#Tumblr and social media in general is meaningless words on a screen | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

batboyblog · 2 years

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Things I like about Tumblr, 2022

first off, Tumblr isn't perfect, it's full of people, and people in general and on-line can be pretty crap, but in a rare move for me I'm looking at the good.

you are not expected to post under your own name/face. In fact people would think you were pretty freaking weird if you did. To the Best of my knowledge only one person posts under their own name with their face as a profile pic, Hi Neil Gaiman! If we keep this up Tumblr will not become a semi-work space like twitter

No one knows your follower count (and honestly you shouldn't know it either) The level of brain rot I see on twitter around having a big follower count is so embarrassing, "help me get to X million!" is so very cringe, much like blue checks its a meaningless thing and we're all better off not knowing who's "popular" there are popular posts not people.

I have a very popular post about the long term nature of Tumblr so I won't go too much into it other than to say that it's nice that we can have long term jokes and memes on here, because we're able to reblog things from the past without any shame and judgement and so a culture and in jokes and yearly (or weekly) events happen here in a way I don't see on more "now! now! now!" social media.

You can do whatever, linking to #1 because we're not a semi-professional webpage where people are selling their "brand" etc there's little to no pressure (outside of yourself) to stay on topic or theme, you can and should reblog that gif set of a funny show from 10 years ago, that moody art shot of a field before a storm, and that short video of puppies falling over, wild out.

You decide if people see your likes. How many times did people get busted for having porn in their Twitter likes, where here no one can judge you, again we're not a work space so if you like that picture of a man in jock strap, go for it reblog that shit, but if you're shy don't worry you can enjoy what you enjoy without having to share with the class.

We hate crypto, we hate NFT, we always have we always will and thats very sexy of us

you can (still) say what you like. The need to make platforms safe for advisors and influencers has lead to "unalive" and other ways to try to get around using bad words. On Tumblr I can say that Elon Musk sucks a whole bucket of monkey shit and I hope he's pushed down the stairs at Twitter HQ.

Tags my beloved, tags are funny, lovely cool little notes, a way to add a joke, say something heart felt etc without worrying "is this needed?" and guess what if the answer was "yes it was" someone will screen shot them and add them to the post for you, win win.

Long form thought, I know this is a semi-jokey list but like no joking I think having all our politicians, journalists and "thought leaders" spending all day on and mainly communicating through a webpage with a very small character limit was/is very bad for our society. Tumblr (as you can see) you can write an essay (I don't think those people should come here, but I never run out of characters)

there's nowhere better for formatting gifs or picture sets, I honestly can't imagine trying to post a series of gifs or pictures on Insta or Twitter and having them all folded up rather than laid out in order all visible at once (and not cropped down, well most of the time)

There's no algorithm, everyone says it but it needs to be on the list, there's no real hand holding pushing you to this or that, there's nothing boosting or hiding your post, you pick what you like and follow it, and then those blogs do something weird and different and thats chill and you keep on.

we're the gay trans sex website, pretty much no where else on-line can you find this much dumb, non sequitur queer humor or as supportive of the trans experience, yes there are TERFs but they are more fringe here than basically any where else.

we just don't matter, back to #1 we are not a place where you can market yourself or your brand or whatever, as such things are just not that serious, this is a social media website made for fun, to enjoy TV, books, and movies mainly but really whatever you do enjoy.

negative I'd like to address before I go, the on-going porn ban, I'm not in favor of porn itself on here, I don't think we need gif sets of studio porn or whatever. But once Tumblr was a safe space for a lot of queer performers to spread their self made work. It also was a safe space for Queer art, both photographic and drawn, to express sensuality and sexuality. And a safe space for Queer artists to draw art of characters totally fucking the shit out of each other. It was a place where enjoyment of the human form and sexuality could be mixed with all the other parts of life as normal. There were for sure problems, however in an ever more censored and sex negative world I think a freed Tumblr is more needed than ever, so I hope we figure that out soon.

#Tumblr #twitter #social media #meta #thoughts

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barbara-gordons-glasses · 3 years

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Since I’m bored, I’m going to be making a long rant about bisexuality, biphobia, inaccurate representation of bisexuality in the media, and just overall how I don’t feel accepted in my own “community”. To start off with, I’m a bisexual fifteen year-old girl who has a preference for women. I still love men, just in case any of you felt the reason to say otherwise.

Biphobia is the dislike of or prejudice against bisexual people. As you may or may not know, biphobia is everywhere, in more places than most people talk about when dealing with issues in our community and the world outside social media. What may surprise some of you is that not only are a lot of straight people biphobic, but LGBT members are as well. There are LGBT members and straight people who refuse to date bi women/men simply for the stereotypes others have pressed onto us (ex. disloyal, greedy, selfish, etc.).

While some people aren’t aware that they’re being biphobic, there are some people who are perfectly aware of what they’re saying/doing, and that’s the worst part of it. Maybe not the worst to some, but it hurts to hear one of your most loved family members say or do something hurtful and not even realize it. Or maybe they did, and just didn’t care enough to correct themselves.

Inaccurate representation of bisexuality in the media is a subject that isn’t talked about enough, because most of us are too busy about flags and who can say what slurs. Other than that, however, I’d like to talk about Glee, and the few biphobic moments that no one paid attention to.

Kurt and Blaine were talking about when Blaine kissed Rachel the other night, and Kurt was confused when Blaine agreed to go on a date with her, claiming for him to be “leading” her on. Blaine then explains that he actually felt something when kissing her, and would like to see where it goes. Kurt waves him off when Blaine questions if he’s bi, saying “Bisexuality is a stage gay guys go through in high school to feel normal.”

Santana Lopez and her soon-to-be girlfriend played by Demi Lovato were chatting at a restaurant about Santana’s breakup with Brittany, her bisexual ex. “I had a girlfriend - she was bi.” Santana said, and the scene I watched on YouTube cut shortly to Santana and Demi’s character as girlfriends. Demi’s character had something along the lines of, “I think you deserve a 100% Sapphic goddess,” which you may not know, but is extremely offensive towards bisexual women. Santana agreed, and then happily explained, “I finally have a girlfriend who isn’t straying for penis all the time!”

(It’s my personal opinion, but if you still like Santana and Kurt as characters after reading this, knowing they hadn’t apologized for what they said, then you’re trash. I’m not sugarcoating anything. I don’t care if Kurt or Santana were the reasons you felt comfortable being who you are. They are terrible people who only have popularity because of how awful they are to bisexuals and people from the Glee club in general.)

Other than the blatant biphobia in some shows, other media likes to cover theirs up by bringing a bi character into the show, but immediately watering down their label (ex. “I swing both ways”, “Maybe I’ll hook up with a hot guy at the party tonight! Or a girl?”). I understand that while some people don’t prefer labels, there is no reason that every bi character doesn’t like labels. Eleanor Shellstrop, for example (The Good Place). Throughout the show, she had no problem with saying bi, lesbian, pan, and gay casually. But although it’s implied that she’s bisexual, the words had never left her mouth, confirming her sexuality. There are some bisexual members of our community that don’t mind, and are simply happy for the representation, but I cannot express how long I’ve had these problems on my mind, and feel like they need to be talked about more.

If you’re looking for positive bisexual validation on websites like Tik Tok, Snapchat, or Tumblr, don’t. There are so many instances of biphobia on those websites (especially Tik Tok) that everyone ignores. Some of it is just blatant (example that I saw in a post - “I just feel like “bi” women in a heterosexual relationship shouldn’t have an opinion on our community”), while others are a little covered up by adding other common features in front of the sexuality (ex. “Oh, there go the cis white bi alt girls again!”). Because of this, I haven’t felt accepted in the community. Not since I first searched up the word ‘bisexual’ on Tik Tok and Tumblr. But the moment you search up ‘biphobia’ on either of those sites, the first videos that pop up are lesbians making posts about how “not everything is biphobic.” and then tagging the video as ‘bi’, ‘biphobic’, etc. And when they’re lesbians speaking against biphobia, the videos always have more views than actual bisexual people talking about biphobia. It’s disgusting, and the reason I hardly ever talk about bisexuality in public.

You are all free to comment or say whatever you’d like, but it will always be my opinion that there is nothing all that great about being apart of the LGBT community these days. We’re all pinned against each other, discussing who can say what slurs, complaining about flags, generalizing and stereotyping certain sexualities, and just overall showing our true colors behind the screen of a computer. There are children and teens in other countries being raped because their parents or legal guardians think it will “turn them straight”, but we’re here in America or anywhere else you live talking about meaningless things like the reasons I’d listed above. Flags, slurs, generalizations. It’s what makes me embarrassed and ashamed to be apart of such a “family” that has no real love for each other.

#biphobia #bisexual #bisexuality #lgbt #pride month #pride #LGBT+#bisexual discourse #biphobes i actually want you to read this and understand why youre trash <3

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itmakesuinspire · 3 years

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I Found the 7 best ways to get more traffic to your blog!

You do not know how get more traffic to your blog. Here, I found the 7 best ways to get more traffic to your blog!

If you follow these 7 best ways you are sure to get more traffic to your blog.

New business blogs are starting every day. Many blogs have a good chunk of readership and increase their customer base.

But most of the bloggers do not achieve any success with their blogs: As a result they stop blogging.

In the following Iines I will go a little deeper into the world of blogging to know – How many Blog Posts are published per day?

You will soon realize the answer is far more than mere statistics.

Moreover, the facts mentioned below strengthen our efforts to get traffic to your blog.

The following statistics are nothing short of impressive.

Growing number of blog posts everyday!

Every month: 70 million new posts appear on WordPress driven blogs alone (29% of all blogs)

Viewers engage in: 77 million comments.

The monthly readership is: 409 million people.

Comparatively : Tumblr engage 450 million blogs

Average Blog post contains: 1150 words

The average time spent on blog posts is: 16 seconds.

With a view of the above facts, obviously more than 70% of blogs reach oblivion before making a profit.

You need to understand one thing: simply creating a blog and posting content is not enough to make your blog successful.

You have to follow the best SEO practices, only then you will get some relevant traffic.

What are the 7 best ways to get more traffic to your blog?

Your blog may not get traffic results due to various reasons. I mentioned 7 queries and if your answer is YES to any one of them, I offered the best ways to get traffic more to your blog.

#1- Are You Focusing On the Wrong Keywords?

One of the most important reasons that you do not get good traffic is that you are using wrong keywords.

This happens usually with new bloggers because they are not sure of the right keywords.

However, some other bloggers neglect the right keywords that will drive traffic and visitors to their blog.

Are you not sure whether your keywords are off-target?

These are the clues:

Your post may have a high bounce rate

Your post may have a little organic visibility

Keywords have higher impression rate and low click-through rate

Your content with wrong keywords may bring traffic to your website/blog but they are not an ideal audience.

Your blog might be swollen with good content and brings guests who will never convert. As a matter of fact, they just hover over your new posts and switch over to your competitors’ content.

Know the best ways to get more traffic to your blog organically

At last the solution to this problem is only making proper keyword research.

There are a number of FREE and PAID Tools to do keyword research like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, Keyword tool.io are some of the FREE tools.

If you can invest a few bucks you can run an active Google Ads Campaign.

This would help make sure your keyword focus matches your target customers’ searches. Then you will get noticed by google and other search engines.

# 2- Are You Paying Enough Attention to Your Competitors?

A keen research about your audience helps you understand the struggles, queries and problems that your target customers have with your industry/products or services.

How do you make an insight about your competitors?

There are several different ways to conduct competitive analysis, which can help you develop a strong and more effective content strategy that drives traffic to your blog. They are:

Analyse your target keywords: Perform a search for the phrases with keywords that you want to write a blog post.

Check on what ranks first. You will find a blog or website that uses these keywords and created a post.

Observe how the post is structured? In what other ways you can improve the writing quality, adding missing content or you can totally change into your own style of presentation.

Make content audits of your competitors: There are many free tools to perform content audit research. Use them on your competitors’ blog, collect information about your rivals’ posts, the topics they focus or miss.

These insights will help you fill the gaps and improve your content strategy. Provide the content that your competitors have neglected. So that you can get a chunk of the audience who belonged to your competitors.

Study the top content in your niche/industry. This can help you craft better blog posts to get better rankings over time. This would result in a higher number of interested readers visiting your website and engaging with your business.

#3-Aren’t Your Blog Posts designed for Human Readers?

In fact, when it comes to optimizing your blogs, they result in two aspects: optimizing blog posts for search engines with your target keywords focusing to capture the attention of bots and your very human customers.

When your blog posts are so focussed to bots rather than to the attention of actual people, you do not get physical traffic though it might rank high in search engines.

How to make content more appealing to human customers?

You have to:

Create content in a conversational style and readable

Use visuals like images, infographics

Break the longer paragraphs into short sentences

Headings, lists and bullets whenever possible.

Further, your content must get the readability score. The readability score is based on 0-100 scale. The lower score suggests the text is complicated. The higher the score suggests the text is readable even to teens.

Get the readability score to your website/content here for free.

Readable content not only can drive traffic in tons but also make them conversions.

Most importantly, your blog should have a compelling source of content which makes your casual skimmers into returning audiences.

#4-Don’t You have a Content and Distribution Strategy?

Many bloggers understand that relevant content is necessary for search engine optimization and building an audience. They create and optimize their content.

Although, this would bring them some traffic, a blog without direction is not sustainable and will not bring any long-term gains.

However, you need to implement a content marketing strategy which includes content creation, publishing and promoting the content. A detailed strategy publishing the content to your audience and maintaining consistency that brings you a loyal following.

Secondly, ensure that your content reaches the widest possible audience through promotion.

Enter the 80/20 rule: You have to spend 20% of your time to create content and 80% of your time to promote it. It would be meaningless to create more useful content without making efforts to reach the audience. You need to reach the platforms where your potential audience dwells.

Thirdly, You have to promote your content to major social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter to niche networks and video sites etc.

#5-Don’t You have a Calls-to-action on Your Blog?

You have created your blog through well-written posts and optimized it. You readers find it exactly the content they needed for their question. What do they do next? Imagine this situation.

Conversely, High quality content posted consistently to your blog is not enough to convert your potential audience into customers.

If you do not provide them a way to connect with your website, you are losing business. Here calls-to-action helps you. You can ask your reader to take a specific action such as downloading an eBook, signing up for an email newsletter or providing a free consultation etc.

The most effective calls-to-action will depend on your brand and audience. There are many practices to create a CTA.

Use strong and enticing words.

Show the exact benefit of taking action.

Insert images to give them more clarity.

Persuade the visitors the urgency of action

You need to optimize your calls-to-action and find out which type of action drives the highest conversion rates.

#6- Aren’t you Updating and Recycling your Older Content?

Be prepared that every post or article is going to bring you an audience. In fact, only one out of 10 posts will get traffic and generate new leads long after you published it. Yet these posts contribute 40% of your blog’s traffic.

If you neglect your older but effective and valuable content, you are missing to generate qualified leads to your blog. If you want to make these posts into compounding posts which generate more leads, you need to do two things regularly.

Identify the posts with the largest traffic and highest conversion rates.

Review and refresh these compounding blog posts to ensure they remain accurate and updated.

Since these posts perform well, they are the ideal content pieces to promote every now and then adding additional and updated content. Promote them on social media and other channels with internal links of your previous posts.

Also, You may make some changes in these compounding posts like adding quotes, replacing images, infographics, latest stats (if necessary), video summary and many more.

#7- Isn’t Your website optimized for mobile devices?

Above all, device incompatibility will have a negative impact on your site’s traffic, as a result the number of visitors your content makes conversions.

Moreover, nearly 70% of consumers between 18-40 age group research products on their mobile devices before making a purchase.

A poor and slow experience of your site means the customers may never visit your site.

By the way, your content depends largely on device compatibility. Ensure your site is optimized for mobile viewers too.

How to make your blog content mobile-friendly?

Make sure your blog/site looks on different devices with a tool like Screenfly.

Replace text links with small screen-friendly,

Edit the size of opt-in forms to be visible on smartphone screens.

Headings, sub-headings, bullet points, images must be used to break up the text content.

8. Bonus Tip:

What are other ways to get more traffic to Your Blog?

In addition to the above issues there are many other things that you need to focus:Content should be long enough. When you write a content with 500-1000 words, it becomes very concise and the reader leaves with incomplete information. If you write a content with 1500-2000 words, it will be comprehensive and the reader feels he need not switch to another site for further information. Moreover, I found in my experience the longer the content the better the SERP rank in search engines.

Index your site to search engines with site maps. Of course, this is a part of your SEO, but many new bloggers ignore this. Submit your sitemap to Google sitemap plugin (if you are using WordPress), Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools etc.

Use internal links, this would reduce your site’s bounce rate and it enables the readers to have a good navigation experience. Make sure the internal links open in the same window.

Optimize your images. Many users’ intent will be image search for brief and immediate information. Image optimization enables your site visible on search engines. You have to perform Image SEO in your blog. Explore here how to Optimize Your Images.

Do not stuff your post with Spam links. Do not do keyword stuffing. Do not add more affiliate links.

Keep in mind that link quality is more important than link quantity.

Bottom line:

As a rule of thumb, the above issues are just a few ways that you may be missing out your traffic and conversions. If you address these main areas, you will go a long way toward improving your blog for sure. But receiving traffic becomes easy when you follow the above suggestions but you have to retain them as your returning visitors.

Finally, it is very important to remember SEO strategies mean very little without a regular schedule of fresh content to post.

#blog trafficbloggingblogging for beginnersblogSEOSEO strategiesdigitalmarketing

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ex-sjw-resource · 7 years

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Tumblr - The Social Media Platform Everyone Used Incorrectly, and How This Has Impacted Mental Health World Wide

A bit of a clickbait-y title, but one that is completely true, and an article we should have written long ago.

Tumblr is a form of tumblog.

Tumblr did not invent this form of blogging, called tumblogging, a form of short, multimedia blog posts. Twitter is a form of tumblog, as is Wordpress. It is generally a public, more casual form of blogging than previous formats such as livejournal and dreamwidth.

Tumblogging, however, was popularized by Tumblr, whose name is obviously inspired by the original term. Tumblr’s company set out to create a platform where an artist’s original content could easily be shared and spread. The entire website’s design and code ethics are primarily built to help spread someone’s content far and wide, much farther than was previously possible on the internet. It worked by promoting your content to others who might like it, allowing you to tag it for finding in a search engine, and for your fans to easily share it with others. All without the trouble of having to save images to your hard drive and repost elsewhere. This was like something never before seen on the internet -- effortless boosting of your work.

And Tumblr still functions, and sets out to function, for this sole purpose. Tumblr’s design ethics have always been focused on promoting artwork and artists. It’s login screen shows artwork from promoted artists, the dashboard is suggesting new artists you might like, and there’s no privacy features to speak of. I mean, why would there be? This isn’t facebook.

But, if you are like any other user, you know that tumblr isn’t just use to promote artists. If you were like our mods, you long used tumblr as a sort of personal -- yet public -- diary. Even like an instant messaging platform. And if you’ve been here a while, you remember how much of a struggle it was -- and still is, to get the tumblr staff to acknowledge how people Actually use the website. We had to use extension, and still do, in order to make the website bend to our will -- to make it function how *we* wanted it to function.

But Tumblr was never meant to function how we wanted it to function.

Discourse. We’ve all seen it, and unless your mutuals are the ones making the discourse, then the posts you’ve seen on your dashboard have likely piled on tens of thousands of notes in the span of a few days. That’s exactly what the platform was meant to do -- boost posts.

But no one in the tumblr staff expected it to be a weapon of political war.

If you have an opinion, and you post it on tumblr, how much it’s seen by other people is directly correlated to how many followers you have to begin with. Even tagging it doesn’t really help. Post an opinion that is as well planned and thought out as one with 10k notes? If you only have 5 followers, it doesn’t matter. Your words are essentially meaningless without the sheer numbers required to get it airborne.

So on this platform, no matter your opinion, if you have the follower-base, you will be heard. That’s what this platform is for.

Or, say, you make a post. A deeply, personal post. On a sideblog with 2 followers. And someone manages to find this blog... and reblogs a post to their blog with 5000 followers... one you meticulously tagged #do not reblog.

It’s now being seen by 5k+ people. All at once. No matter if their followers think it was messed up that they reblogged you. They’ve seen it. There’s no unseeing your personal, private post. Even if that person apologizes for reblogging it and deletes the reblog. But there is no undoing that reblog. People have seen it. It will always be seen.

There is no true privacy features on tumblr to speak of. Nothing to the depths and levels of livejournal, and now even twitter has far more robust privacy features than tumblr. An yet... Tumblr’s users expect privacy, because they expect the entire world to be good just for them, to respect their privacy... and if they don’t, it’s not the fault of the person who posted these things on a website built from the ground up for the publication of content, not the opposite.

And this has had dire consequences.

While of course there are many adults using tumblr, adults who have had the experience of the internet before tumblr -- a time when privacy was something we acknowledged was personal responsibility, and there were websites with intensive privacy features such as livejournal if we wished to speak privately -- we must keep in mind that many of tumblr’s users, are in fact *not* adults. People who have grown up where tumblr was their first major social media site. Even people who their first friends were made on tumblr.

People whose entire worldly experience of socializing is a website where there is no true privacy. People who have never known that there is any alternative.

And I feel this is where a lot of anti-sjw discourse or ex-sjw discourse falls flat. Many people, most of these being adults, do not stop to think what of an astounding impact this website and its blogging format is having on young minds still forming. They chide them for being stupid and not knowing better -- but how could they know any better?

How could they know any better when their introduction to the world’s social stage was a website where no one can expect true privacy, and not only that, users actively deny it to each other?

I’ve seen popular blogs reblog posts from private blogs without their permission because they, in their minds, thought they were doing the right thing. That because this post contained something they disagreed with, they were allowed to go against their morals for the greater good.

Tumblr’s youth have built a surveillance culture.

A culture where trespassing into other’s personal space is deemed as holy and pure because of some other reason they could have possibly just made up. And many children here don’t know that there is any other alternative.

Back when facebook was new, it was heavily criticized for the increasing information it demanded from its users. Personal information that you would not give to a stranger on the street. And back then, people laughed it off. Of course facebook wouldn’t go very far, demanding such personal information from its users. People were smarter than that... right?

Fast forward half a decade later. I’m remaking my facebook account, because one day I accidentally logged out, and when I tried to log back in, facebook decided to permanently lock my account unless I coughed up my social security number so they can prove I was a real person.

My social security number. One of the most vital and personal pieces of information I have. To a website, who demanded it so I could continue to speak to my family members online, because facebook had become the only place I could easily contact them. And when I told my family about this, they had just shrugged and said facebook had done the same to them, and they just complied.

Extreme? Yes.

But at least facebook doesn’t demand a list of every single one of my mental illness diagnoses, my genetic racial makeup, my sexuality and gender identity, my opinions... in order to feel safe from other users while using its website.

Tumblr’s youth expects you to carry a detailed form of ID to even be allowed to form an opinion on specific topics. Tumblr’s youth tells you that privacy is of utmost importance -- unless you say something that upsets them. Then you’re free game.

Most of this could have been avoided if Tumblr had had privacy features built in from the get go.

But most of this could also have been avoided if people had realized the Tumblr staff’s main goal with the website from the beginning.

#ex sjw #exsjw #SJW #exsjwr

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probablyintraffic · 7 years

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Hey, so question! Read your "Fandom is not radical" post and am kinda waffling between agreeing on most of it while I'm also not sure if the premise is always applicable? Anyway, actual question: How would you fit "the personal is political" into "Fandom is not radical"? (Maybe you will just shrug and say you don't think the personal is political but...) Or do you hold that the personal fandom politics are in general not radical? I'm very interested in hearing you respond.

I actually borrowed the title of that post from Yamin Nair’s essay, Your Sex Is Not Radical, in which she argues that what people do in their bedroom has nothing to do with their politics. You can be a conservative and be trans–I mean, that’s Caitlyn Jenner. Nair writes (emphasis mine):

In many ways, when it comes to sex and sexuality, the Left makes the same mistake over and over again: it imagines that simply having violated the rules of the Conservative Right means that it is now setting about creating a new world order. This has led to the Left’s greatest blind spot in social issues, Gay Marriage, which it fervently supports because it believes, in the most wrong-headed fashion, that the very fact of gays marrying each other is somehow disruptive to, well, something: Capitalism, perhaps, The World Order, the Christian Right. Something.

And:

Should we think about sex at all? Yes, absolutely. Let’s all think and agitate collectively around how sex is deployed against the most vulnerable bodies, like people in prison. Let’s all think long and hard about whether we really want to keep reifying the idea that sex offenders deserve to be raped in prison (and about the oppressive framework of the category of “sex offender” itself). Let’s consider how to create a world where sex work and sex trade can flourish without coercion and demeaning people. By all means, please, let’s not stop having sex, which can be riotous fun, and let’s not stop thinking about sex in all its multiple forms. But stop pretending that sex is anything more than sex.

Your sex is not radical. Your politics can and should be. Consider the difference, and act upon it.

I’m quoting her in such length because she’s both such a gifted writer and says such insightful things. I would encourage folks in fandom to read that essay and read her (and other leftists’ writings) a lot more than we do now.

To your larger point: I think that in theory, yes, the personal can be political, but in practice, that theory has really devastated the left. In the kind of politics that’s practiced in the real world, we have to question what’s effective organizing and what’s just your personal life.

It’s such a conflicting issue for me too. On the one hand, I agree that the personal and the public spheres should not be separated. On the other hand, we politicize so much of our daily interactions (both online and offline) now, that the word politics may well have become meaningless. The distinction now, I think, is with “doing” politics. What does it mean to do politics, as opposed to just calling someone out? Doing politics requires organizing people to work toward a definable goal, a la Fight for 15; calling somebody out is, you know, calling them out.

Doing fandom is not doing politics until it involves organizing. I am skeptical of fandom’s real capacity for that, though, even with what the Harry Potter Alliance does, which is not that much. (I am more sympathetic toward it than many leftists would be, because this can be some young fan’s gateway into politics.) But organizing around a specific fandom is not a good idea, especially since Harry Potter has very questionable politics, as any single media thing would, and because, basically, that is just not how politics work. You only need to look at any successful movements/revolutions in history.

The difference between “fandom is not radical” and “the personal is political” is that fandom is mostly entirely online, where the personal needs not be. Online organizing is another topic I tried to touch on with that original post, in that I am not convinced of its effectiveness either. On The South Lawn, “Frank Little,” a “union organizer in the Midwest,” writes (emphasis mine):

If [online organizers] want to Instagram their lunch (which is likely volunteer pizza or stale donuts) –that’s fine — but they should not be organizing around hashtags, online petitions, or Twitter storms because even successful social media organizing can give organizers a false sense of winning.

In the formative years of organizing, understanding a win is crucial.

I’m an online organizer and one of the first things I tell people is that my work can only bolster the work on the ground. If I make a huge mistake, it could tank it. However, I am not winning campaigns behind a screen. I have made hashtags trend. I’ve made Thunderclaps explode. I have gotten important information on the news by organizing activists to tweet about it. But even some of my most “successful” campaigns have been parts of campaigns the organizations ultimately lost.

We seldom talk about this in the post-mortem. When we lose, field organizers self-flagellate while the digital organizers continue to pat themselves on their backs.

I go to a lot of digital conferences where we talk a lot about “building community.”

“Well, we lost the campaign, but we built a great community.”

Again, I’m quoting so excessively because what they said is so good.

But back to your point. The original promise of “the personal is political”–now a dogma–was to invite people to look into their own lives and their own relationships to find reflections of various oppression. That’s great, but I am more concerned about what this means in practice. How does that translate to action and to real political gain? Currently it translates to calling out microaggressions.

Like Frank Little said, I’m afraid that many Tumblr teens may not know what winning a political battle means, what taking political power means, and may believe whatever they’re doing on this website is already politics.

There is a greater concern too, that we have placed too big an emphasis on culture as a political space (I have an essay in the works about this actually). Is it a political win to have a person of color star in a Hollywood blockbusters? Yes, but not nearly, nearly as meaningful a win as say, if we ever get around to make healthcare universal. More in that post, but this combined with “the personal is political” means that personal consumption choices, what you watch on Netflix, what movie merchandise you purchase, have now become political too. Remember when Buzzfeed told us to buy Ghostbuster merch to be feminist or something? I do. That’s that theory, in practice.

Hope that terrible rambling answers your question lol!

#fandom meta #online organizing #the personal is political?

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pettyandprettyblog-blog · 7 years

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Let’s Talk About Taylor Swift

It’s about time we talked about the fake, money-grubbing, white supremacist, anti-feminist, Katy-Kim-Kanye-Clavin-John-Jake-Nicki-Spotify-Apple fighting, man-eating, snake, sheep, selfish bitch, (did I miss any descriptors?) that is more commonly known as Taylor Swift. What’s that, you say? You’re sick of hearing about her? You’re tired of seeing her fake face all over social media? Oh, honey. I’m sorry, but she is just getting started and I am so here for it. Allow me tell you exactly why.

Personally, I was never a huge Swiftie or “stan” (I literally just Googled what “stan” meant. It means overly obsessive fan if you wanted to know), but I always listened to her music. In eighth grade, when the Fearless album came out, of course I listened! “You Belong With Me”, “Love Story”, “Fifteen”--those songs spoke to me as a fresh adolescent, ready to embrace the world of social mayhem one mismatched converse shoe at a time. The boy you liked but never liked you back, the boy you loved and knew you were going to marry, the blind hope that your freshmen year of high school would be charming and romantic and pure and lovely and not just awkward and disappointing (SURPRISE!! No one escapes the fresh hell that is the first year of high school).

But I digress.

The Old Taylor Swift, I guess that’s what people are calling her now, could tap into your soul. She somehow knew what you were suffering through and could sense your deepest dreams and desires. Even those of us who weren’t “stans” could be caught singing along to “Mine” during the car ride to the movie theater with the girls and Kayla’s mom in the big, black suburban. We all knew every word. I had friends who went to her performance in Maine at a church after finishing her filming of a music video. It started raining and she kept singing. It was a whole thing with the rain and such. I had other friends who went to each one of her tours from the flagship Taylor Swift Tour to the new and improved 1989 Tour. I personally attended the 1989 Tour in Massachusetts. Gillette Stadium was filled to capacity with tens of thousands of screaming and crying men, women, and children. Even I shed a tear during her throwback to “Fifteen”, standing with my best friend since sixth grade who had seen me through the good, the bad, and the ugly (not necessarily in that order). Taylor would stop and look around the stadium in awe. Her face, projected on the massive LED screen, would make direct eye contact with every one of us and then she’d transition into her next banger. She made you feel like she knew you. She’s talented, I’ll giver her that. It was certainly an experience.

Along the way, I feel like I always noticed people clapping back at her but it never really registered. I always brushed it off as another celebrity feud, another meaningless piece of exploitation or mindless positioning by the media. When the whole thing about Taylor and Kanye’s “Famous-gate” happened, I remember thinking it was funny. I, too, called her a snake. Better her than me #taylorswiftexposedparty (hiss, hiss). I thought Kanye and Kim were being kind of mean, but I didn’t care. Not that much.

Not until now.

After the drama with Kanye, she disappeared. Radio silence followed for approx. three whole years until the $1 Lawsuit. Maybe some people kept track of her movements or her rare appearances in public places, but I didn’t. I listened to 1989 just like a lot of people, a slightly bigger fan than I once was, thinking it was her best work to date and wondering what kind of music she would do next, IF she would do anything else. I also wondered what kind of scandal she would be apart of this time, what version of Ms. Swift would be revealed in the chaos. Then, just a few weeks ago, she deleted EVERYTHING. Website? Gone. Instagram? Gone. Twitter? Tumblr? Gone, all gone. “IT’S ALIVE!!!” The world screamed. The words of Lord Baelish from GoT echoed in my ears, “Chaos is a ladder” and Taylor Swift is scrambling up that shit. She stirred from her hibernation. What was she going to do now? Was she hacked? And she’s back on Spotify?!

Then came the snake. An actual, bonafide snake video that Taylor posted on Instagram. People were taken aback to say the least. General excitement, theories, awkward laughs, shrugs, silence, and comments about how the snake-dragon was kind of scary, followed her posts. I, on the other hand, was jacked. I sent updates to like all my friends and would sit and refresh Taylor’s Instagram for a few minutes at a time just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. After all, time makes the heart grow fonder. Or is it distance? Idk same thing. The album art popped up with Taylor looking edgy in black and white. The classic New York Times-I Feel Like Pablo-esc font and color scheme graced the cover’s presence. “Wow,” I thought.“ Reputation. She’s going after Kanye with this one.” The too-tight choker, the ripped sweater, the dark makeup, slicked-back hair, this Taylor looks different. Unprecedented. Badass.

Taylor Swift released her newest single, “Look What You Made Me Do”, last Friday. A few friends and I stayed up until late Thursday night to get a first listen. We drank wine and streamed Ye Olde Taylor Swift while we waited for the single. When it dropped, the universe lost its collective shit, Spotify kept cutting out, and we listened to the song four times in a row. Two of my buddies didn’t like it. They said that the New Taylor was bad, that they missed the Old Taylor Swift. Her music was better. I disagreed. This is Taylor Swift. What’s to differentiate Old from New? She just is who she is.

After listening to the song about five-thousand, three-hundred, and twenty-six more times and then watching the following music video nine-hundred times more, I realized this: a lot of people were super upset about this “New Taylor Swift”. I know. Groundbreaking. But then I thought about why, just like my liberal arts education wants me to, and I came to a conclusion. People dislike change. Especially those who feel as though they have a personal stake in whatever or whoever is changing. People loved the Taylor that tapped into their souls and understood their plight of loving people who love them or don’t love them or kind of love them. In “Look What You Made Me Do”, Taylor Swift focuses on other people in a completely different way and she mostly does it for herself, to build herself up. That selfish bitch! But wait. Doesn’t Nicki Minaj do the same thing in Monster? What about Katy Perry in Swish Swish? How about all the countless male artists like Justin Bieber, Kanye West, Drake, etc. who do the same thing? All of them are different stylistically but they all tend to put across the same message, don’t they? That message being: Fuck. You. Taylor would hide little tidbits like that in the past, but her current one has neon arrow signs, black leather, chainsaws, whips, and Grammy’s that get that message across like a flaming garbage fire. She is finished with everyone’s bullshit and she will do whatever the hell she wants.

I also have my own theories. I don’t believe in a “New” or “Old” Taylor Swift. I believe in Taylor Swift. Each one of us changes and develops in different ways as we get older. Our viewpoints can/should change, our personalities shift, we move places, we meet people and lose old friends, and, hell, we can develop allergies to gluten and lactose. So what if I said one day, “No, sorry. The old me is dead. She wasn’t allergic to anything before but now she can’t eat ice cream without getting the shits, so new, shit-stained me is here to stay.” Charming, I know, but ultimately untrue. I’m still who I was in literally every aspect. I’ve grown. I look older. I have different opinions and thoughts. But I’m still me. My image is simply what I choose to put forward to other people. I exist on a continuum. I didn’t just stop one day and become a whole different version of myself.

Going along with the whole image theme, let me enlighten your asses about a little thing called business acumen. Taylor Swift is a BRILLIANT businesswoman. She times her music and tour releases for optimal moneymaking and can extend her reign for up to three years worth of Taylor tomfoolery. There is also something to be said about musicians and their use of imagery to create hype and gain followers (much like a cult leader tbh). But this is why I’m so into her right now at this moment like never before. The whole premise of “Look What You Made Me Do” is how imagery and bad press (although Taylor Swift takes bad press and turns it into record breaking hit singles) has driven her to her peak of success. “Oh look what you made me do! I’ve won Grammy’s and lawsuits. I have millions of dollars, loyal fans, a squad of friends, and two lovely cats.”

Since she was a mere fifteen year old girl, singin’ in Nashville, people have been all over her for one thing or another saying she can’t be that nice, or look that surprised all the time, or date that many people, etc. “Look What You Made Me Do” is her way of saying “you know what? I’m never going to be perfect in your eyes so why should I try? I’m a product of what you all think of me and that will never change so I will become the stereotype and throw you all for a loop.” In “Look What You Made Me Do”, she quite literally just BECAME the headlines. I know this is a very different artist who operated with a totally different message but I’m going to do it anyway. An 80’s pop star/model/actress/general badass and current goddess named Grace Jones had/has a similar plan of attack. If you don’t know who she is, you should Google her ass immediately. She pushed the boundaries of stereotypes and what people thought of her to the point where she became the stereotype and that was her whole thing as an artist. Sounds familiar right? (*cough* Madonna *cough* Lady Gaga *cough* Nicki Minaj and so many others *cough*).

We saw the start of this “Become the Stereotype: Grace Jone’s Method for Financial Success” in 1989. “Blank Space” portrayed Taylor as a man-hungry, black-widow queen who lured unsuspecting males to her massive mansion only to chew them up and spit them out like a piece of Juicy Fruit Gum after five minutes. And again, we saw it in “Shake It Off”: the girl can’t dance for shit (although it seems like she been taking lessons because she busts a fuckin’ MOVE in the LWYMMD music video) but she can sure mom-shimmy with the best of em and she does what she wants.

I’ve taken up too much space, but the moral of the story is this: don’t judge someone by what they did when they were younger or what you think they should be. If I were judged that way, people would forever see a pockmarked sack of hormones with little talent but above average hand-eye coordination. Let Taylor be. She said that the Old Taylor couldn’t come to the phone right now because she’s dead, but she is certainly, very much alive. We criticized her for not being “country” enough. Then we judged her for not being “pop” enough. Now we’re judging her for being a “snake” and presenting a different set of thoughts and sounds. Just because she was young once doesn’t erase everything she’s said, or done, or sung, but she’s evolving. We’ve been telling her to change her whole life. Let her do it now.

It’s what we all wanted her to do anyway.

Wasn’t it?

-A

#taylor swift #reputation #look what you made me do #lwymmd #lwymmdvid #snake #queen #taylor #swift #ts6 #ts6 is coming #ts6 is here #ts6 is upon us

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precioustexture · 7 years

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Week 7 - “I am... I like... I want to...” Assignment Reflection

Don’t leave me to my own devices began with the examination of the half-statements “I am... I like... I want to...” -- definitive statements in response to far more complex questions such as who am I, what do I like, and what do I want to do. How does one compartmentalise and communicate self through responses to a few statements? To merely provide a litany of information would contribute to the “incessant bombardment” of information we face in this day and age.

““[W]e’re suffering from brain fade. [...] The flow is constant, […] Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes.” - Don Delillo, White Noise

Social media teaches us that identity may be reduced to skeins of demographic information -- name, age, sex, gender, occupation, education, country -- drop-down boxes, interests, likes, memes, images, video, status updates. We decimate ourselves to the basest components of being and hand ourselves out as data. The sense of self we occupy on online platforms are both replete with identity and absolutely vacant of it.

To explicate identity, especially digitally, is an inherently futile exercise -- attempt to elaborate self and one contributes only to the noise, the intangible qualia of self dissipates digitally to no consequence. Yet it is these failed attempts at claiming and documenting identity that live on online almost forever -- destined to outlive us.

“It’s hard to look at things directly. They’re too bright and too dark. Sometimes we need to see things through a screen. On one side of the screen memories fade. On the other, they glow forever.” - Wong Kar-Wai, There’s Only One Sun

My project centres around the idea of the digital dissipation of self -- a series of artistic experiments on various social media platforms, viewing each as vessels through which identity is distorted and expressed. Each platform (Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) is characterised by a key trait (tabula rasa, text, image, sharing), and the artistic experiment meditates upon each trait.

Don’t leave me to my own devices.

Don’t leave me to my own devices 2017 Social media platform interfaces, scanographs, moving image, hyperlinks Dimensions variable

I viewed this project as a digital wunderkammer -- a strange collection of artefacts of self scattered across multiple platforms, displayed within the vitrines of the online interface. To unify these multiple platforms, I created a landing page through which the project would be framed in.

http://xilitlachild.tumblr.com/clickme

A digital collage was created for the landing page, acting as a formalistic reference to Olia Lialina’s My boyfriend came back from the war (1991). Using a self portrait and photographs I had taken in the past, images were edited to become pixelated, monochromatic abstractions of their original selves. These serve to communicate the same dichotomous sense of repletion and emptiness of self, digitally: the artwork contains traces of self and identity, but they are abstracted, distorted to a low-fi state of irrecognition. These were framed with cutting grey lines reminiscent of browser windows; a statement on the compartmentalisation of identity.

[Olia Lialina’s My boyfriend came back from the war (1991), which the digital collage on Don’t leave me to my own devices’ landing page references]

The directory allows you to navigate the works in certain order: preamble (It all pieces together), the artistic experiment with Tumblr (White Cube Series), then Twitter (Words fail us), Instagram (Images fail us), and Facebook (Man hands on misery to man). Who is the Xilitla Child?

A thread throughout the works within Don’t leave me to my own devices is the character of the Xilitla Child -- a false identity developed for this project, viewed as one of many permutations of self. Acting as reference to Rosa Menkman’s Xilitla (2014), I was intrigued by the real-world location of Xilitla which Menkman’s digital work was inspired by -- specifically, the garden of Las Pozas filled with surreal structures in the midst of a tropical rainforest. I was fascinated by the image of a child in the middle of this surrealist dreamscape and played with the idea of a child caught in a liminoid space between surreal physical landscape and distorted digital realm -- the concept of identity as both manifest online and off and the distortions and absurdities this entails.

I developed a simple logo of sorts for the Xilitla Child; a kind of visual symbol for the project across platforms.

Preamble.

It all pieces together 2017 Single-channel video 2 min 25 s

The first work to be experienced is a short video essay It all pieces together which considers the act of experiencing art as a personal experience and the futility of attempting to record these experiences down. Just as we struggle to capture the essence of an identity, the nebulous nature of art escapes being pinned down and explicated precisely. This serves as the preamble to the rest of the works.

Created by editing together various decontextualised inserts from past narrative short film projects I have undertaken, the video takes on personal significance -- weaving together images in a dreamlike fashion, it mimics a stream of consciousness, or the process of retrieving distant memories.

Tumblr.

White cube series: .1: deluge 2017 Scanograph 35.8 x 16.6 cm

White cube series: .2: grey forest 2017 Scanograph 34.7 x 15.3 cm

White cube series: .3: formation 2017 Scanograph 20.6 x 11.9 cm

On Tumblr we curate the visual artefacts that become us – a deliberate arrangement of aesthetics in an attempt to stabilise volatile identities. Because of the openness of the platform to me, I reimagine the interface as a white cube – a gallery space where works are displayed cleanly and neatly; meant as symbols of self.

[Selected brochures to create distorted scanographs]

To create the images, I selected from the collection of brochures I have amassed from attending various exhibitions and events. Dragging them over the surface of a scanner while it attempts to capture a document creates a highly distorted scanograph, or a scanner photograph. I touched these images up and named them in relation to the different elements of nature they reminded me of.

In this sense, past art experience become transferred into the digital realm in a distorted fashion -- abstracted into visual form. The references to natural images further emphasise the power these experiences hold as an active force within one’s life.

Twitter.

As a platform using text as the main means of communication, the work interrogates the idea of words and language and their ability to communicate, particularly in the digital sphere. More specifically, it dwells on the idea of the failure to communicate with words.

Inspired by Internet artist Glitchr, I wanted to replicate this symbolic corruption of the Twitter page through text. I thus drew upon the false identity of the Xilitla Child to create an account for such an experiment. Using glitch text generators, I experimented with various ways in which text within tweets could spill out into page. The failure to communicate does not necessarily mean a message has not been put across -- perhaps it just means it emerges in a strange distorted fashion. It spills out and affects the space around it, but how or why isn’t clear.

Instagram.

As a visual medium, Instagram is used to interrogate concepts of photographic truth as myth; the function of aesthetic beauty, and the tenuous link between real and imagined.

Images fail us 2017 Instagram interface, video Dimensions variable

A series of short video works, the delicate, sensuous image of fabric billowing in wind is paired with quotes that confrontationally deal with the ideas of image, aesthetic beauty, consumerism, and representation. A juxtaposition between enticement and antagonism that forces us to engage with the visual culture we find ourselves immersed in today.

I created this by selecting various texts that relate to the idea of the image and representation. Inspired by Inflammatory Essays by Jenny Holzer, I edited text and overlaid it over clips of billowing fabric -- completely capitalised, starkly positioned over the screen. Using image editing software, sound effects, and video-editing, I created a glitch effect that would overwhelm the image over time; dominating the lo-fi lullaby, chime-like music that each video begins with.

[Jenny Holzer, Inflammatory Essays (1979-82)]

This plays with the idea of our innocent acceptance of images and its eventual descent into noise, saturation, and meaninglessness; replete with falsehoods and emptiness.

Facebook.

Here, the platform is associated with the act of sharing -- of handing down information. We show our support for articles, headlines, images, videos that we approve of with a simple click -- a most convenient, non-committal means of expressing identity.

I was interested in the creation of another manifestation of identity for this experimentation with the Facebook platform. Referencing K. from The Trial by Franz Kafka, I created Kay Landmesser, a fictional entity that would be the embodiment of my experiment.

Utilising image editing software, I edited the background of an existing photo of my self standing before regular buildings to one before a landscape of sand dunes and exposed earth -- a simplistic representation of the land surveyor.

This image would hence become my profile picture for the false account -- a visual manifestation of falsehood and imagined character.

Man hands on misery to man 2017 Facebook interface, hyperlinks, text Dimensions variable

Through the creation of this false character, this artistic experiment charts my attempt to immerse myself in the identity of Kay, taking up a subject position disparate from the self. Processes of identity immersion/perpetuation through Facebook become heightened and deliberate – how does the sharing of articles, images, and links reveal one’s identity? Can we possibly attempt to replicate the underlying thought processes and selection of this material for another individual? Are we able to truly grasp the intangible qualia of a person even through the digital sphere based on the act of sharing and handing on information? Can we reverse-engineer identity based on selection of information and material?

As I shared more videos, articles, and statuses based on what I imagined this false character would, it became clear how difficult it was to attempt to mimic such intuitive processes of sharing and handing on information that an individual deems important. I was further attracted to the visual language of the posts I shared -- mostly related to civil engineering and technical tools related to land surveying. Such fields were so distant from my interests that such information felt distanced, surreal, displaced from the world within which I exist in.

It emphasises to me the disparity in the information each individual receives; so fine the data and details and demographics that we often never see swathes of information not relevant to our construction of self.

Conclusion.

The stuttering leaps between interfaces, intertextual references, and identity notes thus allow my Internet artwork to communicate the various fragmentations of identity, digitally dissipated over platforms.

To evaluate, I do feel my work relies a lot more on explanation of processes. Should one experience the work alone without descriptions of processes and write-ups, the themes and concepts may not have been so intuitively communicated. As such, write-ups are present within the work itself, which may reduce immersivity of experience.

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