hamstrung once again by differences in taste. Or, to put it another way: someone fucks up and it’s the last straw for us personally, so we try to remove them from our timelines altogether – but unless our friends and mutuals, who we still want to engage with, are convinced to do likewise, then we haven’t really removed them at all, such that we’re now potentially willing to make failure to cancel on demand itself a cancellable offence.

Which brings us right back around to the problem of how the modern internet is fundamentally structured – which is to say, the way in which it’s overwhelmingly meant to rely on individual curation instead of collective moderation. Because the one thing each successive mode of social media discourse has in common with its predecessors is a central, and currently unanswerable question: what universal code of conduct exists that I, an individual on the internet, can adhere to – and expect others to adhere to – while we communicate across multiple different platforms?

In the real world, we understand about social behavioural norms: even if we don’t talk about them in those terms, we broadly recognise them when we see them. Of course, we also understand that those norms can vary from place to place and context to context, but as we can only ever be in one physical place at a time, it’s comparatively easy to adjust as appropriate.

But the internet, as stated, is a liminal space: it’s real and virtual, myriad and singular, private and public all at once. It confuses our sense of which rules might apply under which circumstances, jumbles the normal behavioural cues by obscuring the identity of our interlocutors, and even though we don’t acknowledge it nearly as often as we should, written communication – like spoken communication – is a skill that not everyone has, just as tone, whether spoken or written, isn’t always received (or executed, for that matter) in the way it was intended. And when it comes to politics, in which the internet and its doings now plays no small role, there’s the continual frustration that comes from observing, with more and more frequency, how many literal, real-world crimes and abuses go without punishment, and how that lack of consequences contributes in turn to the fostering of abuse and hostility towards vulnerable groups online.

This is what comes of occupying a transitional period in history: one in which laws are changed and proposed to reflect our changing awareness of the world, but where habit, custom, ignorance, bias and malice still routinely combine, both institutionally and more generally, to see those laws enacted only in part, or tokenistically, or not at all. To take one of the most egregious and well-publicised instances that ultimately presaged the #MeToo movement, the laughably meagre sentence handed down to Brock Turner, who was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman, combined with the emphasis placed by both the judge and much of the media coverage on his swimming talents and family standing as a means of exonerating him, made it very clear that sexual violence against women is frequently held to be less important than the perceived ‘bright futures’ of its perpetrators.

Knowing this, then – knowing that the story was spread, discussed and argued about on social media, along with thousands of other, similar accounts; knowing that, even in this context, some people still freely spoke up in defence of rapists and issued misogynistic threats against their female interlocutors – is it any wonder that, in the absence of consistent legal justice in such cases, the internet tried, and is still trying, to fill the gap? Is it any wonder, when instances of racist police brutality are constantly filmed and posted online, only for the perpetrators to receive no discipline, that we lose patience for anyone who wants to debate the semantics of when, exactly, extrajudicial murder is “acceptable”?

We cannot control the brutality of the world from the safety of our keyboards, but when it exhausts or threatens us, we can at least click a button to mute its seeming adherents. We don’t always have the energy to decry the same person we’ve already argued against a thousand times before, but when a friend unthinkingly puts them back on our timeline for some new reason, we can tell them that person is cancelled and hope they take the hint not to do it again. Never mind that there is far too often no subtlety, no sense of scale or proportion to how the collective, viral internet reacts in each instance, until all outrage is rendered flat and the outside observer could be forgiven for worrying what’s gone wrong with us all, that using a homophobic trope in a TV show is thought to merit the same online response as an actual hate crime. So long as the war is waged with words alone, there’s only a finite number of outcomes that boycotting, blocking, blacklisting, cancelling, complaining and critiquing can achieve, and while some of those outcomes in particular are well worth fighting for, so many words are poured towards so many attempts that it’s easy to feel numbed to the process; or, conversely, easy to think that one response fits all contexts.

I’m tired of cancel culture, just as I was dully tired of everything that preceded it and will doubtless grow tired of everything that comes after it in turn, until our fundamental sense of what the internet is and how it should be managed finally changes. Like it or not, the internet both is and is of the world, and that is too much for any one person to sensibly try and curate at an individual level. Where nothing is moderated for us, everything must be moderated by us; and wherever people form communities, those communities will grow cultures, which will develop rules and customs that spill over into neighbouring communities, both digitally and offline, with mixed and ever-changing results. Cancel culture is particularly tricky in this regard, as the ease with which we block someone online can seldom be replicated offline, which makes it all the more intoxicating a power to wield when possible: we can’t do anything about the awful coworker who rants at us in the breakroom, but by God, we can block every person who reminds us of them on Twitter.

The thing about participating in internet discourse is, it’s like playing Civilisation in real-time, only it’s not a game and the world keeps progressing even when you log off. Things change so fast on the internet – memes, etiquette, slang, dominant opinions – and yet the changes spread so organically and so fast that we frequently adapt without keeping conscious track of when and why they shifted. Social media is like the Hotel California: we can check out any time we like, but we can never meaningfully leave – not when world leaders are still threatening nuclear war on Twitter, or when Facebook is using friendly memes to test facial recognition software, or when corporate accounts are creating multi-staffed humansonas to engage with artists on tumblr, or when YouTube algorithms are accidentally-on-purpose steering kids towards white nationalist propaganda because it makes them more money.

Of course we try and curate our time online into something finite, comprehensible, familiar, safe: the alternative is to embrace the near-infinite, incomprehensible, alien, dangerous gallimaufry of our fractured global mindscape. Of course we want to try and be critical, rational, moral in our convictions and choices; it’s just that we’re also tired and scared and everyone who wants to argue with us about anything can, even if they’re wrong and angry and also our relative, or else a complete stranger, and sometimes you just want to turn off your brain and enjoy a thing without thinking about it, or give yourself some respite, or exercise a tiny bit of autonomy in the only way you can.

It’s human nature to want to be the most amount of right for the least amount of effort, but unthinkingly taking our moral cues from internet culture the same way we’re accustomed to doing in offline contexts doesn’t work: digital culture shifts too fast and too asymmetrically to be relied on moment to moment as anything like a universal touchstone. Either you end up preaching to the choir, or you run a high risk of aggravation, not necessarily due to any fundamental ideological divide, but because your interlocutor is leaning on a different, false-universal jargon overlying alternate 101 and 201 concepts to the ones you’re using, and modern social media platforms – in what is perhaps the greatest irony of all – are uniquely poorly suited to coherent debate.

Purity wars in fandom, arguments about diversity in narrative and whether its proponents have crossed the line from criticism into bullying: these types of arguments are cyclical now, dying out and rekindling with each new wave of discourse. We might not yet be in a position to stop it, but I have some hope that being aware of it can mitigate the worst of the damage, if only because I’m loathe to watch yet another fandom steadily talk itself into hating its own core media for the sake of literal argument.

For all its flaws – and with all its potential – the internet is here to stay. Here’s hoping we figure out how to fix it before its ugliest aspects make us give up on ourselves.

          from shattersnipe: malcontent & rainbows https://ift.tt/2V13Qu4 via IFTTT

[paradife-loft]

spotted this article doing a little dissecting of the results of a study I’d previously read about, doing a test of the “if we just followed more people with opposing political views instead of having an echo chamber in our social media, we’d be less polarised~ uwu!” hypothesis. (spoilers: it found that no, seeing retweets of posts from the opposite side on twitter doesn’t make your views less “polarised”; actually, you’ll probably end up less moderate, esp if you’re a republican.)

the article gives a basic rundown of why this is a result that makes sense, but a couple other notes I’d want to add (kind of going further on the “most political tweets are not intended to be persuasive to opposing views, but rather to preach to the choir and rally supporters” point) are that, 1) in addition to twitter (or facebook, or most parts of tumblr) being really bad form-and-content-wise for containing persuasive arguments to begin with, I’d say the way this study was carried out (creating a bot for participants to follow who then retweets various political accounts) additionally doesn’t test for much besides mere exposure to opposing views - which may well be part of the point bc I 100% believe there are people out there who know jack shit about the psychology of changing one’s mind and think you’ll start being a ~civil moderate just because you have a mixed social media feed; but it really doesn’t speak much at all to a situation where you may have actual friends who you like and respect as having reasoned viewpoints, and follow their social media accounts and get exposure to other political views that way - which I... hope? is what at least some people are thinking of when they say they want social media to be less of an echo chamber....

(like, I’m substantially more likely to read a piece arguing against a position I largely support, if it’s by someone like Kelsey, or a couple other assorted people I know IRL; but something put on my feed by a bot, that was authored by Rando McFuckwit Fox News Anchor who for all I know has an INT score of 5 or possibly an alignment of Lawful Evil? of course I’m not going to treat that as though it’s a credible source of information that was curated by someone I trust to have sensible thoughts.)

and 2) as plenty of research on radicalisation shows (and as people on here might be familiar with as the sort of TERF-rhetoric-boiling-frog issue), there’s a pretty big difference between throwing tweets into your feed that advocate things you find on the face of it blatantly abhorrent; vs starting out showing tweets or whatever else with content you pretty much agree with already, and gradually transitioning from those into content you wouldn’t have immediately agreed with but now are primed to find much less objectionable because it uses the same rhetorical structures as previous arguments you’ve accepted, and/or because you now see the source of those arguments as more credible than you used to. again, a bot retweeting a selection of established political figures you flat-out disagree with to start with, is not going to produce useful results.

which brings me to 3) a.k.a. my usual refrain whenever we start up the “but polarisation!!!!” speech: people changing their minds to be more moderate in their political views is not a desirable end simply for its own sake, because it doesn’t pay a damn bit of attention to whether those “moderate” views have any kind of factual backing or ethical standards. so stop fucking whining about civility and moderation as though those qualities were points to be proud of on their own, regardless of what content they’re the packaging for. good fucking lord.

[chrislowles]

I love Gab, it’s amazing, let's make it better.

For the past few months I've been using Gab, a social network which states frequently that its main principles are Freedom of Speech and not imposing arbitrary restrictions on users and on what they can and cannot say, another intriguing aspect of Gab is that they are 100% user-funded.

That’s right, no ads, no coaxing into certain treatment of users due to corporate interests etc. Gab is exactly the kind of place to be where you can discuss topics in real-time without fear of getting booted off for no reason, the only way you can get suspended on Gab is if you do something Illegal, obviously.

Now given the time I’ve spent on Gab, I’ve got to admit I’ve developed some anxiety regarding the direction Gab is taking not with its policy (which I’m fine with), but it’s user experience, the way the website works and approaches certain aspects of a social platform, I think there are better ways of going about it and because of that, here are a couple of things that I think Gab should take a second look at, or things that I think Gab should consider:

Now looking at the embed response in Gabs with Links and seeing how much can be done with it, In general I think the Embed Response in Gabs should be made more flexible, metadata from websites can be utilised in a way to uniquely expand posts that include links from different websites. For example I imagine in the future Quote Posts on Gab will just be normal Gabs but with a Gab post link attached at the end of it, in this scenario the Quote Button seen on Gabs right now would simply become a shortcut to that, bring everything down to a link, streamlining the embed response in Gabs by breaking down what the links metadata is capable of doing is important and should be looked at as such, an example of implementation would have to be Twitter Cards and how developers can set up a player for anything that requires more context.

Now onto the next suggestions, in my opinion right now I see GabTV as a separate product entirely to that of Gab and due to the promotion of GabTV as such a different experience to that of Gab itself, in my opinion I don’t see the point of that, people will get over GabTV and just simply demand an inline experience, again with the expanding via streamlining, that's exactly what I think should happen. Bring it down to the user, if a user is streaming, show indication of that on their user profile, a Live Symbol? Maybe? The irl implementation of this is unknown since I haven’t actually seen something like that pulled off, anyways this would prevent the user experience from fracturing, reducing confusion.

Now here comes the unpopular opinion: I find the Live Topics kinda pointless.

I can see why it was introduced, a lot of the time people were Gabbing with #MAGA and that was screwing with the experience Gab was trying to pull off, so in response Gab removed it entirely and replaced it with a curated space that no one could influence.

That, that right there was not a good decision. And considering how wide and dare I say it, diverse Gab is now compared to then, Topics has turned into what many would see as a redundant part of the Gab experience. A trending section is in most parts now an integral feature to sites like these, not to say that Gab can’t survive without it, just that the side effects of a static list of subjects doesn’t pan out well to an audience that wants to know what people are talking about the most, right now Gab is putting itself at risk of stagnating its range of subjects conversations are involved in, it’s been proven and with that being said I think a Trending Section should be added back in.

Sure you can feature a story, maybe even create a Staff Picks section for the fans of Live Topics out there.

While we’re on that I might as well bring up what can be done with a new Trending Section, if said thing were to happen. Now notice how I’m only referring to it as the Trending Section and not Trending Hashtags or something along those lines, my ideal Trending Section would feature Hashtags, Keywords (considering how vague that is, imagine the phrase Seth Rich getting brought up in a Gab a lot, Gab could pick that up and rank that alongside the trending content on Gab) and last but not least, Trending Accounts, let's imagine a huge celebrity like Notch joining Gab (tee hee), Gab could see that and feature that, same could happen to a user that’s been on the platform for months, they suddenly get a surge of followers etc, that could bring things together while also making things wildly unpredictable (in a good way). With Hashtags, Gab could perhaps introduce a following mechanism for them, similar to user accounts. This would break up the echo chamber feel many social platforms have inadvertently fallen into. You see Gab can avoid this, all they need to do is add this in, really its that simple, at least I think it is (lol).

While we’re here I should bring up categories, don’t get rid of ‘em, tbh I wasn’t a fan at first, but I’ve since realised what they can do, Topics are what I haven’t been a fan of is all.

Sidenote: The Live Topics/Trending thing is something I’ve actually been talking about on Gab itself for quite some time now.

[imanes]

do you think that "influencers" and celebs should speak out about "political issues"? (putting it in brackets bc. it's clearly an understatement n not accurate but idk how to word it) re: palestine? cause i've seen a lot of people be like "yeah they shouldn't talk about it if they're not educated or if they're just doing it for the trend" (even tho at this point its been so all over social media that ppl cant use the "im not educated enough" excuse anymore) n all and i guess it's a fair point and all but also? idk when i'm on social media and i see ppl talking about what's happening in palestine, and then i scroll down and see ppl be like omg new haul uwu! vlog with my friends! and thats just so???? idk. idk what to think bc on the other hand ofc performative activism is bad ykw? (like....re: blm ppl just posting a black square on their ig....) but i don't know what to think about it and i would love to hear your thoughts!!!

inchresting question to which i have no concrete answer to provide (except a lot of ramblings) because it is a thorny subject related to the ubiquity of digital society and the social weight we give to a certain class of people who frame their existence as something that could represent us but actually doesn't at all. and everybody and their mother - including me - has an opinion on it but at the end of the day it's just an opinion, not an empirical fact to be presented, and not even one i think about a lot bc it isn't a primary concern of mine on a day to day basis. so i'm like not looking for a debate with some random tumblr user (not talking about u anon, but talking about whoever might care too much about my inconsequential opinion) bc this is a question i'm answering, not a question i'm asking so to anyone tempted to "well according to the encyclopedia of pfppspfpsp" me, make ur own post!

i guess we can start with "should influencers/celebrities/people who are famous by virtue of being well-known even exist and should we lend weight to their words?" the answer to that may vary from person to person but social media accounts with a very large following can indeed turn tides with regard to socio-political crises, such as demonstrated by bella hadid who single-handedly educated a whole generation of south-korean netizens through her posts on palestine so we can see the good effects of that. now obviously bella hadid is personally concerned by the ethnic cleansing of palestine and has a lot more at stake than say rihanna with her all lives matter bullshit statement (someone said "saudi dick must be potent" but i think it has more to do with her contract with puma who is actually on the BDS list) or even jameela jamil who has a terminal case of "everything must be about me always".

people can say whatever they want about what well-known ppl are allowed to speak about or not but i'll just remind that these "influencers" and whatnot are people and they're bound to want to talk about stuff, especially when it is relevant or when prompted by their own following, because literally everybody with an account on a social media platform expresses their opinions about smt at one point or another in time. that includes random ppl on facebook commenting under news with their stale hot takes. famous ppl or "influencers" are no different.

I'll also say that "influence" only goes so far so I'm not *particulary* concerned with whatever whoever that i don't take seriously says. let me take the queen of talking out of her ass jameela jamil as a case study for this. people who agreed with her bizarre and narcissistic takes are already bound to agree with her because people flock to opinions that are similar to theirs. in my opinion that is not influence, that is attracting similar weirdos in your sphere and consequently creating impenetrable echo chambers of idiocy. did her stale ass take become a "consensus" amongst the indecisive? i don't know for sure bc i haven't run a survey but my assumption is that people who have critical thinking skills were rightfully put off by her rancid take and called her out publicly for it, providing sources and information, which i think is visible enough for anyone 2 look through. and people who like her talk and think out of their asses were like "wow preach i've been saying!" so they are themselves inconsequential.

so in my opinion it is less about influencing - because at this point i think someone can be influenced by a single person into buying a product but your fave singer is not going to make you buy into their ideology just because they released one lukewarm-at-best statement - and more about signaling where you stand. when viola davis and idris elba (amongst many others) stated that they stood by palestine, they made it clear that they stood against apartheid and ethnic cleansing and people who already agreed on these basic principles saluted their stance. do i believe they changed anybody's mind? not really, that is the job of well-informed people such as activists disseminating information and other people sharing the info. do i think that mark ruffalo lost all credibility with his flip-flopping? absolutely, and it doesn't reflect back on palestine, it reflects badly on HIM. we're in an era where people are bombarded with so much information from all sides that one person saying something is a drop in a bucket no matter how famous they are. this is also why we say that israhell lost the PR war. we were and are too loud 2 be ignored now and a few celebrities showcasing how inane they are doesn't change anything. the famous-ppl-market is too saturated for their opinion to matter a whoooole lot. support is appreciated but not hailed as the second-coming jesus u know what i mean?

to address ur final point about finding it weird that some people flat-out ignore some stuff while you are neck-deep into it, I think it's an understandable situation to find yourself in and as subhi taha said, it just looks tacky. i think it should be your cue to just unfollow whoever doesn't align with your interest content-wise. i unfollowed a loooot of people lately because of that like I really didn't give a fuck about Michelle phan's cryptocurrency peddling (which was already yikes on principle) in the midst of real-time live-stream decolonisation and liberation struggles against apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and at this point I don't think I can go back to caring about using social media for frivolous things (except cats and memes account bc they bring me joy) and following bigger accounts that are trying 2 sell me some shit, because I've changed in the past weeks, one could say I've become more "radical" (lol) and I'm ready to sustain an online space that caters to my concerns and abandon all content that I indeed find tacky in between two posts that talk about some serious shit. it's not to say I'll never post a pic of the sunset on Instagram again or that I don't consume content that has literally nothing to do with informing myself and disseminating information on decolonisation and anti-capitalism (I literally watch study vlogs from med students to unwind lol), or that "everybody should use their account in this specific way because it's the only one that is valid" (it's not and i don't care what other ppl do) but u are obviously dissatisfied with ur feed for valid reasons and while some ppl may not share your opinion it doesn't mean that you shouldn't take steps to make ur user experience less jarring.

it's again just an *opinion*, not a to-do list or smt that i'd ever want 2 present as a "fact", at the end of the day everybody curates their online spaces the way they want to and if you find your current configuration to be distasteful, that's understandable. and everybody is entitled to believe that celebrities/influencers/glorified sellers of products and lifestyles and disorders talking or not talking about certain things can be harmful or beneficial, as there are arguments and examples for and against it and i am personally not interested in participating the debate even tho i wrote a long ass text about it akjdlkfjgd I'm sorry about this u might be regretting ever asking me this question. hope i made sense!

[agirlnamedsteve]

Some conversations I’ve been having recently

Conversation 1:

[in response to an instagram story about the timothée chalamet/harry styles interview]

Steve: I adored that interview. May or may not have been emotionally wrecked by it [hasn’t read the full thing yet, just read internet commentary on it as of now]

Maggie: I’m actually super interested in this. I was just talking to Madeline about this. What parts particularly struck you/resonated with you?

S: Hey sorry it took so long for me to respond

S: I think the part where they talk about the contrast of being a public figure which comes with a certain amount of self celebration, especially during awards season, when so many people are suffering

S: It just seemed like the sort of conversation that I was really happy to see in print that happened between two celebrities

S: Like bringing up social media and the Arab spring seemed really random, but also like something that would randomly come up if my friends and I were talking about stuff like this

S: The masculinity part of the conversation wasn’t the most nuanced thing I’ve ever heard but I appreciated it a lot

S: They both just come off as really genuine guys and I hope this sort of interview/interaction between celebrities becomes more visible. 

M: Yeah I pretty much feel the exact same.

M: I think that i should stops calling it an interview because it’s a conversation. It feels like two guys meeting for the first time at a party and discovering they have similar interests and thoughts and just having a very natural convo.

M: Even if the questions were planned it felt very real. So everyday. And like it just happened to be recorded for us to read.

M: Also super interesting to contrast Harry who has been in the spotlight for so long with Timmy who is so new to the world.

M: And how much I feel Harry could teach him.

S: Yeah that was a really beautiful beginning, like I can’t believe that was the first time they’ve talked

S: Made me smile, I’m a sucker 

S: Just seemed like two normal guys but they’ve both ~made it~

S: Timmy talking about his family was sweet as heck 

S: I didn’t feel like they necessarily did justice to talking about the social responsibility of celebrities but I like that it was mentioned

M: And I think the part about gratefulness really hit me. The idea that they are both trying to remind themselves that they aren’t owed any that they have but that they are really lucky.

M: Yeah it felt like a throw away

M: Some of it I don’t think they really got deep enough into. The stuff that felt forced because they felt like they had to bring it up. Instead of it coming up casually.

M: I think the reason people are really into this article is because it makes these mythical people so present and quotidien and relatable

M: Like they could just be our friends 

M: And it feels quite intimate 

S: It does feel so intimate. And I have a good friend on this program who went to la guardia with Timmy and knows him in such an intimate way, so I feel like that reminds me of his humanity as well

S: It seems very genuine, but I also can’t help but wonder how much of this is also about image and knowing it’s the right thing for them to say

M: Yeah. And I’ve heard from people at la guardian that he is actually a pretty great guy

M: Yeah. What I thought was particularly interesting was the difference in composite between the two. 

M: Like Harry seems so put together and Timmy feels like a mess. Like not in a bad way just like more nervous and rambley and how the years of coaching and PR people changes how you do these sort of things. But also Timmy has been praised for this so I wonder also if he’s playing it up at this point. Like people point to it as proof that he’s genuine.

S: Okay I noticed that too, and it might be age, and it might be him playing up the rambling young charismatic genuine guy-thing he has going on. Regardless I kind of loved the chatter. 

S: There were questions I felt Timmy didn’t actually answer though, like in the fluster of trying to keep the conversation it seemed like there was something missed. But also phone interviews are so interesting. Like your words that you say, which you can’t easily manipulate without training and practice, can come out sounding super different than you wanted based on context and reactions to the unknowns of verbal conversation. 

S: I guess phone interviews aren’t any different than in-person interviews minus body language, which I always find interesting to read about in journalists’ second-hand perspectives when they do write-ups of the interviews. 

S: But I have been thinking a lot about how social media allows us to curate our words in a way that changes how we communicate in general. 

M: And how much practice you get. 

M: Yeah it’s weird because Harry is only like two years older but has been famous for so long. And I at least take comfort in the idea that Timmy at least was first rambley genuinely. But I always get freaked out by whether I’m being manipulated or not. 

M: But also Harry’s specificness makes him sound so mature like wow.

S: Media manipulation! I was just talking about how I feel like I’m being constantly mislead by mainstream media and my own ‘free thought’ isn’t free thought at all. 

S: And I try my best to find out things for myself, but the internet is wide and vast and can very easily turn into an echo chamber. 

M: I’m terrified because there are people who’s job it is to make us think a very specific thing.

M: And they are so good at it. 

S: How do we make sure we don’t all just turn into sheep?!

Conversation 1: 

[lovey dovey but also reflective] 

Steve: I was doing some reflecting the other day and wrote stuff down in the most of my academic notes

S: Allow me to transcribe because it’s literally illegible

Max: Please do. 

S: Max really handles disappointment well. Like he fails with grace and that’s not an easy skill to learn, it’s intuitive. He know what’s he wants to do and others see that in him. I always look forward to seeing how he handle disappointment and fears of the unknown with grace and embrace those  harder times knowing that he offers so much support for himself and others in those spaces of discomfort. Also pancakes can always cure the worst moments.

M: That’s a really beautiful thing for you to notice and share with me. I’ve never thought anything close to that about myself before. 

M: Can I share a reflection I’ve had recently?

S: please do. 

M: it’ll take a sec

S: Go for it 

M: So it’s definitely a document sized reflection so I made a doc for it in the drive

M: But here it is anyway for convenience

M: Alison,

You know that I love love. I've read books and listened to philosophical speeches and podcasts and even taken a dang class on the matter. I think and talk about love all the time. When I was younger I understood love to be complex but not necessarily dynamic. I knew it was something that required some form of "work" to sustain but then I framed it more as maintenance, upkeep that both parties participated in to maintain the love that they shared. I could conceive of the oh so many factors that make up a relationship, communication, time, sex, affection, compassion etc. At the time all of these things were external, each of them pieces of the love bus to be tinkered with it so it would run smoothly for many miles. What I couldn't have conceptualized at the time was what it means to grow with someone. Not to somehow "induce" growth on the other person or encourage them to make positive changes in their life but to look inside myself and search for what I really want and push myself to figure out how to get there and then actually put in the work to get closer and closer, day by day. 

This has been a really hard few months for me. I've been met with many disappointments in my family, my work, and personal life, and spent many hours lamenting about each of them. All the while I've thought some version of "if Alison were here things would be better. We could talk and laugh and fuck and dine and do all the things that made me oh so happy when we were in the same place." 

I've thought a lot about where that thought comes from and must first say it's absolutely valid and for the most part true. Doing anything with you is immeasurably better that doing the same thing without you, just reading your words on the page or a screen makes me want to shout with glee and affection no matter where I am (usually I just smile like a young me in an arcade for a while for fear of alarming those around me [other times I just shout because i dont give a FUCK])

I think part of the reason our love and are relationship felt so unique and special from the beginning was that each of us were so satisfied as individuals. We have deep connections with amazing friends and ask questions about complex issues and take great pleasure in struggling to find answers. We are passionate about so many things and recognize the value of our time and the way we spend it. And when we came together we just kind of celebrated all of that in this awesome way where we would celebrate both each other as people and all those amazing things that make us who we are. Its intoxicating, and incredibly addicting. In these months where things have been hard and I’m not spending my time in ways that situait my heart and my soul I’ve looked to you to fill that space, when I need to take responsibility and fill that space myself no matter how near or far you are.

I think I got a bit lost in immeasurable grandeur that is our love, and it has taken me a lot of thinking and talking and writing to understand and really believe that I am so much more than my love for you. Though it is overwhelming and feels allencomapsing it is just a part of who I am. As hard as this distance has been I am so thankful for it, as it has given me the space to think and feel through things I could only do on my own. It's so wild to think about how our story and how the year between matching on tinder and getting coffee in Olin was so necessary for both of us. 

Growth is hard and it's painful, both physically and emotionally, and I want to grow with you, separately and together, from near and far, for as long as we want to. I hope it's for a really really long time.

I have a much greater understanding for what you said to me over the summer, that you didn't want to be THE thing that either made me happy. That's a lot of pressure, and I can imagine doesn't feel very good. 

of course, recognizing all these things is just the start. As hard as it was to get her now a different kind of work starts that may prove to be even harder. I need to take action in my own life and make the changes that feel right, that draw from the deep well of passion I know I have inside me and drive me forward. And If I'm lucky I'll get to tell you all about it

S: Oh wow I loved reading that

S: That is so big

S: Thank you for sharing 

S: You’re literally so self aware and want to do the work on yourself that people need to do (esp men in general if I’m being honest) and that just took a lot of pressure off of me to have to ask you to do that work, so wow I’m honestly honored

S: Never stop growing, I never want to stop growing with you

S: And I agree wholeheartedly especially with the middle section about how much that year was important for us, and how we came into this relationship both knowing ourselves so well and being so established and happy so we just relished in being able to enjoy each other

S: that’s so special. 

S: I think we’ll definitely get back to that place. I don’t feel like we’ve left it, but it’s different ya know?

M: It feels so good to share that with you

M: Of course of course, and the “place” were in together will always be changing and always be beautiful

M: I just sort of started thinking and all of a sudden some of those things just became really clear

S: wow yeah I love that 

M: me too. 

[bisoroblog]

When Pushing Boundaries in Math Education, Where Can Teachers Turn For Help and Camaraderie?

Earlier this year, math educator and Demos executive Dan Meyer published a piece entitled “Lonely Math Teachers” in which he raised the shortcomings of social media and the need for innovative math teachers to connect online. In his post, he made the case for Twitter. At its best, he argues, Twitter can be an invaluable tool for professional development among educators.

He writes:

For the right teacher, Twitter is the best ambient, low-intensity professional development and community you’ll find. Maybe Twitter isn’t as good for development or community as a high-intensity, three-year program located at your school site. But if you want to get your brain spinning on an interesting problem of practice in the amount of time it takes you to tap an app, Twitter is the only game in town.

But here’s the problem: It’s takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there, to broadcast your opinions and to ask for input. And just because you put yourself out there, it doesn’t always mean you’ll get a response. Hence Meyer’s new website: Lonely Math Teachers, in which he curates those lonely tweets that have gone unanswered.

Interesting looking at my early #MTBoS tweets. Most of the time I got no response at all. I wonder why I kept at it.

— David Butler (@DavidKButlerUoA) July 29, 2017

This conundrum brings us to an important question: As an educator, how do you overcome the shortcomings of social media and network with other innovative teachers beyond the Internet?

For answers, we turned to various educators, who shared tips on building camaraderie and tapping into existing math communities. These tips and strategies include both online and offline approaches, many of which can be applied to any subject, not just math.

Find mentors and collaborators in your own school

“Does your school allow for teachers to build communities ad hoc?” That’s the first question you should ask yourself, said José Luis Vilson, a math teacher and author of This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education. “Generally, high performing countries spend way more time planning that they do actually working in the classrooms,” he said.

When Vilson was just starting out as a classroom teacher, he turned to his peers to build upon his own skills and create camaraderie. “I leaned heavily on visiting all of my colleagues two to three times a week,” he said. He would spend time observing and then ask follow-up questions in free periods: “’How did you do that?’ ‘What did you do?’ ‘Can I take notes on that?’ I started becoming a conglomerate of all the teachers I’ve seen,” he said.

Ultimately, educators don’t all have to teach the same way but those classroom experiences can help you innovate and tailor your curriculum in a way that makes sense for you and your students.

“Obviously you hear what to do and what not to do—but mainly it’s about what actually fits into your teacher persona,” he said. “We don’t all have to do the same thing. We are going to teach in a way that is responsive to the students but also what’s responsive to what we envision as a teacher.”

Curate a Twitter feed filled with diverse voices to broaden perspective

Lybrya Kebreab is a math coach at Westlake Middle School in Oakland, California. She says Twitter is where she found her people. “It was good to see [through Twitter] I wasn’t the only person to see the potential of education, and specifically math, to empower students and teachers.”

But it took her awhile to actually join in on the conversation. At first, she just observed. “You don’t have to say anything to anyone but at least get on and watch and listen to other perspectives for as long as you need to. The whole point is to keep growing.”

That being said, it’s easy for social media platforms to become an echo chamber filled with similar voices. Kebreab‘s advice is to curate a diverse feed filled with educators from different backgrounds and expertise. “People who have done different jobs have a much wider and broader sense of the big picture [of educational systems]. But then people who have only been in one place have a very deep knowledge base—so both of those perspectives are needed,” she said. “Our upbringing and experiences have a huge impact on how we see things.”

Kebreab spent many years as a classroom teacher, and she said Twitter helped her expand her craft. She used the platform as a way to gather new ideas and inspiration around math curriculum.

“Anytime I did a math lesson that I really wanted to go well and I wanted different perspectives on, I would just put the idea on Twitter and people would give feedback and specific ideas on how to make it better,” said Kebreab. “Every time I did that, they saw the lesson from a perspective I didn’t see.” She recalls a time when she heard feedback from a teacher in the Midwest: “That perspective the teacher in Nebraska gave me from Twitter might be similar to the perspective of a kid sitting in my room. But I can’t see it with my California perspective—so I am able to reach more children with more eyes on the lesson.”

Share your point of view, and encourage your peers to do the same

If you feel comfortable on Twitter, one way to build upon those relationships is to share your experiences on a personal blog. Just last month, Kebreab started a WordPress blog. And in her first post, she wrote about why play has become so important to her while teaching math: “I’m obsessed with creating joy, laughter and warm memories of in-depth explorations with equations, shapes, patterns, graphs, conjectures, arguments and counterarguments, and most importantly, connections, in the rooms for which I have been blessed with stewardship,” she writes.

She kicked off her blog with a topic she’s been exploring for some time and she says that’s a key part of building a community and generating conversation: having a niche. “I’ve been incessantly encouraged to start blogging by my Twitter friends and by my friends in my immediate math circle. They said I should write, so I wrote,” she said. “I wanted to write something I was passionate about. And I’m passionate about kids being kids and analyzing consequences for the way adults impose their adult worries onto kids in this culture of high testing.”

Thus far, Kebreab says all conversations have been respectful, even when there are disagreements or “Twitter fights” as she calls them. “We have to engage the other side or else we aren’t really pushing ourselves as much as we could,” she said. Ultimately, she said, the more you talk about what you care about, the more people will come to you for information and support on that specific topic. “You start to be known for whatever your pocket is, and the more you expose yourself to the people on Twitter, the more people want to interact with you,” she said. “The more you put yourself out there, the more people come to support you.”

1st session of the day. #MidSchoolMath2018 #iteachmath #mtbos Developing Risk-Takers!

Happy to see @TracyZager's beautiful face

#BecomingMath pic.twitter.com/qRfwNwIFDd

— Lybrya Kebreab (@LybryaKebreab) March 2, 2018

Tap into existing math networks online and in person

There are collaborators who have been working to create and cultivate online and in-person spaces for math educators. Tracy Zager is one of those people. She’s a longtime math coach and author of the book Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You Had.

She encourages math educators to use hashtags on social media like #iteachmath, #mtbos, #elemmathchat, #msmathchat, and #swdmathchat. This helps raise the visibility of posts, and it also provides relevant streams of conversation that you can follow.  She says to look for “little teeny moments to send something out.”  For example: “If I am in a classroom and a kid says or does something interesting, I will take a picture of their work or jot down their thinking, and then tweet with a math teacher twitter hashtag like #mtbos, #iteachmath, or #elemmathchat and ask, What would you ask this student? or What problem should we pose next? Within a couple hours, the teacher and I will have new ideas to think through together,” Zager said. “I can pull all these colleagues into my classrooms with me. I find reaching out to teachers online enriches my conversations and relationships with teachers in person.”

I always take test questions structured like this as a dare. CANNOT?! We'll see about that. CAN TOO.

In other words, I hate this question design. pic.twitter.com/oNSWKaXyuL

— Tracy Johnston Zager (@TracyZager) January 25, 2018

For additional experiences outside of social media, Zager points to teacher organized opportunities like the Global Math Department’s free weekly webinar, as well as the in-person conference, Twitter Math Camp.

And then there’s the annual game night for math teachers that Zager and a few of her friends dreamt up. The last one took place in San Antonio and was sponsored by the National Council of of Teachers of Mathematics. (You can follow the tweets at #MTBoSGameNight.) She says those in person events can deepen relationships and foster emotional connections with other math innovators. And oftentimes, those relationships will sustain over time, not only in person but also online.  

“The internet is awash with stuff. There’s so much out there and much of it is terrible, so I think that is part of the reason to find a community,” she said. “It helps us find the good stuff more quickly because there is just too much to sift through alone. We can help each other develop good taste in what choices to make and what resources to use in thoughtful ways.”

When Pushing Boundaries in Math Education, Where Can Teachers Turn For Help and Camaraderie? published first on https://dlbusinessnow.tumblr.com/

[thegoose5150-blog]

The Feed Is Coming. Here's How Google Could Monetize It

If you use the Google app on your mobile device, you may already be aware of Google's recent addition of a newsfeed, a Facebook-y, portal-like feature that allows would-be searchers to skip the search completely and dive right into new content relevant to their interests (based on their past searches as well as topics they opt into, plus Google's now ever-present machine learning algos).

If you're Mark Irvine, this feature makes you very nervous:

Well, prepare to get even nervouser. Google just announced that the feed will soon extend beyond the mobile app to appear on Google's homepage across devices.

Outside of sounding like a low-budget horror flick, and G apparently thinking its user base is comprised solely of Brooklynite neckbeards (Whether you're a pet-loving, Nietzsche-reading, sports fanatic; a hip-hop head and burgeoning brewmaster; or anything in between, your feed should fit your fancy), the feed appears to be a perfectly practical application for app users who don't want to bounce between search and social for news updates.

But wait, there's more!

Per the BBC, Google plans to implement the feed on Google.com as well; the media outlet also claims that the focus of the service [is] to make Google more useful and drive users to its other services, but there are no (public) plans for monetization. Yet.

What is The Feed?

Simply put, the feed is Google's answer to Facebook's News Feed and Twitter's, well, Twitter-ness.

A reality: Search is all about intent. This positions Google as the apex ad platform, a place where advertisers can reach prospects at any point during the sales cycle based on the words typed (or spoken) by those prospects. The ROI is awesome because you're only bidding on terms that show intent relevant to your wares.

When it comes to news, though, people prefer a little bit of serendipity. Google doesn't really do serendipity. Sorry, didn't do.

Per Google, the feed's goal is to make it easier than ever to discover, explore and stay connected to what matters to you-even when you don't have a query in mind. How does it accomplish this? The cards in your feed are not only based on your interactions with Google, but also factors in what's trending in your area and around the world. The more you use Google, the better your feed will be.

Incentivized activity? Limitless utility? Tell me that isn't the foundation for a new revenue stream and I'll never believe another word you say.

Before I get to the speculation about how the feed-as-ad-platform might exist, some credit where credit is due.

The Feed: The First Step Towards A Balanced Media Diet

Unlike Twitter (where I get most of my news), the feed can grow and evolve without exacerbating the curated media echo chambers in which the majority of us reside.

Again, here's Google: To provide information from diverse perspectives, news stories may have multiple viewpoints from a variety of sources, as well as other related information and articles. And when available, you'll be able to fact check and see other relevant information to help get a more holistic understanding about the topics in your feed.

The ability to synthesize informed thought based on multiple sources, how novel!

In all seriousness, this is really cool. Comparably interesting, at least from an SEM perspective, is the fact that the topics in a user's feed link to a SERP (you know, one with ads).

And now, some advertiser-focused speculation

How Will Google Monetize The Feed

Note: that wasn't a question.

Without a stated path towards monetizing the feed, a lukewarm take might be something like

The 'follow' button will be used to create audiences for advertisers to use on existing channels

Or

Turning to Google for news, sports, culture, etc. instead of Facebook/Twitter will incite more searches (from links and due to an influx in overall use), which in turn means more opportunity for Google to sell text ads on the SERP.

Google didn't monopolize search by glossing over valuable opportunities in the name of altruism (helping people find information!) , and that's exactly what the feed is: a valuable opportunity for Google to monetize native ads and audience-targeting.

Native Ads

I don't know about you, but I've always yearned for a side of you'll never believe what these 9 child stars look like today on my SERP.

The feed seems like the perfect place for Google to test native ads in a very big way. The tiny white and green Ad tag appended to text ads makes it clear(ish) to searchers that the results atop their SERP were paid for; how will Google go about distinguishing between curated news, opinions, and an article about buying a new pair of shoes written and paid for by BIG SHOE?

I'm all for a new approach to news (we need it), but the potential for it to become bogged down with clickbait feels very real.

Audience Targeting

As I mentioned earlier, search is fantastic because intent is clear; audience-based targeting (the likes of which you use on Facebook) represents a different kind of value.

While audiences on the Display Network are relatively robust, they don't hold a candle to the audiences available on Facebook (or even LinkedIn).

But imagine if Google had information on exactly what you like, how long you've been into it, and how your preferences shift over time; that'd be pretty damn valuable to advertisers, don't you think?

Whether these potential audiences would be used to target users via Search and Display or with (speculative) native ads is anyone's guess; that being said, it seems completely logical to assume Google would implement a means of testing pure, audience-based targeting-a keyword-free model of targeting outside of the third-party dependent Display Network-in a way that doesn't disrupt their existing ecosystem (and by ecosystem, I mean substantial revenue stream).

There'll be some gorgeous irony in the use of Dr Seuss's there is no one alive who is you-er than you quote if your you gets lumped in with a bunch of similar you's, shaken up, packaged, and sold as a top-of-funnel targeting method to enterprising individuals.

Do people really want a new home page that's not social media based?

Google has attempted to chase the Facebook experience before. It didn't go well.

It's also a bit presumptuous of the Search juggernaut to assume that people want a new home page that doesn't simultaneously inform them of foreign affairs, the Sox, and what their pal ordered at Taco Bell.

While the feed could very well be the future of digital news consumption, a source for content that exists outside of users' pre-existing points of view, I'm infinitely more interested in how Google lets us use it to grow our brands and push existing prospects down the funnel with yet another touchpoint. We'll keep an eye on it, and let you know how things develop!

About the Author

Allen Finn is a content marketing specialist and the reigning fantasy football champion at WordStream. He enjoys couth menswear, dank eats, and the dulcet tones of the Wu-Tang Clan. If you know what's good for you, you'll follow him onLinkedInandTwitter.

[tinymixtapes]

Feature: Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2017

Red Bull Music Academy returned to New York this year for yet another well-curated series of performances, lectures, club nights, and workshops. As is tradition now, TMT sent a few writers to cover some of these events, which included a hip-hop piano bar show, Brazilian bass music, a showcase for one of our favorite labels, an interdisciplinary performance piece/meditation, and a couple lectures from two vital artists of our time. --- Solange: An Ode To Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool After the late performance of An Ode To had ended, Solange Knowles took some time to speak to the audience about the piece she had just performed for us, her development as a musician, and the space she had just occupied for her work. Referring to the Guggenheim Museum’s atrium, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed “temple” that has been home to countless exhibitions and performances of significance, Solange spoke of wanting to “immerse my work in the daylight,” of “having a show where I can see the faces” of the people there to see her. This quality of light was one of the most striking things about Ode: the combination of bright sun from the building’s skylight (both of the show’s performances were scheduled in the afternoon) and flat, even museum lighting gave the work a context that immediately made it something different than just “Solange playing in a museum.” And it was true, you could see everyone’s face in the small crowd that was brought in, dress code and all (those in the audience who did not heed Knowles’s request to dress in all white were few, and easily spottable). This, and the fact that much of those in attendance were seated on the ground just feet away from the band, gave the event an incredible sense of intimacy; in staging and tone, An Ode To felt almost private, a personal work by a young artist both in development and at the top of her game, wildly talented and still growing. This piece was a substantial step in that growth: billed in the program as “an interdisciplinary performance piece and meditation,” Solange took elements from A Seat At The Table and rebuilt them, framing them in new ways — often stripping the arrangements down to their absolute minimum, at others exploding them with a new, startling sense of size. The core band was skeletal, augmented by two backup singers and a recurring cast of dancers and horn players — and though the music was the center of the performance, Solange seemed just as committed to exploring the work physically, leading her ensemble in precise, often beautiful choreography (done in cooperation with dance coordinator Eloise Deluca) and expressive a capella breaks that were, more than just a compliment to the songwriting, as much a piece of the work as her music. Photo: Stacy Kranitz / Red Bull Content Pool At times it felt like Solange was ripping open her album and re-examining it on a microscopic level, and the evening’s trajectory from its hauntingly minimal opening numbers to the explosion of feeling in her dual performances of “Don’t Touch My Hair” and “FUBU” (through which Solange walked through the crowd to sing directly to those gathered, causing at least one man she approached during the show I attended to have a complete ‘Oh my fucking god solange is standing right next to me’ meltdown — one of the few instances where the close-quarters of the room served to amplify the singer’s goddess status) felt like an investigation of what exactly the limits of this music were. Embracing the atrium as a necessary component of the performance — having her players descend down the ramp to the performance area, hiding her horn section under its walls, or more concretely using the chamber’s space to amplify the echo of basslines, solitary snare hits, or the complex three-part vocal breaks, almost dub-like in their hugeness — Solange built something site-specific and yet with resonances beyond this set of concerts. This, and Solange’s ability to fill the historically white space — figuratively and literally — of the Guggenheim with persons of colors (whether her entirely black and brown band or the vast majority of those in attendance) resonated as both an assertion of Solange’s power, and the ability for change within music to ripple out as broader, Earthly changes, and in some way an echo of the work’s broader exploration of expression voiced against its opposite. –Dylan Pasture --- Sacred Bones 10 Year Anniversary Photo: Colin Kerrigan / Red Bull Content Pool Sometimes I want to be devastated. The morning of the Sacred Bones 10 Year Anniversary showcase, I drew the ten of swords. How fitting. One for each year. The ten of swords is about hitting rock bottom and falling apart. Mine depicts a bull stabbed in the head. One sword even pierces the eyes. Usually I read this card as a warning. Get outside your mind before it eats you alive. I know I should have at least tried to be more vigilant. Instead, I turned to my friend and said that it felt perfect for Sacred Bones. What I mean is, I entered Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse thinking about collision. A giant moon hung from the rafters. I became aware of the space as malleable and tried not to understand. I wanted to feel it. Emotionally and viscerally. How else can I describe the experience other than to call it spiritual? Perhaps it has to do with juxtaposition. Like being ripped in half while watching Uniform and again while watching Marissa Nadler. Both strangely meditative. Uniform wrought havoc in the form of relentless noise. Like a vicious cycle indicative of how frustrating and limiting it can feel to live inside a body as the entire world burns. How everything seems impossible, at least everything but clawing up the walls and screaming into a void. Nadler described that void. Glimpsed it and shed light upon the center when she sang, “I can’t go back, I don’t wanna go back, to that house or that life again.” I felt my heart break like a window thrown open in the middle of a storm. Like I was listening alone in my bedroom. Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool I want music to fuck me up and scrape me out and leave me wondering where to go. This is why I love Sacred Bones. Watching The Men play with all of their original members, I thought about how it felt to discover Sacred Bones when I was on the radio in college. I had just begun listening to more dissonant and intense music, and pretty much anything released on Sacred Bones would freak me out. And I loved it. I still love it. Jenny Hval wore black velvet with a hood. She wore a black wig. She said we would all become family through blood ties. She moved through fog. She received a haircut while singing. She snaked her arms around her collaborators. The line between song and manifesto disappeared, which left me considering the body and the idea of ceremony. Magic as political. I had been inhabited and transformed. Part of me was somewhere else. Blanck Mass made the ritual of noise and light so huge that it was like the whole space had been swallowed. Zola Jesus ended the show with kinetics. I mean, pop so shattered and frenzied I felt hypnotized. Oscillating between the cathedral and the rave. Between gothic and cosmic. It was an ideal culmination of the energy swirling all night inside Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse. Like a vibration powered by obsession with darkness and weirdness. I felt a shift inside my body upon leaving. Simply existing was totally different. –Caroline Rayner --- Piano Nights: Gucci Mane and Zaytoven Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool It’s a cliché meme for someone to say “I am the American Dream,” and in an era with such little room for systemic romanticization, such a proclamation is also politically problematic at best. Nevertheless, Gucci Mane is the American Dream. If you’re like me, or any of the numerous other hip-hop devotees who’ve eventually come around to Guwop, the first time you heard him, you couldn’t understand a word he was saying. “Mumble-rap,” as it’s now called today, may be stylistic affectation for some, but there was no such phrase back when Gucci started doing it; probably because not since Rakim had a rapper put so many words together so poetically while sounding so close to falling asleep. In some parallel world, an alternate version of myself would never dare to use Rakim and Gucci’s names in the same sentence, but here we are. Rap is “mumble-rap,” the phrase itself is an anachronism functioning primarily as an age identifier of the writer who writes it, and this 31-year-old writer has watched Gucci Mane perform some of his most popular songs in a swank cocktail bar on the Lower East Side, accompanied by his producer Zaytoven on live piano. Photo: Carys Huws / Red Bull Content Pool Forget arrest records, jail bids, shootings, rap beefs, Twitter meltdowns, Harmony Korine courtings — forget all that, because it’s not what I’m referring to when I say Gucci Mane is the American Dream. I’m not talking about the American Dream of the bootlegger turned politician or the drug dealer turned real estate mogul. I’m not talking about the American Dream of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby or DiCaprio’s. I am talking about the American Dream of American music. Arguably our greatest cultural achievements, jazz, blues, rock, and hip-hop music were all originally perceived as amusical by the critical powers that be and eventually recognized as expressions of “higher art,” whatever that may be. I’m not trying to absolve myself here. When I first heard Gucci Mane, I might not have gone so far as to say it wasn’t hip-hop, but I definitely didn’t hear what others heard, simply because I had never heard anyone rap like that before. I literally didn’t understand what he was saying. I can only speak for myself , but I’ve personally witnessed yesterday’s proto-“mumble-rap” become today’s instantly sold-out black-tie affair of the millennium — dress code for the event called for attendees to wear their “finest formal wear” — and as far as I’m concerned that’s the American Dream. –Samuel Diamond --- A Conversation with Alvin Lucier Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool Perhaps the best story told at Alvin Lucier’s intimate gathering in the basement of Red Bull Arts was his response to the question of what, if any, recent versions of his legendary work “I Am Sitting In A Room” have been most meaningful to him. As Lucier described it, after a concert performance of the piece at MIT, a 10-year-old boy came up to the man and declared: “That’s cool!” The boy then later went home and recorded his own version of the work on his laptop and emailed it to the legendary composer. This, Lucier said, was a version he liked a lot. Watching Lucier speak, it seems much of what gives life to his work — even at its most conceptually adventurous — is this very down-to-Earthness, an embrace of the everyday, the generosity of spirit and lack of pretense that allows the experiments of a child to stand alongside that of a “legitimate” performance venue. Elsewhere, Lucier explained that he wrote his own text for Sitting in lieu of adapting a poem because he didn’t want to use anything “high falutin’.” Though possessed with perhaps one of the most refined imaginations in experimental composition, he insisted that he was uninterested in “theory.” In Lucier’s words: “My decisions are real.” Through a life-spanning conversation moderated by Red Bull’s Todd L. Burns, Lucier returned to this theme in many forms. When discussing his coursework as a Professor (preserved, in some form, in his text Music 109) he spoke of trying to “demystify” music for his students, of telling them he was not interested in their opinions, but in their “perceptions.” And as he dove into his own use of perception in his work — whether in using the echolocation of bats as a reference for his use of delay, or how his refracted Beatles arrangement “Nothing Is Real” was meant to capture the sense of remembering “where you were when you heard a song for the first time” — one had the feeling of an artist trying to demystify the senses for himself, grounding the mysterious in something sturdy and real. Evocatively describing how those bats use sound to travel in the dark, Lucier slipped us a kind of statement of purpose: “You can’t cheat if you’re trying to survive.” Threaded through these discussions of technique were lovely anecdotes of the artist’s large and impressive circle of acquaintances, dishing on everyone from John Ashbery and Nam June Paik to Morton Feldman and, of course, John Cage, who was revealed to have apparently inspired (and/or peer-pressured) the first performance of Lucier’s brain-wave piece “Music For Solo Performer” into existence. Though anecdotally anchoring himself among many of the greats of 20th century art, Lucier left the intimate group gathered to listen to him on an appropriately humble, un-elevated note. When asked by an audience member if music had a “spiritual meaning” for him, he answered, simply: “No.” –Dylan Pasture --- Fluxo: Funk Proibidão Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool This year’s Red Bull Music Academy takeover of NYC began with the announcement that MC Bin Laden, the headliner for the inaugural evening’s Brazilian bass event, would not be able to perform for reasons out of his and the festival organizers’ control. I found out from a friend that this meant he’d been denied entry at the US border, presumably an exercise of ideological power by immigration officials. RBMA itself embodies corporate accumulation of cultural capital, a late phenomenon toward which discerning ravers maintain a healthy ambivalence, suspended between cynicism and the notion that maybe, particularly if the artists can gain control of it, this type of power could be better than the kind that preceded it. The announcement, emailed via the ticketing agent the day of the event, brought a latent global power strata to the fore that framed the event: the admittedly neoliberal post-nation-state RMBA agenda versus the utterances of the deep-state monolith, which you only find out about through texts from a friend who knows a friend of someone who was at the border. And so RBMA NYC 2017 began. Even with MC Bin Laden not present, though, the Fluxo event was stacked with a formidable range of Brazilian bass DJs and emcees, strung together under the banner of maximalist sonic valence with NYC party mainstays Venus X and Asmara, Detroit ghetto house forbearer DJ Assault and the indefinable entity that is Chicago’s Sicko Mobb, who themselves are Red Bull-sponsored artists. Photo: Krisanne Johnson / Red Bull Content Pool After being encouraged by the coterie of Red Bull chaperones near to the door to enjoy my evening, I entered the venue to find Sicko Mobb bobbing and jack-balling amidst one another on stage, Ceno wearing a bright red T-shirt with “BALMAIN POWER” printed in shiny bold Impact font across the front. My friend and I quickly situated ourselves behind a car whose interior was rigged with overzealous strobe lights, one of several props situated throughout the venue that upon reviewing the event literature I realized was intended to be a simulation of “the neon-lit car stereos lining the local block parties [in the favelas of Brazil] known as fluxos.” Despite being obfuscated by a thick wall of smoke-and-strobe that would give Dean Blunt a run for his money, Lil Trav and Ceno breezed through a seemingly arbitrary selection of their metallic, sweet-sad bop songs, still a sound without any real parallels in hip-hop: “Own Lane” and “Go Plug” from the Super Saiyan Vol. 2 mixtape, throwbacks like “Fiesta,” “Hoes Be Goin’,” and “Round and Round.” In lieu of a DJ, an associate played tracks from an iPhone, and following in the tradition of cutting songs short he simply stopped the playback at random points, the music giving way to the sound of smoke and low chatter in the absence of DJ wheel-up sounds. DJ Assault took the stage shortly thereafter, living up to his name by starting the set out at a casual 145 bpm and playing “Let Me Bang” almost immediately after getting on stage. The venue was only beginning to fill as he warmed up the crowd, plunging headfirst into the obscene territory of booty music blended together with cumbia and proibidão. Obscenity and disorientation seemed to be forming as obvious mantras seeded by the party organizers as I went into the port-a-potty nested inside the warehouse and found it was resonating on beat with the bass, which only served to highlight that there was no respite from the building disorientation of the space. Venus X and Asmara played the mid-event set, rolling out a hip-hop-heavy set that felt somewhat obligatory to the context of the party, and MC Carol did not take the stage until very late, at which point the crowd was not well-positioned to entertain a set of emceeing. We left and hung out in the park, and talked about the slightly off feeling we were left with, and wondered if it was the party or us who was off. –Nick Henderson --- A Conversation with Werner Herzog On Music and Film Photo: Stacy Kranitz / Red Bull Content Pool [This lecture review is to be read in the voice of preeminent German filmmaker Werner Herzog: I do not care if this offends him or you; it is critical.] I was not sure if I would be able to make it to the lecture on time. As it was being held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in one of the many areas of Manhattan with notoriously limited street parking, I elected to take the Long Island Rail Road, which picked me up directly behind my day job in Garden City. Inevitably late, the train did not leave me enough time to reach the venue via public transportation, and because this would have required that I transfer between multiple subways and a bus, I instead hailed a taxi in front of Penn Station. I knew this meant I would have to pay more, as these cabs are permitted by the City to charge extra for the premium pickup location, but I did not care. I had somewhere I needed to be and no way to get there sooner. Looking at my phone during the 50-block cab ride, I learned President Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey. Also, the publicist facilitating Tiny Mix Tapes’ coverage notified me that the doors were closing. I was dismayed but not altogether discouraged. When I arrived at the event, a discussion with Werner Herzog on music and film, the gentleman admitting ticketholders and press-listees told me the lecture had only started about five minutes ago. My name being confirmed, I proceeded up the museum steps to a dark auditorium where I was ushered to an empty seat not far from my point of entry. I saw erected on the stage a faux living room similar to Zach Galifianakis’s Between Two Ferns set, but more fully furnished, with couches and a film-projector screen hung above and behind them. At stage right, shrouded in cinematic shadow, stood a tall man looking up at the screen. When the film clip ended, the lights came on revealing him to be Herzog. He seated himself on the couch at center stage and spoke with a nebbish film-critic-type about music in films, his and others. He indicated he chooses the music for his films almost exclusively by feeling. He cited Fred Astaire’s dance routines as a prime example of the marriage of music and cinema, though in far less romantic terms. He reminisced about teasing Popol Vuh founder Florian Fricke during a friendly soccer match over his interest in New Age thinking and going home badly bruised for it. He said he hadn’t heard the phrase “krautrock” until just a few days earlier. In the Q&A portion of the event, he found occasion to reassert his argument that Elon Musk is acting foolishly in his pursuit of Martian colonization, that humanity would be better served conserving and protecting its home on Earth. He admitted that though there is no purposeful allusion to so-called spirituality in his films, some of his early religious teachings most likely had a lasting effect on his viewpoint and that he always strives to evoke a sense of poetry with his filmmaking to “elevate” the thinking of his viewers. On my way out, a Red Bull employee offered me a drink from a tray holding multiple colored cans. I took one at random; “Acai Berry”-something, she called it. “Save it for the morning,” she said. Thanking her, I cracked it open and exited to the cultured darkness of New York City’s Upper East Side. –Samuel Diamond http://j.mp/2qxIPYU

[hypertagmaster]

3 Strategic Ways to Get Links to Your Website

“Link building” is something I’ve never done in my 19 years of publishing online. In other words, I’ve never spent any time whatsoever emailing strangers and trying to convince them to link to my content.

I have, however, been on the receiving end of many link-building requests. And they’ve never worked on me.

Now, I know there are smart people who work on behalf of clients to get links through these outreach initiatives. Strangely, I’ve never received a link request from a smart person.

It’s usually just dopey people using bad email scripts and automation that some clown sold them on. They don’t even bother to modify the language, so you see the same lame emails over and over.

Outside of receiving compensation for a link (which I would never accept and is just a bad idea in general these days), I don’t see why any online publisher would agree to these requests. What’s in it for us?

So, if you’re looking to get links to your site for all the benefits that come with it (including enhanced search rankings), maybe you should try a different approach.

Let’s look at three that might work for you.

1. Guest posting

Not a new approach, certainly. But guest writing for relevant and respected publications remains one of the best ways to gain exposure to an audience that builds your own. And of course you’ll want, at minimum, a bio link back to your site in exchange for your content contribution.

Now, you may remember that Google at one point spoke out against guest posting for SEO. Yes, spammy sites submitting spam to other spammy sites in exchange for links is not smart — but that’s not what we’re talking about.

I’m also not necessarily talking about content farms like Forbes and Business Insider, although if that’s where your desired audience is, go for it. You’ll likely have better luck, however, with beloved niche publications that cater to the people you’re after.

What you’re looking for is a place that you can contribute on a regular basis, rather than a one-shot. Not only will the audience begin to get familiar with you after repeat appearances, the publisher will value and trust you, which can lead to coveted in-content links to relevant resources on your site rather than just the bio link.

What if a publisher doesn’t allow links back to your site? Move on. It’s not just about SEO — if a reader is interested in seeing more of your work, they should be able to simply click a link to do so. That’s how the web works.

If you’re limited to a bio link, see if you can point to something more valuable than your home page. A free guide or course that gets people onto your email list is the primary goal ahead of SEO.

2. Podcast interviews

The explosion of podcasting, especially the interview format, is a potential boon for exposure and links. In short, podcasters need a constant supply of guests, and you should position yourself as a viable option.

The links appear in the show notes, and this can be a great way to get citations to your home page, your valuable opt-in content, and your most impactful articles. But you have to find a way to get on the show in the first place.

This may be more doable than you think, because as I said, podcasters need a constant supply of fresh guests. And take it from me — we’re looking for new and interesting people outside of the typical echo chamber that exists in every niche.

For example, recently Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers introduced me to Talia Wolf, someone I was unfamiliar with. I trust and respect Joanna, so I checked out Talia. Next thing you know, I’m interviewing Talia (her episode of Unemployable comes out tomorrow) and I ended up linking to three of her articles as well as a page that contains her free conversion optimization resources.

The key, of course, is to do great work that reflects you know what you’re talking about. Then do your research:

Find relevant podcasts.

Take the time to understand the show, its audience, and its host.

Send a friendly note explaining why you would be a solid interview.

Don’t be shy; it’s just a (well-written) email, and podcasters want you to convince them to be their next guest. Or get someone who knows both your work and the host to recommend you. There are even podcast interview booking agencies cropping up that will do the outreach for you.

3. Tribal content

In the early days of Copyblogger, it was all about creating hugely valuable tutorial content that naturally attracted links. It’s harder these days, because most people tend to share that type of content on social channels rather than blog about it like back in the day.

You can still make it happen, though, with the right content and the right relationships with other publishers in your niche. It hinges on leveraging the powerful influence principle of unity, or our tribal affiliations with like-minded people.

Tribal content is all about resonating strongly with people who believe the way you do on a particular issue.

Rather than just “you’re one of us,” it’s more effective when it’s “you’re different like we’re different.”

For example, one of our prime tribal themes involves the dangers of digital sharecropping, or publishing content exclusively on digital land that you don’t own and control. We didn’t coin the term (Nicholas Carr did), but often when the topic comes up, there will be a mention of Copyblogger.

It works the other way, too. Whenever I see a solid piece of content that warns against digital sharecropping, I share it on social. And there’s a good chance I’ll link to it as outside support the next time we talk about the topic. You know, like this and this.

If there is an important worldview within your niche or industry that other online publishers share, it’s likely important that they make the case to their audiences. With tribal content, you’re providing an important message that supports part of their editorial strategy as well as your own.

That’s how the truly powerful links to your site happen. So start making a list of unifying concepts that you share with others in your arena, and make sure your relationships with those publishers are solid before you unleash your epic tribal content.

Wait … I was wrong

Now that I think about it, one link-building email almost worked on me. It was one of those cookie-cutter templates asking me to swap out a link in the web archive of my personal development newsletter Further.

When you curate content as I do with Further, linking to other people’s stuff is what it’s all about. So I took a look at the suggested resource, and it was surprisingly good.

I wrote back to say I wasn’t going to replace the old link, but I would include her resource in the next issue. Unfortunately, this person didn’t respond over the next several days.

What I got instead, just a day before publication, was the next automated email in her sequence, asking me if I had seen the original email that I had already replied to. Deleted that email, deleted the link to her resource in the draft issue, and included something else instead.

Which brings us to an important principle in both link building and life:

Don’t be a dope.

The post 3 Strategic Ways to Get Links to Your Website appeared first on Copyblogger.

via marketing http://ift.tt/2n9DzIZ

[marie85marketing]

3 Strategic Ways to Get Links to Your Website

“Link building” is something I’ve never done in my 19 years of publishing online. In other words, I’ve never spent any time whatsoever emailing strangers and trying to convince them to link to my content.

I have, however, been on the receiving end of many link-building requests. And they’ve never worked on me.

Now, I know there are smart people who work on behalf of clients to get links through these outreach initiatives. Strangely, I’ve never received a link request from a smart person.

It’s usually just dopey people using bad email scripts and automation that some clown sold them on. They don’t even bother to modify the language, so you see the same lame emails over and over.

Outside of receiving compensation for a link (which I would never accept and is just a bad idea in general these days), I don’t see why any online publisher would agree to these requests. What’s in it for us?

So, if you’re looking to get links to your site for all the benefits that come with it (including enhanced search rankings), maybe you should try a different approach.

Let’s look at three that might work for you.

1. Guest posting

Not a new approach, certainly. But guest writing for relevant and respected publications remains one of the best ways to gain exposure to an audience that builds your own. And of course you’ll want, at minimum, a bio link back to your site in exchange for your content contribution.

Now, you may remember that Google at one point spoke out against guest posting for SEO. Yes, spammy sites submitting spam to other spammy sites in exchange for links is not smart — but that’s not what we’re talking about.

I’m also not necessarily talking about content farms like Forbes and Business Insider, although if that’s where your desired audience is, go for it. You’ll likely have better luck, however, with beloved niche publications that cater to the people you’re after.

What you’re looking for is a place that you can contribute on a regular basis, rather than a one-shot. Not only will the audience begin to get familiar with you after repeat appearances, the publisher will value and trust you, which can lead to coveted in-content links to relevant resources on your site rather than just the bio link.

What if a publisher doesn’t allow links back to your site? Move on. It’s not just about SEO — if a reader is interested in seeing more of your work, they should be able to simply click a link to do so. That’s how the web works.

If you’re limited to a bio link, see if you can point to something more valuable than your home page. A free guide or course that gets people onto your email list is the primary goal ahead of SEO.

2. Podcast interviews

The explosion of podcasting, especially the interview format, is a potential boon for exposure and links. In short, podcasters need a constant supply of guests, and you should position yourself as a viable option.

The links appear in the show notes, and this can be a great way to get citations to your home page, your valuable opt-in content, and your most impactful articles. But you have to find a way to get on the show in the first place.

This may be more doable than you think, because as I said, podcasters need a constant supply of fresh guests. And take it from me — we’re looking for new and interesting people outside of the typical echo chamber that exists in every niche.

For example, recently Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers introduced me to Talia Wolf, someone I was unfamiliar with. I trust and respect Joanna, so I checked out Talia. Next thing you know, I’m interviewing Talia (her episode of Unemployable comes out tomorrow) and I ended up linking to three of her articles as well as a page that contains her free conversion optimization resources.

The key, of course, is to do great work that reflects you know what you’re talking about. Then do your research:

Find relevant podcasts.

Take the time to understand the show, its audience, and its host.

Send a friendly note explaining why you would be a solid interview.

Don’t be shy; it’s just a (well-written) email, and podcasters want you to convince them to be their next guest. Or get someone who knows both your work and the host to recommend you. There are even podcast interview booking agencies cropping up that will do the outreach for you.

3. Tribal content

In the early days of Copyblogger, it was all about creating hugely valuable tutorial content that naturally attracted links. It’s harder these days, because most people tend to share that type of content on social channels rather than blog about it like back in the day.

You can still make it happen, though, with the right content and the right relationships with other publishers in your niche. It hinges on leveraging the powerful influence principle of unity, or our tribal affiliations with like-minded people.

Tribal content is all about resonating strongly with people who believe the way you do on a particular issue.

Rather than just “you’re one of us,” it’s more effective when it’s “you’re different like we’re different.”

For example, one of our prime tribal themes involves the dangers of digital sharecropping, or publishing content exclusively on digital land that you don’t own and control. We didn’t coin the term (Nicholas Carr did), but often when the topic comes up, there will be a mention of Copyblogger.

It works the other way, too. Whenever I see a solid piece of content that warns against digital sharecropping, I share it on social. And there’s a good chance I’ll link to it as outside support the next time we talk about the topic. You know, like this and this.

If there is an important worldview within your niche or industry that other online publishers share, it’s likely important that they make the case to their audiences. With tribal content, you’re providing an important message that supports part of their editorial strategy as well as your own.

That’s how the truly powerful links to your site happen. So start making a list of unifying concepts that you share with others in your arena, and make sure your relationships with those publishers are solid before you unleash your epic tribal content.

Wait … I was wrong

Now that I think about it, one link-building email almost worked on me. It was one of those cookie-cutter templates asking me to swap out a link in the web archive of my personal development newsletter Further.

When you curate content as I do with Further, linking to other people’s stuff is what it’s all about. So I took a look at the suggested resource, and it was surprisingly good.

I wrote back to say I wasn’t going to replace the old link, but I would include her resource in the next issue. Unfortunately, this person didn’t respond over the next several days.

What I got instead, just a day before publication, was the next automated email in her sequence, asking me if I had seen the original email that I had already replied to. Deleted that email, deleted the link to her resource in the draft issue, and included something else instead.

Which brings us to an important principle in both link building and life:

Don’t be a dope.

The post 3 Strategic Ways to Get Links to Your Website appeared first on Copyblogger.

[nathandgibsca]

3 Strategic Ways to Get Links to Your Website

“Link building” is something I’ve never done in my 19 years of publishing online. In other words, I’ve never spent any time whatsoever emailing strangers and trying to convince them to link to my content.

I have, however, been on the receiving end of many link-building requests. And they’ve never worked on me.

Now, I know there are smart people who work on behalf of clients to get links through these outreach initiatives. Strangely, I’ve never received a link request from a smart person.

It’s usually just dopey people using bad email scripts and automation that some clown sold them on. They don’t even bother to modify the language, so you see the same lame emails over and over.

Outside of receiving compensation for a link (which I would never accept and is just a bad idea in general these days), I don’t see why any online publisher would agree to these requests. What’s in it for us?

So, if you’re looking to get links to your site for all the benefits that come with it (including enhanced search rankings), maybe you should try a different approach.

Let’s look at three that might work for you.

1. Guest posting

Not a new approach, certainly. But guest writing for relevant and respected publications remains one of the best ways to gain exposure to an audience that builds your own. And of course you’ll want, at minimum, a bio link back to your site in exchange for your content contribution.

Now, you may remember that Google at one point spoke out against guest posting for SEO. Yes, spammy sites submitting spam to other spammy sites in exchange for links is not smart — but that’s not what we’re talking about.

I’m also not necessarily talking about content farms like Forbes and Business Insider, although if that’s where your desired audience is, go for it. You’ll likely have better luck, however, with beloved niche publications that cater to the people you’re after.

What you’re looking for is a place that you can contribute on a regular basis, rather than a one-shot. Not only will the audience begin to get familiar with you after repeat appearances, the publisher will value and trust you, which can lead to coveted in-content links to relevant resources on your site rather than just the bio link.

What if a publisher doesn’t allow links back to your site? Move on. It’s not just about SEO — if a reader is interested in seeing more of your work, they should be able to simply click a link to do so. That’s how the web works.

If you’re limited to a bio link, see if you can point to something more valuable than your home page. A free guide or course that gets people onto your email list is the primary goal ahead of SEO.

2. Podcast interviews

The explosion of podcasting, especially the interview format, is a potential boon for exposure and links. In short, podcasters need a constant supply of guests, and you should position yourself as a viable option.

The links appear in the show notes, and this can be a great way to get citations to your home page, your valuable opt-in content, and your most valuable articles. But you have to find a way to get on the show in the first place.

This may be more doable than you think, because as I said, podcasters need a constant supply of fresh guests. And take it from me — we’re looking for new and interesting people outside of the typical echo chamber that exists in every niche.

For example, recently Joanna Wiebe of Copy Hackers introduced me to Talia Wolf, someone I was unfamiliar with. I trust and respect Joanna, so I checked out Talia. Next thing you know, I’m interviewing Talia (her episode of Unemployable comes out tomorrow) and I ended up linking to three of her articles as well as a page that contains her free conversion optimization resources.

The key, of course, is to do great work that reflects you know what you’re talking about. Then do your research:

Find relevant podcasts.

Take the time to understand the show, its audience, and its host.

Send a friendly note explaining why you would be a solid interview.

Don’t be shy; it’s just a (well-written) email, and podcasters want you to convince them to be their next guest. Or get someone who knows both your work and the host to recommend you. There are even podcast interview booking agencies cropping up that will do the outreach for you.

3. Tribal content

In the early days of Copyblogger, it was all about creating hugely valuable tutorial content that naturally attracted links. It’s harder these days, because most people tend to share that type of content on social channels rather than blog about it like back in the day.

You can still make it happen, though, with the right content and the right relationships with other publishers in your niche. It hinges on leveraging the powerful influence principle of unity, or our tribal affiliations with like-minded people.

Tribal content is all about resonating strongly with people who believe the way you do on a particular issue.

Rather than just “you’re one of us,” it’s more effective when it’s “you’re different like we’re different.”

For example, one of our prime tribal themes involves the dangers of digital sharecropping, or publishing content exclusively on digital land that you don’t own and control. We didn’t coin the term (Nicholas Carr did), but often when the topic comes up, there will be a mention of Copyblogger.

It works the other way, too. Whenever I see a solid piece of content that warns against digital sharecropping, I share it on social. And there’s a good chance I’ll link to it as outside support the next time we talk about the topic. You know, like this and this.

If there is an important worldview within your niche or industry that other online publishers share, it’s likely important that they make the case to their audiences. With tribal content, you’re providing an important message that supports part of their editorial strategy as well as your own.

That’s how the truly powerful links to your site happen. So start making a list of unifying concepts that you share with others in your arena, and make sure your relationships with those publishers are solid before you unleash your epic tribal content.

Wait … I was wrong

Now that I think about it, one link-building email almost worked on me. It was one of those cookie-cutter templates asking me to swap out a link in the web archive of my personal development newsletter Further.

When you curate content as I do with Further, linking to other people’s stuff is what it’s all about. So I took a look at the suggested resource, and it was surprisingly good.

I wrote back to say I wasn’t going to replace the old link, but I would include her resource in the next issue. Unfortunately, this person didn’t respond over the next several days.

What I got instead, just a day before publication, was the next automated email in her sequence, asking me if I had seen the original email that I had already replied to. Deleted that email, deleted the link to her resource in the draft issue, and included something else instead.

Which brings us to an important principle in both link building and life:

Don’t be a dope.

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