#astroturf-art | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

astroturf-enthusiast · 9 months

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We were robbed of Lloyd and Cole having any bonding about their ghostly happenings

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titleknown · 1 year

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...There's this thing going around by the Concept Art Association trying to raise money to fund anti-AI-Art stuff, that big stupid "Protecting Artists From AI Technologies" Gofundme, and I feel the need to inform y'all that it's a scam, or at least suspicious as hell.

Like, the main person behind it, Karla Ortiz, is a major NFT person and the organization they're trying to get buddy-buddy with; the Copyright Alliance; is basically an astroturf organization funded by megacorps like Disney and Warner to push against orgs like the EFF who're doing good work to push back against said corps overreach.

It bears all the signs of an astroturfing attempt to cozy up with megacorps and expand copyright law to something akin to what the music industry has. Which, as anyone familiar with that industry will tell you, you do not want.

Regardless of your views on AI art, the expansion of copyright is a bad idea for all artists, especially anyone who does fanart, and we shouldn't let the people trying to use this wave of panic to smuggle in a draconian expansion of copyright law that will only be used to hurt independent artists and help megacorps.

Remember, no matter what anyone says, Disney is not your friend. If they get their way on expanding copyright law, they will stab you in the back and then discard you.

#art #ai art #scams #astroturfing #copyright

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ravenkings · 2 years

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i, personally, have no intention of seeing blonde, but i do agree that watching the tendency in some internet/fan spaces of engaging in art and culture criticism purely as a metric as to whether one work or another should be allowed to exist based on a system of black-and-white moral judgement seeping into the critical mainstream to be.......troubling.......to say the least

#that being said i increasingly wonder how much of these kinds of controversies (re: blonde but also don't worry darling etc.)#aren't astroturfed.......#i read something somewhere the other day about how when you recommend a series/movie to someone #oftentimes it will just go to the bottom of their never ending ''to watch'' list #however if you drum up controversy around it/try to ''cancel'' it #that almost guarantees an audience (either of reactionaries/contrarians but also people who are just curious)#it's really just baby simple reverse psychology #and like......even if this particular situation isn't astroturfed i wonder if we won't be seeing more of that in the future.........#art #writing #twitter

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wally-b-feed · 11 months

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#Chinese #Meat #Packaging #Sunset Light #Astroturf #Art #AI #GetIMG

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disteal · 7 months

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yknow it’s more than a little sad that every artists ‘hand-wringing panicking’ about what ai would do to the industry and how it would replace a lot of the already slim meat-and-potatoes jobs we rely on to survive were overwhelmingly proven true months after the technology really became widespread. It’s sad that convention space is being taken up by enormous booths full of cheap ai prints soaking up the limited space and money available at cons, it’s sad that competitions are getting flooded with ai generated pieces, it’s sad that i’ve seen a lot of ‘man. i’m just gonna go work at target, i can’t compete with this.’ from ppl who have been working in the industry for YEARS.

But it’s INFURIATING to see supposedly leftist game devs and indie ttrpg makers on here try and astroturf a PR campaign for ai to make using it for their projects more socially acceptable, and in order to do this paint artists as pearl clutching hysterics. As if anyone would blink on here if factory workers threw a brick through a window when they were being replaced by automation, but because art is never respected or treated like actual labor our industry collapsing is just kind of a big joke.

Like I saw someone compare the gay sex cats to Duchamp LIKE NO!!!! THEYRE NOT!!! The people who would get pissed off at Duchamp’s fountain are a very specific demographic!!!! Namely fascists!!! Like the implication of a statement like that is actually absurd. who is the fascist in this analogy, 25 year old nonbinary artists?? If you don’t want to pay artists to do your backgrounds for your indie game like just SAY it. (edit: additional context bc this got out of hand but I’ve looked at the blog of the person who said this and i’m walking back the salt I expressed here. It’s a nuanced take that wasn’t expressed super clearly in the post that went viral and he’s elaborated on it a lot in a way that makes me feel this was an unfair interpretation of his words. My bad)

#vent #ai art #these ppl never rly graduated from the ‘please draw my comic for exposure’ mindset #edited for context

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tanadrin · 6 months

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This series of four videos on Ukraine and the Russia-Ukraine conflict is very interesting. The first is basically just a narrative political history of Ukraine from about 2000 to 2014, talking about different political factions that were relevant in the country in the period, and how different internal and external pressures shaped politics. It's very helpful for understanding the Ukrainian political context, including just how recent and just how shallow the supposed tensions between monolingual Russian and bilingual Ukrainian-Russian speakers was in 2014.

The second video is an overview of the Donbass war from 2014-2022, which you might have been vaguely paying attention to at the time. But it's very helpful to have it all laid out in chronological order with the benefit of hindsight, especially due to the obfuscation of Russian operations at the time that made it hard to work out what, exactly, was going on. It's a combination of a good old 19th century-style filibuster (the military expedition, not the parliamentary maneuver), Fox News-style propaganda, and some (rather badly failed) attempts at astroturfing civil unrest--why Russia thought that would work becomes important in Part 4.

Part 3 is just an extended argument that NATO expansion is not relevant to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and while I already agreed with that assessment, it's nice to have it laid out in detail. The very very short version is that by NATO's own public criteria, Ukraine was simply not a candidate to join NATO, and had given up on joining NATO, and that had been painfully obvious since at least the Obama administration. Even more frustratingly, there were multiple points where Russia had an offramp to escalation, where it had gotten everything it could have possibly wanted from the conflict in Donbass, and it refused them all.

Part 4 is the author's attempt to explain why it refused them. The very short explanation is that Russia's government is led by idiots, who are very enamored of a flavor of conspiracy theory that has its origins in the LaRouche movement, and which has been bubbling in both left-wing and right-wing circles since 2000. In this worldview, the US government acting through the CIA (or the British royal family, or George Soros, or Jewish bankers, or whoever your bogeyman of choice is) has an almost supernatural ability to overthrow any government on earth by funding performance art groups (seriously), civil society NGOs, and protestors, and that almost every revolution, actual or so-called, since 1989 has been their direct work, from the post-Soviet revolutions, to Euromaidan, to the Arab Spring.

This belief, in its more overt or fragmentary forms, is incredibly popular, spurred on no doubt by historical instances of CIA malfeasance and actual aggressive wars waged by the Bush administration. But the problem is, it's bunk. During Russia's initial moves against Ukraine in 2014, they tried essentially the same playbook in the Donbass, and of course it failed miserably--you cannot actually astroturf a popular uprising. (The CIA has preferred to stage coups and assassinations, which are a different animal from color revolutions.) The separatists in the Donbass eventually had to be supported by a few thousand Russian troops and direct military aid.

But Putin, driven by his own paranoid misunderstanding of world events, the clique of yes-men he has embedded himself in, and his fear of gay Nazi Jewish CIA agents, simply got Russia in over its head. There is no offramp because Russia cannot articulate what its goals are, and because "stop trying to use George Soros to overthrow the Russian government" is not something the US can agree to, since they are not doing it. The only thing that might have prevented Putin fucking with Ukraine in the first place was maybe if rigging the parliamentary election in 2011 hadn't resulted in protests, in which Putin saw the specter of the hand of the CIA--but of course the US and NATO and the EU had nothing to do with that!

And to cap it all off, since the 2010s the LaRouche movement and its theory of color revolutions has been making inroads in China, so we have that to look forward to in coming decades.

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yeah-yeah-beebiss-1 · 1 year

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not to go Full Crank Mode but at this point, i lowkey wonder if the AI art panic is (at least partially) astroturfed by entertainment industry lobbyists

steamboat willie is due to enter the public domain on new year’s day 2024, and the lobbying efforts of disney/time warner/viacom/etc. were integral to getting the Copyright Term Extension Act passed in the late 90s - but republicans have implied that they’d be more hostile towards any copyright legislation pushed by the mouse now as retaliation for disney (reluctantly) opposing the don’t say gay bill

so if the entertainment industry wants to push for further copyright extension, they’ll need popular support since their usual cronies (or at least the upfront-about-it half) won’t have their back this time

along comes a new tool with potential for abuse and a bunch of greasy annoying techbros hawking it as a way to make easy money off other people’s work, and boom, you have a panic about an already-precarious field (the arts) becoming even more so

in this climate, if a stricter copyright bill is framed as “protecting the livelihood of artists from AI theft,” those same artists will embrace it even though the average individual online illustrator is only going to be fucked over by disney et al. gaining an even bigger legal mallet to crush artists with

okay tinfoil hat coming off, but the point is, don’t be a useful idiot for the mouse

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steampunkforever · 20 days

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As a semipro screenwriter myself, I often find my thoughts occupied with a yearning of sorts for the close circle of creatives that spawned the Romantic movement or the Beat Generation. "Networking" and the astroturf sterility of online writers guilds and facebook groups just don't have the same spark as a loose grouping of maladaptive freaks devoted to making intolerably pretentious artworks. Where, I ask, do I organically find a circle of like minded snobs to be a freak about movies and culture with? Do they not make those anymore? Where have all the inner circles gone? Did nepotism and studio commercialization pave over the greatest minds of our generation?

In watching legendary skate film Yeah Right! I was reminded that these sort of movements aren't sorted until hindsight can gain some focus. "Malaise Era" is a term referring to Carter's post-Vietnam America (specifically in the manufacturing industry) decline, but it was minted in a 2008 jalopnik blog post. Cultural storms are only named well after landfall, and Yeah Right! reminded me of this.

Yeah Right! is a darn good skate film, but the talent within it is frankly of more note than the film itself. The movie gives you exactly what you want from a skate film: people doing tricks on boards. It's artfully shot and tracked to a stacked setlist of the best possible songs you could imagine for this sort of skate film (minus break stuff, mind you), with whip smart editing and great composition, but that's not the special part.

What's most impressive about the film is who populates the credits, a star studded list of skateboarding for that era's best and brightest, alongside names like Sofia Coppola, Owen Wilson (who has a great little cameo sequence), Sam Spiegel (whose work you've definitely encountered through Jose Cuervo/Levi's/H&M/T Mobile ads if you didn't encounter it through MIA/Kanye/Doja Cat/Crystal Castles/Maroon 5 first), Andy Jenkins (of the band Milk) and Ty Evans. Even if they didn't contribute to the film any more than needed to warrant a special thanks mention, these names represent a network of creatives who all hang together in a loose association that only now am I connecting into a sort of movement of young creatives of the era that reaches all the way to Nitro Circus, Gymkhana, Hoonigan, and RWB in japan.

What I'm saying is that you won't be able to see the wave til it breaks. And this is coming from someone who watched the film surrounded by a loose collection of like minded movie freaks that'd organically grown from just a few people who wanted to see weird films into an organized crowd of people there to discuss art, film, and whether or not Nic Cage is hot. Some questions answer themselves. Go watch Yeah Right! It's a great piece of sports cinema.

#filmposting #film #Yeah right!#spike jonze #cinema

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yuribuny · 2 months

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tragic: the art of shitty mean women you've been seeing is from an astroturfed fanart campaign for a vn selling itself on being "not like other vns"

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thehiddenbaroness · 3 months

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15 People, 15 Questions

I was tagged by @plumcoloredblazer -- sorry it took me a hot minute to get to it! I appreciate it. <3

1. Are you named after anyone?

I've long disliked that none of my names are 'mine', in that both my first and middle names are from other people -- my first is my maternal grandfather's middle name (which he also sorta went by), while my middle name is my mother's middle name (which she went by when we moved to the UK).

2. When was the last time you cried?

I had a few frustrated tears over the weekend, but it's rare nowadays that I actually cry-cry.

3. Do you have kids?

I do not, unless you count the two fur-babies. No intention to.

4. What sports do you play/have you played?

I played field (read: astroturf) hockey for a few years in middle school; before that, I was a dancer (yes I count dance as a sport). Lately I'm not really a sporty type but I am getting more active.

5. Do you use sarcasm?

Moi?

6. What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Usually what comes out of their mouth, but also how they carry themselves -- do they look interested in where they are? Are they engaged with what's at hand? Do they have good posture? Are they trying to shrink into themselves? Are they oblivious to being in someone's way? Are they close to the gap?

7. What’s your eye color?

Dark brown.

8. Scary movies or happy endings?

Err...I hesitate to say neither, because while I don't like scary movies and don't *dislike* a happy ending, movies with ambiguous/bittersweet or even tragic endings are typically the ones I've enjoyed more.

9. Any talents?

Writing, I'd like to think. I'm organized and efficient. I have a deep well of empathy and understanding and feel like I'm good at helping folks wrestle with life's troubles. I'm a spice sorceress.

10. Where were you born?

Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

11. What are your hobbies?

Writing (who knew?), history (especially art and natural, and archeology), reading, word games, languages, organizing and decorating, gaming somewhat, jigsaw puzzles, travel.

12. Do you have any pets?

We have two! Molly, our sensitive and loving Shepinois (German Shepherd and Belgian Malinois mix), and Penny, our eccentric and brave gray/peach dilute calico shorthair.

13. How tall are you?

A delightfully average 5'4; as my mother used to say, at least I don't have to bend down as far if I drop something.

14. Favorite subject in school?

I actually had a love/hate relationship with English since it was the one I was most invested in, but I liked it the most because I did the best in it.

15. Dream job?

Taking this to mean more of an occupation than a *job* -- since I think if something is a job it's not especially enjoyable or rewarding -- the answer is perhaps obvious: a published fiction author. But really, I want to be occupied with my writing, tending our dream house in the woods, making my own salves and tinctures, reading, entertaining close friends with the finer things. I'd like to be occupied with love in its different forms, and for my time to be largely my own.

===

No pressure, those of you who I'm tagging! Just something to perhaps fill an idle few minutes. @ohtobealady, @in-a-storm-glass, @dahliasgloom, @malglories, @webedragons, @oftwodarkmoons, @lastoftheptolemies, @daughter-rhaenyra, @karrova, @ofallingstar, @marrogerson, @naryamirie, @aryasnow, @modernamericangirl, @saffron-mantled-dawn

#scrapsofbiography #tag game

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astroturf-enthusiast · 3 months

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Mild blood and an alt version below the cut

Rewatching Ninjago rn and thinking about how much I love the wildbrain season's fight choreography

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possumcollege · 8 months

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No artist needs to "go to bat" for AI.

It's got all the support it needs from corporations and governments who've invested millions in a technology they believe will all but eliminate their need to waste money on human workers.

For some, that sounds like there could be a stable future in it, or new opportunities could be right around the corner. If Capitalism has taught us anything it should be that the person operating the machine that put 30 people out of work isn't paid well for long.

In my heart of hearts, all I see is another angle in this new golden age of scams.

The notion of AI was made for the benefit of artists and workers is an egg that developers lay in the brains of people who struggle to engage with creative work or people looking to capitalize as early adopters. They may dangle attractive rates or hype up the experience and cred you'll get from being a part of AI-centric projects but they will do to AI artists what they've done to everyone else and I assure you the laws we have now will allow them to fuck you over harder and faster than those who came before. Studio executives are fighting tooth and nail for the right to abuse writers, artists, crew, technicians, and actors that have made them billions of dollars in extremely profitable properties. Do we sincerely believe they'll dole out fat checks to someone they see sitting at a keyboard, asking the machine to make pictures? Do we really believe we'll own anything we prompted the machine to make for them? That would be uncharacteristically generous of them to put it kindly.

The AI systems they've built or claim to be building have tricked people into thinking it's an exciting new creative medium. The profit for AI is in that excitement, not the products AI generates. People are excited to play with it and businesses are excited to exploit it. Its successes so far have been driven by novelty, naivety, and greed. The very concept is a model of predation, exploiting the good faith of artists, writers, and creators online to feed their mimic of human labor.

It's in a business' interest to legitimize their use of AI so they invest in stoking the hype and bolstering its defense to cover up for the fact that it's meant to cut costs on human staff. Investors and developers take to forums and social media to prime their user base with talking points and paint the people threatened by the proliferation of AI as jealous, elitist, snobs. Everyone inside the wire is looking for a slice of the profits and everyone outside gets a steady diet of astroturf. Early adopters and aspiring influencers get to feel like they're catching a big wave with minimal personal investment. Those users get a few easy treats right away because the output really can be impressive and the controversy bakes-in opportunities for engagement, heightened visibility, and monetization. You can potentially make money by arguing with strangers online over the pictures you asked a program to make, but that potential has a pretty short lifespan as the field becomes saturated with people who are acceptably good at using the software.

The people who will reap the lion's share of AI's profits need users to believe they're on the side of the geniuses who are looking to the future and breaking down walls that the Art World built to keep regular people from eating its lunch. They do this because gaining users isn't enough, they need allies who become personally, emotionally, financially invested enough to carry their shields when the people whose livelihoods are threatened by AI demand protection.

THIS is the scam of AI. The people who are actually getting extremely rich off AI aren't prompt writers, users, artists, writers, creative professionals. They're idea men and parasitic startup ghouls who just need numbers and hype to show investors that their property, built entirely from the stolen reprocessed labor of hundreds of millions of uncredited, uncompensated people is hot enough to throw money at. They need people willing to work AI jobs so businesses feel confident enough adopt the technology. They need their competition to be seen as greedy, privileged, and outdated. The scam-crux of it all is that the people profiting the most from AI don't actually need it to be good or successful to get theirs. They relied on student researchers for labor, developed the technology on government grants and investor funding, trained the programs on resources they fucking stole, and when they were done, they were free to sell their product to all comers, collect licensing fees, and pretend that they aren't responsible for any of the highly predictable ways their product can be abused. How much of the operating cost is paying lobbyists to make sure the magic money lever isn't slapped out of their hands by regulation for a long as possible?

Even if their vibe-based cash train careens off the novelty cliff or slams into a wall of regulation (and fuck do I ever hope it does) these people have already feathered their nests. It doesn't matter if AI-generated copy makes people feel like they're going insane. It doesn't matter if AI art is off-putting and wonky, if the programs make products and services demonstrably less useful or effective, and make customer service a living nightmare. It doesn't matter if the programs starve when they can't consume protected data and poison themselves by consuming their own output. Some developers will be able to coast financially for the rest of their lives because they invented a way for the rich and powerful to spend their money on the smallest possible number of people.

It's an experiment that became a toy that can make a handful of people obscenely wealthy through exploitation, theft, and disenfranchisement. It's a system that says "Pay me now for this thing that might make you money later and if it doesn't you can address all complaints to the empty bag I left you holding."

Our security as creators, artists, writers, and workers is won by taking a bat to this kind of shit, not going to bat for it.

#labor #worker's rights #exploitation #scams

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insinirate · 10 months

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Kind of telling that I've seen at least 2 other kv ppl get incessant, weirdly manipulative asks sent about how kw is THE NEW big ship and how dare you not SEE the truth that 'kv will be made irrelevant' (and you are supposed to care about this for some reason) in the past week or two...

Methinks a few ppl are trying to astroturf a shipwar that doesn't exist. Please keep making your art from the heart just as always. Most of us are y'know. Actually grateful.

this is the weirdest ARG ive ever had the displeasure of being forced to take a part of

#its also wild how they insist on wk being better for being the “more popular” ship and like none of these words mean anything to me #sorry for not being tiktokpilled or whatever but the amount of clout i can amass from posting kw literally does not matter to me im not 17 #in fact i can quadruple that engagement by posting wv but i wont cause i dont..................care about that #literally like all 3 fandoms prior to 3gun ive been drawing for have been DEAD #and even in the impossible situation where these dweebs chase the eng fandom of a century old ship out #jpn/cn/kr fans will not understand or care about ANYTHING they have to say and theyll have no choice but to seethe in their decrepit twt dm #anonymous

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memecucker · 1 year

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The arrival of AI is too convenient. Recently artists of different fields started unionizing and all that, with great solidarity among them ... And then suddenly AI art started spreading with a lot of buzz, and BAM, those same artists sides with their exploiter? And also, right at the time Disney is fearing of losing copyrights on some of its characters?

The tech is inoffensive, but it's not even that recent of a tech so I'm suspicious the spread of AI arts and the mediatic storm around isn't a deliberate psyops.

There’s gonna be hostility and pre-judgement towards new technology in arts all the time because this is the same “debate” people had (and sometimes still have) over digital art which itself was the same debate as over photographs etc

However the extra push that’s involved with anti-AI art movement and the fact that it has the backing of major corporate lobbyists (who have the gall to set up promotional gofundme to fund corporate lobbyists despite being funded by things like Disney or the MPAA) so there’s probably a bit of astroturfing

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ibuprofen-exe · 7 months

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WIP Introductions Part One

Hospitality is Hell

I thought I would introduce some of my dearly beloved original characters so I could talk at length about them in the future.

Warning: The post below the cut has mentions of death, tobacco, suicide, and war. There isn’t anything particularly graphic, but please be safe.

Status: outlined, on a break

Medium: script

In an industrial, capitalistic interpretation of Hell, work is scarce and agonizing in poverty is commonplace. Victor Chen, recently laid off from his unforgiving factory job, finds work at the mysterious Grand Motel, run by its shrewd owner, Hilbert, and he must endure the suffering of working in hospitality.

Characters:

Victor Chen, bear (he/him), gay, disabled (post polio syndrome and autism), Chinese American, Catholic (1919-1950)

Kerosene by Bad Religion Once a drug racketeer and restaurant waiter, Victor was murdered trying to escape his life of crime. He works as the bartender of the Grand Motel, though he would rather not work at all. Fact: Victor was orphaned at a young age, and spent most of his childhood in his uncle’s restaurant.

Barbara Hilbert, agender (they/them), aroace, disabled (OCD), Black American, Baptist (1903-1942)

Paint Me Black Angels by Eartha Kitt Once a bootlegger, Hilbert lost their life to a fatal case of influenza. They work as the owner of the Grand Motel, taking great pride in completing a dream they could not in life. Fact: Hilbert loves fashion and often goes on long shopping trips to buy anything with sequins, shoulder pads, or loud prints.

Donovan Sandoval, bigender (he/him, she/her), gay, disabled (ADHD), Salvadoran American, Catholic, (1955-1990)

Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard by Paul Simon Once a telemarketer and scam artist, Donovan killed himself after being forcibly outed as a gay man. She works as the accountant and bellhop of the Grand Motel, struggling to handle multiple positions. Fact: Donovan has had a terrible nicotine addiction ever since she was a teen, and would often tell her mother she would quit when she was dead. That has yet to happen.

Sachiko Fujimoto, butch (she/her, he/him), bisexual, disabled (NPD and congenital amputation), Japanese, Protestant (1952-1977)

Ue Wo Muite Arukou by Kyu Sakamoto Once the leader of a girl gang, Sachiko died during a freak diving accident. She works as the receptionist of the Grand Motel, much to her irritation. Fact: Sachiko has adult braces from years of ignoring her dentist as a teenager. She hates them.

Sandeep D’Costa, cisgender (he/him), aromantic gay, disabled (enucleation and PTSD), Indian, Catholic (1917-1946)

Vera by Pink Floyd Once a soldier on the African front of the Second World War, Sandeep lost his life during complications in surgery. He works as the resident musician of the Grand Motel and takes great pride in his piano skills. Fact: Sandeep received his musical training in the church choir, but he dreamed of being on the radio.

Settings:

Paradise

Welcome to Paradise by Green Day The premiere vacation city of any well-to-do individual looking for a reprieve from Hell. Vibes: neon lights, vices, pink stucco, novelty dining, astroturf, distant smokestacks, and the smell of rot

The Grand Motel

Hotel California by The Eagles A budget location on the outskirts of Paradise owned and operated by Barbara Hilbert. Vibes: tile pools, peeling wallpaper, the smell of cigarettes, wrought iron balconies, art deco roofs, and carpeted bathrooms

Thanks for reading (⁠｡⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠｡⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠♡

#wip intro #writeblr #suicide #death

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enki2 · 3 months

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we used to have a billion little productive subcultures that were intentionally supported -- by art grants, cheap housing, & programmes for borrowing space and resources -- for the purpose of injecting novelty into the 'mainstream'. now we don't have a 'mainstream', and we kind of stopped trying to farm the avant-garde for stuff, but we still have the religiously-segregated media ecosystems developed in the 80s and 90s to cater to people who wanted a mainstream with less gay in it, and now if something inexplicably gets really popular it turns out it's astroturfed by a corporation that shills ripoff versions of hallmark movies or something. meanwhile all the little subcultures have gotten real incestuous because it's been 20 years since the last time a niche was mined by a mainstream artist (because it's been 20 years since there was a mainstream artist).

it used to be that movie stars would get real weird, and they'd basically get street cred for being esoteric.

now there aren't movie stars anymore, and the closest thing is when a niche is appropriated by a slightly larger niche, which only really provides cred with the smaller niche (and even then, this is not guaranteed). there is no cred in being esoteric because everyone is esoteric.

anyway this is all to say that, when i found out that the whole stanley cup thing was manufactured by some BYU gift guide, i was not surprised

(i was a little surprised to discover that this ostensibly secular gift guide still included a book titled "Why the Book of Mormon is True", because at that point why not just admit that it's not a secular gift guide)

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