You know that theory where Niffty is a former overlord who Alastor chose to brainfuck instead of killing for whatever reason?

Someone make an AU/fic where he does that to Vox

How BTS Paved the way

Okay so basically I wrote this as my JR paper for high school. I decided to write about BTS because I was allowed to pick what I wanted to write about and it's supposed to be a research/opinion page. It basically talks about what makes BTS so special and different from the rest. Its 16 pages long with citations and yeah that’s it basically. Please enjoy

@BTSCRAZED on IG AND TWT

The Entrepreneurs of Change: Why BTS is Different from the Rest

           They’ve sold over ten million albums, sold out entire tours including their upcoming stadium tour with over one million attendees in a matter of 5 minutes, hold five world records and now known as the biggest boy band in the world. They are BTS and they paved the way for a new genre of music known as K-pop. This band has proved to be more than just a generic boy band. They have played a big role in a wave of new music and trends, created a strong fanbase who they’ve taught important life lessons like self-love and acceptance, broken many records, gain popularity all over the truly become the biggest boy band in the world but how come a boyband from one country (South Korea) managed to reach people around the globe?

        First, let’s talk about what is K-pop and Korean pop culture? “They call it Hallyu, the Korean wave: the idea that South Korean pop culture has grown in prominence to become a major driver of global culture, seen in everything from Korean dramas on Netflix to Korean skincare regimens dominating the cosmetics industry to delicious Korean tacos on your favorite local menu. And at the heart of Hallyu is the ever-growing popularity of K-pop — short, of course, for Korean pop music” (Vox). K-pop has recently become very popular all over the world especially in the U.S. K-pop is often used as an umbrella term for all types of Korean music popular outside of Korea, so the genre can consist of rock bands, hip hop, indie, and basically any other type of music. The K-pop genre consists of main groups though there are solo artists who most of the time had previously been part, of other bands. Although you probably don’t know you have probably already been exposed to this wave especially if you visit Twitter regularly or were on YouTube in 2012 through 2013 when the song “Gangnam Style” by PSY came out. K-pop fans have a lot of power and can start trending thing in a matter of hours depending on the popularity of the idol they are promoting.  Korean pop culture is very different than American. It’s like a whole new world with new rules, vocabulary and just way of being fans. It’s all very well planned and based around main fanservice. Periodically or for special holiday and events, idols what K-pop fans call celebrities to have comebacks – which is when they release new albums and start a new concept for their music or performances- or release special packages and collaborations like makeup, photo books, concert DVDs and collectibles that they fans can buy. Along with those new comebacks or packages they hold fanservice events like music shows and fan meets. That is one of the biggest reasons K-pop is so popular and has a big fanbase. This is one of the biggest reasons I think that K-pop more specifically BTS has become so popular outside of Korea. But who is BTS?

        Who is BTS? First, what does BTS even mean? BTS in Korean is Bangtan Sonyeondan meaning bulletproof boy scouts but in 2017 they officially changed their name to beyond the scene because they wanted fans to see beyond than just the scene in front of them. They are one of the most popular boy bands in the world at the moment BTS has been called next generation leader by Time magazine and “have grown beyond the bounds of traditional K-pop acts, making a splash everywhere from Chile to California. Their devoted followers styled as “ARMY,” have kept them trending on social media at most public appearances.” (Time). They hold the world record for most views in 24 hours with 78 million views on their newest song “Boy with luv” from their newest album Map of The Soul: Persona and at the same time broke the record for the fastest music video to reach 100 million views broken at one and a half days since its release. Each of the seven members is adored by thousands of people all over the world. Kim Namjoon goes by the stage name RM is the leader, producer, and one of 3 rappers of the group he is the only fluent English speaker and the first member to join the band. Next is Kim Seokjin or just Jin the eldest member and vocalist of the group he plays the role of the dad of the group though originally, he wanted to be an actor he has grown a lot and is now one of the best vocalists. Up Next is Min Yoongi or Suga the main rapper and producer very well known for his quiet yet savage personality. Then there’s Jung Hoseok aka J-hope he’s one of the main dancers, producers, and rappers of the group he is also the happy virus of the group he is everyone’s angel and hope. Now for the three Maknaes which in Korean means the youngest members of the group we have Park Jimin who’s is very well known for his powerful yet elegant looks that can capture both female and male attention. He is one of the main vocalists and dancer of the group. Followed by Kim taehyung or V which is his stage name. Who is another powerful visual and was actually voted most handsome face in the world in 2017 and also ranked #5 in 2018 he is also a vocalist of the group. Last but not least is Jeon Jeongguk or just Jungkook the youngest member yet unspeakably talented, main dancer, main vocalist and center face of the group who was also placed #2 in the most handsome faces in the world 2018. Together Those seven men hold so much power they’re not only all good looking but all extremely talented in different things that when put together make the best boyband in the world. They have the power to sell out anything with just a single tweet it's insane.  These seven boys didn’t just become famous overnight they made their debut but where were ignored and judged harshly until they broke through the charts in 2017 with all their hard work and the help of ARMY.

        BTS is very well known because of their huge and very dedicated fanbase that will do anything to get them the recognition they deserve. This is because they have proven to be more than just a group of good-looking men that can sing, rap and dance. They try to share positive messages like self-love, touch on delicate topics like suicide and depression as well as being big supporters of the LGBT community by breaking gender-role buy wearing feminine clothes and makeup and advocating equality regardless of sexuality, gender, and race. All of this through music, videos, and campaigns that they launch. First, I want to talk about how they use their music and content to shine a light on controversial topics like mental health, sexuality, gender identity, growing up, finding yourself, and even political topics. Almost every music video that BTS release follows this storyline about a group of teenage boys and their struggles in growing up and finding the right path while facing different obstacles. The teenage boys are played by BTS of course and the story actually starts out from the very beginning of their career even though we had only figure out it was a storyline during a later era in 2017. The story begins with a group of rebellious teenagers who don’t like to follow the rules who are looking for acceptance and love which they get from each other. Each character hides their own demon and dark past. Namjoon the leader of the group of friend struggles with not know who he is and what he’s going with his life. Jin who is supposed to be the most mature member struggled with the fact that he’s growing up and being who his father wants him to be who forces him to betray his friends and leave them. Yoongi suffers from depression after his mother died in a fire and he couldn’t save her and holds himself guilty for and attempts to commit suicide. Hoseok was abandoned by his mother at an amusement park when was a small child and suffers from PTSD and also has narcolepsy which forces him to live in a hospital the majority of the time. Jimin is very similar to Hoseok they know each other the best because they were both forced to live in a hospital. Jimin suffers from abandonment issues but in the sense that he thinks everyone hates him and he isn’t good enough and also has seizures with an unknown and also tries to commit suicide at one point. Taehyung is a young delinquent who always seems to get in trouble. He isn’t a bad person he just has a bad life with an abusive father which leads him to murder his father one night trying to protect his sister. Then there’s Jungkook he’s the youngest he’s just trying to see his friends who are more like his brothers since they have basically raised him happy. He eventually realizes he can’t have the happiness or euphoria he wants and ends up committing suicide as well. That part of the story takes place during their albums called The Most Beautiful Moments in Life part one, The Most Beautiful Moments in Life part 2, Young Forever, and Wings.  Then continues in their Love Yourself series. Which is when they try and find a way to reverse time and fix all their mistakes or stop themselves from splitting up and killing themselves. I feel like this story is something that you really wouldn’t expect from a boyband of any kind. Which why I think it's so important and makes BTS special and different. What boy bands do you know that have tried to even touch on the topic on this level? Apart from incorporating important mental health and life issues. They have also encouraged people to show who they are and speak themselves. On November 1st, 2017 the group launched their Love Myself campaign in partnership with UNICEF. This campaign was created as an anti-violence campaign but, in my opinion, it has grown to be much bigger than that. Over the last two years, I have watched as BTS has grown and spread their message teaching everyone that they don’t need to hide who they are and shouldn’t be afraid who they are to the world. This message has even led them to speak at a united nations conference in New York making them the first ever Korean Band to do so. The leader of the band Namjoon who fans have since then called their “President” made a very touching speech on how to find yourself.  In the speech, Namjoon said, “After releasing the “Love Yourself” albums and launching the “Love Myself” campaign, we started to hear remarkable stories from our fans all over the world, how our message helped them overcome their hardships in life and start loving themselves. These stories constantly remind us of our responsibility. So, let’s all take one more step. We have learned to love ourselves, so now I urge you to speak yourself. I would like to ask all of you. What is your name? What excites you and makes your heart beat? Tell me your story. I want to hear your voice, and I want to hear your conviction. No matter who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, gender identity: speak yourself. Find your name, find your voice by speaking yourself. I’m Kim Nam Jun, RM of BTS. I’m a hip-hop idol and an artist from a small town in Korea. Like most people, I made many mistakes in my life. I have many faults and I have many fears, but I am going to embrace myself as hard as I can, and I’m starting to love myself, little by little. What is your name? Speak Yourself!". This is one of my favorite speeches Namjoon has ever given as a leader. I’m not going to say that they’re the only artist to ever say this, but they the apart of the few to have such a big impact and influence so many people. I’m also not going to tell you that because of them I have started to love myself, but I can say that I have learned to speak for myself and for what I do believe in. I have spoken out a lot about who I am where I come from like my sexuality and my immigrant background. All the things that the old me wouldn’t have done. But BTS has created a protective bubble that allows me to speak out and find more people like me be happier than I used to be. Because of I have become someone different who I like more than who I used to be. BTS have really set the stage for this new genre of music. Though they aren’t the first they are the only ones to have truly made an impact. The reason this one band from South Korea out of hundreds of other is because of their extremely strong a big fanbase.  Over 10 million fans can’t be wrong.

        Like I mentioned previously BTS’ fanbase is called A.R.M.Y. which stands for Adorable representative MCs for Youth and their Job is to spread the message BTS is trying to give and this Army is extremely dedicated I mean extremely dedicated to their job. Ages ranging from 6 years old to 60 years old BTS is for everyone to enjoy. Their fanbase is all over the world promoting their boys. They spend hours every day creating a thing for BTS a promoting BTS through any way they can. On an interview for Billboard, an Army said, "We want to see them break records and write history." And that’s exactly what we are working for. There are thousands of fan account that are run on twitter an Instagram alone and I’m one of them. The point of these fan account it’s to keep the rest of the fanbase updated, create content, promote BTS, and recruited a new member for the fanbase. This is exactly what I do on my fan account every day on my fan account and literally any chance I can anywhere else. The mission is to promote and educate everyone about BTS this raises their popularity and success.  BTS fans are extremely dedicated to them for many different reasons. Some for their looks, others for their catchy music and of course for their message. “Their message is beyond just making good music. They talk about social issues. They stand for more than your typical boy band would stand for. I think that’s really important for people my age and the younger generation to really understand. Everything on social media, you kind of get desensitized to everything out there. But BTS brings it to the forefront. A lot of things that people younger than me or my age wouldn't care about or know about, they find out about because BTS cares about those things. That really sets them apart for me in comparison to anyone else out in the industry.”   says Christine Gee 27-year-old BTS ARMY for Billboard. I totally agree with her joined the fandom for the very same reason. A lot of people think that because their speaking in a different language their message is unimportant, and people don’t care but we do we translate and decipher the meaning behind everything they say and that’s the truly important part. These boys have voices too and that’s what army is here to promote. Doing that is its own process alone as well.

        The process is very complicated, but we figure out the most efficient way to promote them however we can.  Take BTS’ new album for example first we take everything we know and piece it together like a puzzle. Which is a part of the idea of looking beyond the scene. Like I mentioned before they have a storyline to their videos.  We had already figured out it’s a storyline and every comeback they add a new part or chapter. So, we spend the 6 months between each album piecing the story together and creating theories and trending them on twitter so even while they are away they continue to be relevant. Which is very important in all fandoms and I believe that this fandom is the most active. I've been a ton of other fanbases and it gets boring eventually. We get bored and run out content, but the army is different they're always creating new memes or theories keeping the content relevant.  Once the comeback was confirmed they do many things they promoted it in every tweet they could and made sure to trend it then started setting new goals as well as participating in new activities released by BTS’ company. For the next month, Army spent all their free time trying to find even clues for the new comeback and preordering the album until we reach whatever goal we set for themselves this time we reached 2 million presales in the first 24 hours. Then they set goals for the music video and album streams the goal this time was to beat any previous record we had set so we settled on one hundred million views in 24 hours while the Korean fans who are called K-diamond army and Japanese fans the J-jewels were asleep every other army would stream the music video repeatedly. The American fanbase would buy single songs while the European armies would buy the whole album, so we could get the individual songs on the album on charts and then the full album all while still watching and sharing the new music video. That we get the album to be number one in more than 80 countries as well as making sure that the video and every trending tag on twitter are BTS related in order to capture more audience. Once the other armies were awake and together they set up street promotions by buying billboards and decorating train carts promoting BTS. That all was just for a new album. Every other day army promotes BTS by donating in their names. Every time it one of the members birthday Army donates to a cause.  For this year for Suga’s one of the rapper’s birthday a hundred of army donated blood under his name. For other members, we would adopt endangered species under their names and save those animals. they do things like this because they don’t just want them to be well known but also because they want them to be known for good deed. Of course, BTS themselves also pay parts in these kinds of projects. One of the members J-Hope recently donated 250 Million Won which is over $200,000 just for scholarships for female students. They also normally don’t like when we buy them gifts so why not spend money on a good cause. It’s our job, in the end, we are their representatives we have to make them look good. Like I mentioned before I had been a part of many other big Fanbases and I have never seen this amount of dedication or activity. Not even the Directioners fans of One Direction the who previously were biggest boy band in the world. I feel like this type of dedication has been part of their rise to fame. The amount of time and loyalty they put in is like no other.

        Many people argue that army is a very toxic and aggressive fanbase because of how dedicated we are to promote BTS and sometimes can start fights for being too dedicated with fans of other groups by boasting of our success and achievements. Other times is for being too dedicated for example in many occasions interview misphrase or say things criticize them harshly and Army goes on a rampage against them. For example, Richard Lloyd Parry who is a British foreign correspondent and writer. Parry interviewed BTS and made an insensitive comment about one of the members Namjoon who is the only fluent English speaker in the group English. Of course, Army wasn't happy at all and started to tweet hate at Parry and forced him to apologize publicly because of the insensitive comment. Army said very harsh thing which I witnessed on twitter thought it was very harsh but I believe that he deserved it not only cause I’m army and I support BTS until my last breath but because if this was said to any non-English speaker I would be upset especially since English isn't my first language either its really upsetting when someone underestimates your hard work because you speak differently. In an article about why BTS are way too dedicated and must be stopped it says “BTS fans are young, and youthful adoration isn’t meant to be measured or sensible. Those teenagers you see in floods of tears at Beatles concerts? Not measured, but joyous and warm, a life-affirming testament to the power of pop culture. But that passion, combined with the facelessness of social media, has given rise to something ugly and extreme, aggression that sullies the band’s name. The BTS ARMY marches on a message that is exclusionary, intolerant of others. You wonder if BTS are fearful of their own, intense fanbase.” (NME). I don't agree nor disagree with this quote cause I myself am one of those extremely dedicated fans. I agree that the pressure can get to the boys and all I care about is their happiness and wellbeing the last thing I want to do is hurt them and make them feel bad or ashamed but then again BTS and army have a very strong connection and they always express their love for us the same way we express our love for them. I believe the reason that army acts like this is because BTS has always been put under everyone’s else and now they are finally getting recognition and we won’t let anyone ruin that for ashough criticism is great and everyone has a right to their opinions army strongly believe in the phrase if you don't have anything nice to say don't say it at all we understand when you say that the music isn't your type and it’s not for you that totally understandable but if you come to us with “BTS sucks they don't even speak English why do you like them they look like girls” you're basically signing your death wish. So yes, we are aggressive but without Army, BTS would literally be unknown because people are ignorant and unfair for who they pick to like. By promoting them this way they have proven so many people wrong and have made BTS proud.  Army has made BTS the powerful people that they are today.

BTS is breaking more records than other any other foreign artist in the U.S. but why? There are thousands of other Bands in all kind of languages, but they aren’t making the same impact? I honestly think it’s because of their fanbase and the way that they promote themselves. There is a formula to be the biggest boyband in the world. First, you need good music with a message that people want to hear. Many artists nowadays like to either talk about sex or drugs. BTS chose to instead choose to talk about self-love and acceptance but at the same time making their music fun and energetic. Next you need to promote it this can come in many ways BTS chooses to release a “comeback trailer” which is what American artist calls a single before the full album comes out they also release photoshoot sets that connect to the concept of the album to get fans excited to buy all the album typically one album comes with one version of the photo shoot and there are typically four different photo shoots so as a good fan you would want to buy all four raising the album preorders and sales. Speaking of fans, you need a big fanbase you need an audience to share it and watch it that’s where army comes in like I previously talked about we promote BTS any chance we can and divide up the streams in order to get them to trend in as many places as possible and beat as many records as possible. That’s how you become the biggest boy band in the world. Now you’re probably asking yourself okay but so many artists do that how come only BTS is getting all the attention. My answer to that is luck I believe they were lucky that so many people grow to like them, and they really do create amazing music that I believe many people can relate to something another artist may be doing. For example, BTS is made up of rappers, vocalist and dancers all with different styles, for example, one rapper is more into hip hop while the other Is more into RnB and the other is straight rap. Same with the vocalist part is pop the other part is a ballad and sometimes even rock. All different types that can reach different people and when you put them together everyone can enjoy at least a little bit of it. in comparison, you take a big artist like let’s say Drake who is a rapper very popular with today’s youth who into rap the same with Ariana Grande who makes pop music typically popular with the youth only reaching one type of audience. While BTS has all these different genres making more open to different groups of people. Which is very important because with a little of everything you get a lot and that’s what makes BTS special. They get a little bit of everything and when that comes together it creates something big.

Now you’re probably telling yourself I understand that they’re popular in America and different from American artist but what makes them different from other artists in Korea. First, let's talk about what the entertainment companies or record labels in Korea look like. Before BTS’ big success there was the “Big Three” a term used when talking about the three most successful record labels in South Korea. The big three includes SM entertainment which still is home to the biggest artist in the K-pop industry, JYP interment who also is very big and has some of the best artists in my opinion and lastly YG interpatient which has a lot of new talent. BTS comes from a small company called Bighit entertainment was essentially broke up until BTS success and is only home to now 4 different artists. But now the tables have turned and with the help of BTS bight has surpassed the big three by bringing in billions of dollars just from BTS related sales. But how? BTS Isn’t the first group to make it to the U.S. and stay on top.  We all remember PSY who came from SM entertainment Back in 2013 who was really successful and the first Korean artist to become a global phenomenon. “Gangnam Style was phenomenal, but PSY’s persona was consumed as a character, not as an artist,” Choi says. “He didn’t have a strong fan base like other idol groups, but [US promoter] Scooter Braun found him marketable and introduced him to the American mass media. Despite his long career and musical talent, Psy was depicted in the United States as a hilarious, thus non-threatening, Asian male stereotype.” (SCMP). I agree with this yes PSY was huge and everyone was crazy for him but in American pop culture, he was a one-hit wonder. He did make more music which I absolutely loved and is honestly a big part of K-pop culture except no one outside of the K-pop fandom know about it and that’s the problem. The same thing happened with a boy band called Big Bang and before that all in 2009 a less popular girl group called the Wonder Girls who had made it into billboard charts and even toured with the Jonas brother in 2009. All those bands had tried but failed to stay popular in the U.S. afterward. After that, no other band had tried promoting like that in the U.S. until BTS appeared in the charts in 2017 and managed to stay there. Something that no other Korean artist has done in a long time. After that BTS started to pave the way for other Korean bands like NCT, Black Pink, and EXO on talk shows and award shows. They did what no other band was doing, and they didn’t even come from one of the big entertainment companies that exist in South Korea. Korean artist themselves have even agreed to this idea. A former member of the Wonder Girls and literally the biggest solo artist in Korean right now Sunmi mentioned BTS in one of her interviews when told that her work with the wonder girls had paved the way for K-pop in the United States. She replied “No BTS did” I find this so amazing because as a K-pop fan I am telling she is and OG she’s the first of the first a legend in K-pop books. For her to deny her part in the path of K-pop today and give BTS credit for their work is amazing. Army themselves couldn’t believe it but we totally agree with her.   Though they weren’t the first to start the pave the path into popularity in the U.S. they did finish paving the way for a new artist to come.

In conclusion, seven Korean boys are now the biggest band in the world. Paving the way for many new artists to come and becoming global superstars. They’re doing this in many different ways. For example, using their popularity to shine a light on important controversial topics, having extremely dedicated fans and lastly for making great music for almost anyone. BTS are truly the entrepreneurs of change.

Works Cited

“BTS Pave Way for K-Pop Golden Age in the U.S, Doing What Psy Couldn't.” South China Morning Post, 20 July 2018, www.scmp.com/culture/music/article/2127984/bts-pave-way-k-pop-golden-age-us-achieving-what-psy-and-wonder-girls.

“BTS Speech at the United Nations UNICEF.” Performance by Namjoon Kim, YouTube, UNICEF, 24 Sept. 2018, https://youtu.be/oTe4f-bBEKg

“Five Ways BTS Changed the World of Pop Music.” Evening Standard, 12 Apr. 2019, www.standard.co.uk/go/london/music/bts-map-of-the-soul-persona-ways-changed-pop-music-kpop-a4110786.html.

Bassett, Jordan. “Why the BTS Army Must Be Stopped.” NME, NME, 18 Oct. 2018, www.nme.com/blogs/we-need-to-talk-about-the-bts-army-2389994.

Bruner, Raisa. “Everything to Know About K-Pop Group BTS.” Time, Time, 11 Oct. 2018, time.com/collection-post/5418827/bts-members/

Herman, Tamar. “Meet the Fans of BTS: Profiles of American ARMY.” Billboard, 29 Sept. 2017, www.billboard.com/articles/columns/k-town/7981702/meet-fans-bts-profiles-american-army.

Kolgraf, Jackie. “How Fans of BTS, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift & More Are Changing Music Marketing.” Billboard, 15 Feb. 2018, www.billboard.com/articles/business/8099836/fan-armies-bts-beyonce-taylor-swift-music-marketing.

Litovsky, Dina. “40,000 BTS Fans Can't Be Wrong.” Vulture, 10 Oct. 2018, www.vulture.com/2018/10/bts-and-the-army.html.

Romano, Aja. “How K-Pop Became a Global Phenomenon.” Vox, Vox, 26 Feb. 2018, www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/16/16915672/what-is-kpop-history-explained.

How the KitchenAid Stand Mixer Achieved Icon Status added to Google Docs

How the KitchenAid Stand Mixer Achieved Icon Status

 The KitchenAid stand mixer has been a home kitchen staple for a century. | Getty Images

The much loved kitchen essential has remained a powerful symbol of domesticity for a century 

The KitchenAid stand mixer is a countertop staple for any home baker worth their salt and a colorful kitchen showpiece for plenty who aren’t. With a price tag that runs between $199 and $1,000 for certain limited-edition versions, this multi-attachment appliance can whip, knead, chop, juice, spiralize, and even make pasta. A standard wedding gift since the mid-20th century, it’s become a milestone purchase even for those who have never kneaded dough or whipped meringue in their lives.

Where it came from:

The stand mixer was invented in the early 1910s by Herbert Johnson, an engineer at Hobart Manufacturing Company, after he observed a baker laboring over mixing dough. Determined to simplify the process, Johnson’s solution was the Hobart Model-H, an 80-quart industrial mixer that was introduced in 1914.

While the U.S. Navy was an early client, Johnson and the executives at Hobart had their sights on a wider client base and set about creating a smaller, in-home version of the tool. As the story goes, Hobart executives brought prototypes home for their wives to test out, and one of them exclaimed, “I don’t care what you call it, but it’s the best kitchen aid I’ve ever used.” Thus, the brand name was born. The H-5 KitchenAid, Hobart’s first in-home model, was introduced in 1919. This five-quart mixer weighed 65 pounds and cost $189 (or around $2,777 in today’s dollars).

Explaining its iconic status:

Celebrating its 101st anniversary this year, the KitchenAid stand mixer is so widely loved that people get its likeness tattooed on their bodies. But it took a few decades for the brand to reach cultural ubiquity, let alone cult status. The earliest models were popular in their own way; the Model G, a slightly smaller version than the H-5 that was released in 1927, sold 20,000 units in three years and enjoyed moderate success among affluent households thanks to ranks of door-to-door sales women and demonstration dinner parties (precursors to today’s Instagram stories and YouTube demos). For housewives in the ’20s and ’30s, the appliance represented speed, modernity, and perhaps a little freedom from a never-ending list of household chores to take care of.

But the price and sheer heft of the tool were barriers to wider popularity. Though the company developed a series of increasingly smaller, cheaper stand mixers to compete with a much more affordable newcomer, the SunBeam MixMaster, KitchenAid didn’t grab hold of the consumer imagination until 1937. That’s when the sleek, aesthetically pleasing Model K — the first iteration that today’s cooks would recognize as a KitchenAid — was released.

Heavily influenced by the Streamline Moderne design movement, which emphasized horizontal lines and aerodynamic curves, the Model K was designed by renowned industrial artist Egmont Arens. Arens was a former art editor of Vanity Fair and celebrated “humaneer” who advocated for aesthetically pleasing consumer products designed with the needs and wants of the general public in mind. With the Model K, the KitchenAid suddenly looked trendy. (The silhouette, which is patented, remains virtually unchanged more than 80 years later.)

While Arens’s modern silhouette was one innovation that won consumers over, another aesthetic decision tapped even deeper into trends and cemented KitchenAid as king of the countertop: the introduction of color finishes in 1955. A first in the stand mixer category, the colors KitchenAid offered (Petal Pink, Sunny Yellow, Satin Chrome, and Island Green) reflected broader industrial design trends of the time, which had made it normal to find baby pink cabinetry in a home kitchen with a coordinating pink refrigerator and oven.

 Tinxi/Shutterstock Candy-colored KitchenAid mixers on display at a trade show

According to Jessica McConnell, senior manager of color, finish, and material studio for KitchenAid, adding color was part of the company’s push to turn what had essentially been a commercial product — designed to help professional bakers knead bread — into a home necessity. “They decided to put color on it to make it more palatable and seem more friendly for the home versus really commercial and cold,” she says. “The finishes, the color, the shape of the product, are all things that make you want to touch it, display it confidently in your home, and treat it like an accent.”

The power of color gripped consumers then and hasn’t let up since. Considering several conversations I’ve had with KitchenAid users, the ability to personalize your kitchen and express yourself with your color choice remains a huge part of KitchenAid’s appeal. Most folks mentioned laboring over the color choice and had myriad reasons why they chose the shade they did.

“I had picked a color that, once received, I decided I didn’t love,” says Mindy Fox, food editor and cookbook author of Salads: Beyond the Bowl, who put the KitchenAid on her wedding registry. “I took it in to exchange it and fell in love with another [pale periwinkle] color that was a limited run, soon-to-be-discontinued option. Every single person that comes into my kitchen goes bananas for and comments on the color of my KitchenAid!”

Rachel Tepper, a New York-based food writer, says she “agonized” over the color of her KitchenAid. “I wound up going with Majestic Yellow, which I figured would go with a lot of different kitchens. I knew I was going to have this baby for a long while.”

That longevity is another crucial aspect of the KitchenAid stand mixer’s iconic status. McConnell says that most consumers think of their KitchenAid as a 10-15 year investment, and thus pick a color they can live with for at least that amount of time. But the mixers actually last a lot longer than that (especially models made before the ’90s, according to some consumers). Every KitchenAid stand mixer released since the Model K works with the modern attachments, a fact often discussed in online forums or fan sites. This stands in stark contrast to more modern products like, say, the iPhone, which are designed to become obsolete or incompatible with accompanying products within a few years of their release.

That longevity also contributes to owners’ personal attachment. Like the Le Creuset Dutch oven, the KitchenAid mixer is not just a cooking tool — it’s an heirloom. Several interviewees told me that their mixers were passed down from family members (mine was my grandmother’s from the 1970s), making it understandable that people form an emotional bond with the gadget.

And with a design that’s changed so little, you can recognize a KitchenAid stand mixer anywhere, an essential trait of any icon. “It’s just such a beautiful product, and I’ve always admired them in other peoples’ homes,” says Tepper. “My mom has one, so many friends have them, and I see them all over food Instagram.” They’re ubiquitous on cooking shows and in magazines; and in most product reviews of the category, KitchenAid unquestionably reigns supreme for its classic design and superior performance.

Acquiring a KitchenAid stand mixer is like joining a club. It became apparent from the interviews I conducted over email and Facebook that a KitchenAid stand mixer bestows symbolic status on its owner, thanks to the lifestyle it represents. “For many people, it’s the most expensive gadget in their entire kitchen,” says Tepper, who has written about owning a KitchenAid as a consumer milestone. “But it’s also because of what one uses a stand mixer for — it’s for more ambitious projects, signaling one’s entrance into a new phase of cooking life.”

For generations, that “new phase of cooking life” was synonymous with marriage. Like Fox, countless customers I spoke to got their mixers from their wedding registries, and according to the Knot’s 2019 study, the KitchenAid stand mixer is the most popular registry item. That may be shifting as traditional wedding registries fall out of favor and millennial shoppers stop waiting for marriage to upgrade their kitchen tools. As Sierra Tishgart, founder of cookware startup Great Jones, told the Atlantic, “I remember thinking, I want nice things, but do I have to wait for that stage of my life? That feels preposterous.”

Whether your KitchenAid mixer was gifted to you on your wedding day, passed down by your grandmother, or purchased for yourself in a snub of tradition, it’s a tool that carries a surprising amount of emotional weight. It’s still a powerful symbol of domesticity, but increasingly a different — and more performative — kind, a candy-colored, Instagram-filtered version in which you can have it all: a happy marriage, enough money to buy a $400 appliance, the motivation to take on baking projects on a Wednesday, the time to mix up a batch of cookies whenever you please.

In reality, you might have none of those things; in fact, you may barely use your mixer at all (even among circles of cooking enthusiasts, I came across plenty of people who said they rarely did, including one woman who said the day prior was the first time she’d used it in five years). But with the unmistakable appliance on your counter, you’ve definitely got the appearance of such achievements — personal wealth, leisure time, creative ambition, a stable home life. And you’ve got the distinct possibility of cupcakes… even if you only bake them once every five years.

Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. For more information, see our ethics policy.

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In Tully, Charlize Theron plays a mother on the verge of a breakdown. It's uncomfortably real.

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In Tully, Charlize Theron plays a mother on the verge of a breakdown. It's uncomfortably real.

On its face, Tully is a movie about motherhood. Not the warm, fuzzy parts of motherhood, but the parts where your body gets stretched and pulled out of its former shape, your breasts leak and ache, your house is a wreck, your kids scream for no reason, and you’re so tired that you start screaming too.

But though not all adults have been mothers, most adults will find something to relate to in Tully. Because while there’s no doubt that mothers of small children have a unique claim on physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion, another, more universal thread runs through Tully: the fear that in growing older, you are losing a part of your essential self, the you that you used to be.

Rating

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Winding those two themes together makes Tully a poignant, sometimes painful story about a woman who reaches her breaking point. It’s funny. It’s uncomfortable. And it feels real and lived-in, right to the bone.

Tully is the tale of a woman on the verge of a(nother) breakdown

Tully marks director Jason Reitman’s third collaboration with screenwriter Diablo Cody, following Juno in 2007 and Young Adult in 2011. The Cody-Reitman partnership is interesting in that each of their films feels quite different from the others in tone, but one thing stays consistent: All three of their films feature women struggling with life transitions who could not exactly be called “strong female characters.”

And that’s good — the complexity of these women, and the filmmakers’ willingness to serve up potentially unlikable (but possibly very relatable) female characters to their audience, still feels somehow audacious in 2018. Like them or hate them, the women in a Reitman-Cody movie feel uncommonly familiar.

Charlize Theron in Tully.

Focus Features

In the caustically funny Young Adult, Charlize Theron played a woman determined to relive her high school glory days by returning to her hometown and pilfering her married high school boyfriend. Theron returns for Tully with a typically nuanced performance as Marlo, a heavily pregnant mother of two who lives in the suburbs of New York City with her husband Drew (Ron Livingston). Pregnancy is more exhausting in Marlo’s early 40s than it was when her daughter Sarah was born about eight years earlier. Her kindergartner, Jonah, struggles with a battery of obsessions and fears that his school can’t quite figure out how to handle. Marlo suffered from postpartum depression following his birth.

Marlo and Drew live a fairly typical middle-class life in a house that’s growing more cramped by the day, while her brother Craig (Mark Duplass) and his wife Elyse (Elaine Tan), also parents of three, are wealthy and relaxed in their sprawling home. Craig, wanting to ease Marlo’s burden after the birth, gingerly asks his sister if he can “give” her a night nurse as a baby gift. But Marlo doesn’t want that, and he drops the subject.

Through montages, Tully immerses the audience in the blur of life right after the birth of Marlo and Drew’s daughter Mia. It’s easy to understand how exhausted and overwhelmed Marlo feels in the cycle of feeding, changing, passing out on the couch, and doing it all over again.

And this is the point where the title character enters the story, after Marlo nears the snapping point. Tully (Mackenzie Davis), the night nurse who starts showing up at Marlo’s bedtime, seems like a dream. She’s a little odd, but she’s also just what Marlo needed. Suddenly, Marlo can sleep through the night, secure in the knowledge that Tully is looking out for Mia. Tully cleans, and makes cupcakes for Jonah’s class, and becomes a welcome and listening ear for Marlo.

Because it’s not that Marlo doesn’t love her family. She loves Drew. She’s grateful for the life they’ve built together. But as she tells Marlo, it’s not so much that she mourns the loss of the dreams she once had for herself — she just mourns the loss of her old funny, weird, younger self, the one who lived in a loft with her girlfriend in Bushwick and went to concerts at night.

“If I had a dream that didn’t come true, I could at least be pissed at the world,” she tells Marlo. “Instead, I’m just pissed at myself.”

Tully seems like a miracle and a friend, which is why when she suggests to Marlo that they go into the city for a night out, Marlo goes along with it. And that’s when everything changes.

Tully is about motherhood, but it’s also about growing up

That loss, of a younger self facing a bigger world alive with possibilities, is at the heart of Tully, and the biggest reason the film works on a broader scale. Motherhood is the situation, but growing older is the story. And it’s something that everyone has to face, sooner or later.

Nonetheless, the particular details associated with pregnancy and having small children are what make the movie feel authentic. The physical details are well drawn, but it’s the mental health issues that can accompany pregnancy, such as postpartum depression, that drive the story. That aspect of the story has also drawn fire from some who claim that Marlo should get more support and treatment than is depicted in the film.

Charlize Theron in Tully.

Focus Features

Yet part of what makes Tully moving is that Marlo doesn’t get that support — a situation that many new mothers find themselves in, either because women’s mental health issues are still often brushed off as just a “mood” or because resources are scarce. Watching Marlo struggle, you begin to understand a little better what new mothers can face, something the film’s “twist” near the end highlights.

Still, it’s possible that Tully is exactly the kind of movie new mothers don’t need to watch, with its sharp depictions of things that are all too real for some women. And it’s possible that the ending wraps up too quickly, leaving us with big questions about Marlo’s future and her family’s well-being, and how they intend to get there. Healing doesn’t come with the snap of a finger.

But even with these drawbacks, Tully is still a strong depiction of parenthood that also makes for a startling and entertaining movie, one that most people can understand. Marlo isn’t a two-dimensional character, but she thinks she’s been flattened by life. Watching her try to rediscover herself, you get a taste of her desire and her pain and, most of all, who she might be able to be again.

Tully opens in theaters on May 4.

So you’re telling me there’s a chance …

When Senators McCain, Collins, and Murkowski cast their fateful votes, pretty much everyone assumed that ACA repeal had reached its politically ignominious end. The klieg lights, cable TV, and the front page shifted to hurricanes Harvey and Irma. President Trump announced he would let DACA expire. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi negotiated what appeared to be a tactically brilliant three-month extension of the debt ceiling. Senator Sanders released his single payer plan. The Senate HELP committee began the process of discussing a much less ambitious, bipartisan bill. The world kindof moved on.

Only a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand was still up there, called the Cassidy-Graham bill. At first, it seemed like a bit of a joke. Arcane Senate rules impose a final deadline of September 30 to pass an ACA repeal based on a simple Republican majority vote. For weeks, no one in Washington took Cassidy-Graham very seriously.

Until late last week.

By Thursday or Friday, liberal heavy-hitters were becoming a little concerned, then very concerned, then actually alarmed, as they saw Senator McCain and Republicans leaders warm up to this bill.

Red Alert#Trumpcare is back & Senate GOP has until Sept 30 to pass their bill. We need your voices more than ever!

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) September 15, 2017

Friend of HIO Charles Gaba, then Senator Schumer and others, issued “red alerts” that this thing might be real. Liberal activists were caught napping after the House’s initial failure to enact an ACA repeal bill. They are petrified of being caught napping once again. And with good reason.

RED ALERT: Dammit, GRAHAM-CASSIDY IS ON THE MOVE! https://t.co/2ikmu1KIkB

— ☪️ Charles Gaba ✡️ (@charles_gaba) September 15, 2017

Republicans must rustle up 50 Senate votes, obtain some sort of Congressional Budget Office score, and surmount other procedural obstacles within the before September 30. That would be hard, but Republicans might nonetheless pull this off.

Schumer and Pelosi’s deal suddenly didn’t seem so brilliant. It cleared a Senate calendar that would have otherwise been clogged by the debt ceiling and hurricane relief. Republicans freed more clock time by putting-off the required reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), set to expire September 30.

Most ominously, Senators Collins and Murkowski haven’t said anything about this bill. Healthcare activists are nervously remembering that these two Republican Senators are not liberal stalwarts. Given the right opportunities, each has some good reasons to change her mind.

This is in no way a moderate bill

If you don’t follow health care closely, you might be forgiven if you somehow assumed Cassidy-Graham is some more moderate compromise, designed to obtain broader support. Because it passes so many critical decisions down to the states and backloads its most significant provisions, it’s hard to precisely determine its true impact. Partly for this reason, the pending assessment by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office might create better optics, too.

Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham have often sounded moderate notes in the repeal-and-replace debate. Two months ago, Senator Cassidy wrote in the Washington Post: “Let a blue state do a blue thing and a red state such as mine take a different, conservative approach.” Senator Graham, for his part, harshly criticized the partisan process that produced the Senate’s failed repeal bill. A mild-mannered physician, Cassidy has spoken warmly of the “Jimmy Kimmel test” to evaluate any ACA repeal effort.

Despite all that, this is no moderate bill. Cassidy-Graham would also be enacted by precisely the partisan process Senator Graham had previously criticized.

Unveiling the bill, Graham commented: “If you want a single payer health care system, this is your worst nightmare.” If anything, he was unduly modest. Whether you believe in single-payer or not, his bill would be the biggest retrenchment of American health policy since the enactment of Medicare. (I happen to believe Republicans’ ACA repeal would hasten the arrival of single-payer by destroying plausible market-based alternatives. But that’s another story.)

Cassidy-Graham dropped the tax cuts for the affluent that proved so politically immolating to prior Republican repeal bills. The bill would still would convert the entire Medicaid program from its current state-federal partnership to a per-capita block-grant designed to encourage further cuts. It would, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “destabilize the insurance marketplace” by cutting the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies for low-income people and eliminate the ACA’s individual mandate. It would also allow state waivers to permit insurers to charge higher premiums on the basis of preexisting conditions and other factors.

The stew is the same … and it’s toxic.

The indispensible Timothy Jost presents more nuts-and-bolts details here. Cassidy-Graham retains much of the junk DNA of previous repeal bills. It includes a one-year ban on federal funding for all Medicaid-covered services furnished by Planned Parenthood. (It’s possible that this provision is ornamental, placed into the bill to be dropped in return for Senator Collins’ vote. That doesn’t make Democrats feel any better.)

Other boring but important verbiage matters, too. For example, the bill would end federal funding of retroactive Medicaid eligibility. Since 1965, health care providers could treat car accident victims and others costly illnesses and injuries who were eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid when they required costly care. Cassidy-Graham would leave states on the hook for this.

As Sarah Kliff explains at Vox, and Jonathan Cohn explains at HuffPo, Cassidy-Graham would essentially replace the Affordable Care Act’s financing structure with open-ended block grants to states which could be used for high risk pools, measures to stabilize premiums, direct payments to medical providers, and more. It’s anybody’s guess how much of this money would actually help the poorest and sickest people who are now most reliant on ACA, and how much of this money would go to others or would simply be used to offset other spending that states would do anyway. Oh, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the bill would cut federal healthcare programs by something like $400 billion over the next decade before deeper cuts kick in.

Like other ACA repeal bills, Cassidy-Graham is wildly unpopular in its specifics. By wide margins, the American public wants Republicans to work with Democrats on a bipartisan health care bill. Americans oppose cutting Medicaid, support universal coverage. Every patient advocacy group, healthcare, and provider group opposes Republican repeal efforts.

The real mystery behind Cassidy-Graham is why it is being proposed at all, and why it actually has a decent chance of passage. I think three reasons bear further attention.

A man in my position can’t afford to look ridiculous

The most basic reason is the easiest to overlook. Republicans control the Presidency and the Congress. Their failure to repeal President Obama’s hallmark policy is a massive humiliation. In different ways, this is a particular humiliation for President Trump, for House Speaker Paul Ryan, and for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Particularly when Republicans are only one or two votes away, this provides massive motivation for another try.

American politics is so polarized that majority sentiment doesn’t particularly matter. Senators and Representatives know perfectly well that most Americans don’t want them to pass Cassidy-Graham or any other ACA repeal bill. For many politicians, though, that public sentiment is surprisingly irrelevant to their strategic calculations. Many congressional Republicans don’t need Democratic or independent voters to win reelection. As long as their base voters admire President Trump and are potentially drawn to conservative primary challengers, that’s what matters.

Cassidy-Graham exploits the personalized, undemocratic structure of the United States Senate. Republicans need 50 Senate votes to pass ACA repeal, with Vice President Pence available to break the tie. They have always had 47 or 48 of these votes available. The battle is over those final few.

Human relationships matter in this story. President Trump pushed hard for repeal. His and his allies’ efforts fell one vote short this summer, when their hopes came down to Senator John McCain. We’ll never know how much Senator McCain’s vote reflected his desire to honor Senate norms or his personal disdain for a President who weirdly disparaged McCain’s own Vietnam war heroism and weirdly profited from Russian interference in the 2016 election. Voting on this new bill, Senator McCain won’t be bailing out a President he despises. He would be supporting Lindsey Graham, one of his very closest friends and Senate colleagues.

Another factor matters, too. Republican governors – not least in Senator McCain’s own state of Arizona – had much to lose from the House and Senate repeal bills. Ohio’s John Kasich, Nevada’s Brian Sandoval, and other Republican governors played key public and private roles in turning back the repeal effort.

I’m glad governors matter to health policy. They actually have to run things. That often breeds responsibility, expertise, and accountability. Imagine a Medicare-for-All system with President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Tom Price at the help. Liberals might ponder this thought as we consider states’ role in a single-payer healthcare plan.

The ’25-governor’ strategy

ACA also faces a baked-in problem, one that is as old as the U.S. Constitution and as unlikely to be altered. Wyoming (population 600,000), Vermont (624,000), Alaska (742,000), and North Dakota (758,000), and are entitled to the same two Senate votes as California (39 million), Texas (28 million), Florida (21 million), and New York (20 million). Generally speaking, small, predominantly white rural states are not bastions of support for universal coverage.*

Jacob Leibenluft and his Center on Budget colleagues ran these numbers, examining Cassidy-Graham’s impact on individual states in 2026. Overall spending on federal health programs would be roughly $80 billion below current baseline. Yet the impacts would be quite different across the country. California and New York, between them, would lose more than $46 billion. Red states that didn’t expand Medicaid would actually receive more money. And this understates things. The Center on Budget’s calculations do not include state-specific sweeteners one could easily provide Alaska and other small states, where moderate Senators such as Lisa Murkowski, hold this bill in the balance.

As one commentator put things, Cassidy and Graham can follow a “25-governor strategy.” If there is pork to throw around, they can buy off the smaller states, using funds extracted from the big, safely-blue states whose Senate votes are out of reach. Those punishing cuts to California and New York free billions of dollars in pork for every small-state Senate vote.

Former CMS administrator Andy Slavitt is perhaps the leading public defender of ACA. Responding to me over email, he doesn’t mince words:

You would have to be crazy not to worry about an effort to repeal the ACA, now backed by leadership. Remember, at least 45 Senators would vote for a piece of paper with the words “Repeal Obamacare” on it. The strategy to get the other 5 on board is to transfer money into their states to attract their Governor and Senator. Senators McCain, Capito, Gardner and Portman will be critical. As will Alexander and the success of his bipartisan effort. If that goes down, more momentum could swing towards Graham-Cassidy. It’s not time to watch from the sidelines if you feel you have a stake in the outcome.

Elections matter

ACA will never be fully safe until Democrats win back the Presidency, the Senate, or the House. Maybe that’s how it should be. Elections matter.

With 13 days to go, I’d say Cassidy-Graham faces an uphill battle. But as we know, American politics sometimes delivers unlikely outcomes. It’s foolish to take anything for granted.

* Washington, DC (population 681,000) is such a bastion. It enjoys zero Senate votes. The combination of partisan gerrymandering and Democratic urban bunching provides Republicans with an even bigger systematic advantage in the House of Representatives.

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It can be tempting to write Medium off for dead. The company laid off a third of its staff earlier this year. The bigger-name publishers who migrated to Medium have left. (Goodbye to: The Ringer, Backchannel, The Awl, Pacific Standard, Film School Rejects, ThinkProgress.) They mostly returned to WordPress — or in The Ringer’s case, to Vox, or in Backchannel’s case, to Condé Nast.

“The move to Medium was a cool experiment, in my opinion, but the year is up and personally I missed the ads,” wrote Sylvia Killingsworth, editor of The Awl and The Hairpin.

All of these publishers left, largely, because they still like ads (at least some ads), and the future that Medium founder and CEO Ev Williams sees for the company — and dreams for with media in general — doesn’t include advertising, not even the native advertising that was a key piece of Medium’s plan when it rolled out its publisher program back in 2016.

“We’ve made clear that anyone who is dedicated to pursuing an ad-driven business model is probably not the best fit. We’re not going to be developing or incorporating ad technology,” Williams told me Tuesday. Instead, the company announced earlier this month that it’s going all-in on subscriptions — using a Spotify-ish model that pools subscribers’ $5 monthly contributions and doles them out to a select group of creators based on how many “claps” the creators get. (“Ev doesn’t like ads? Wait until he finds out what credit card processing is really like,” a source told Business Insider in February.)

There’s reason to be skeptical of this. Many of the companies that left Medium didn’t want their business models to be driven by advertising; they just wanted to have ads as an option, and they weren’t close to being able to sustain a business on subscriber revenue, even if they’d do that in an ideal world. “We’d love to be able to do this all without ads, but there’s no money in that,” Film School Rejects’ Neil Miller wrote in May.

And Medium’s new money-pooling model, which doesn’t allow paying just one creator directly, is also not appealing to some publishers. “I’ll eventually need to move to WordPress so I can add subscriptions in a meaningful way,” said Derrick Harris, the founder of ARCHITECHT, which is currently hosted on Medium. (Harris is also my former colleague at Gigaom.) The model Medium is going for instead is “maybe okay for hobbyists or freelancers in between paying gigs,” Harris said, but he doesn’t believe it can work for someone hustling to run their own publication full-time.

Of course, Williams disagrees. “For those who do well in the program, there’s every reason to expect that they can make more money writing here than they could at an ad-based publication,” he said. I talked to Williams about the company’s most recent changes; here’s our conversation, slightly edited for length and clarity.

Laura Hazard Owen: The different iterations of Medium have been a little confusing. You shut down your publisher program in January, and then added a $5/month membership program in March, and now there are more changes. What’s the state of things now?

Ev Williams: Since we originally launched our paywall and subscription and announced the partner program in March, the big change is we’ve developed this thing that allows people to publish without us explicitly commissioning them and approving what they publish before they get paid. Previously, if people wanted to get paid, we were working with them individually, accepting pitches, going back and forth doing light editing, signing contracts in a more traditional way and paying them on those terms. The big change, essentially, is that once they’re in the program, people can publish themselves and get paid on performance.

It’s a dramatic change, but it was always our plan to figure out how to do this. The nature of Medium is an open platform. We wanted to introduce this new economic model powered by user subscriptions, but building a system we thought would pay out fairly, and building the right type of content, was non-trivial. We first started learning by doing it more manually — building, basically, the pipe to take money and charge money and build the subscriptions database. The long-term plan has always been to figure out how to scale that to many more creators and remain open.

Owen: How many people have signed up to be partners since March, and how many are working with Medium now? What are some of the things they have in common?

Williams: A couple thousand people applied right off the bat, and we’ve worked a couple hundred of them over the last couple of months. A lot of those were people who had been writing on Medium. The vast majority of people who write on Medium don’t do so for money. Some aspire to do so; some write professionally in other cases and not on Medium. We have a ton of writers on Medium, and the majority of them aren’t really our target for our partner program. We don’t want to suggest that everybody who writes should get paid or try to get paid.

Owen: So are those more direct relationships, with the editing and such, now coming to an end?

Williams: Not necessarily. We’re continuing to work with some people right now as we ramp up this other system. It’s likely that we will be working with some writers longer-term, as well as publishers. There are still publishers and studios that we signed contracts with.

Owen: A lot of the publishers left, though. The Ringer, The Awl.

Williams: Some of the bigger ones have left. There are hundreds of publishers still on Medium. We talked to The Ringer and some of the others at the beginning of the year about what their plans are and what our plans are, and we made clear that anyone who is dedicated to pursuing an ad-driven business model is probably not the best fit. We’re not going to be developing or incorporating ad technology. It made sense for publishers who needed that to migrate off. There are lots of publishers who weren’t doing [advertising] and for the most part they’ve stayed, so that’s really the distinction.

There wasn’t a lot of doubt that we shouldn’t partner with people who had incompatible business models with us.

Owen: So native advertising — which you guys previously seemed to see as a promising area — is gone, too?

Williams: We’re not doing any advertising, native or not. All the advertising on Medium, pretty much, unless publishers did it themselves, has been native. We did a few native content projects with brands, both ourselves and in partnership with some of our publishers. Those deals actually worked pretty well, and we saw a path there, but it wasn’t the long-term path that we wanted to pursue.

There are, of course, publishers still on the platform who may write sponsored content for brands. There are a few features in our publishing tools that still accommodate that. But it’s not something we’re encouraging or pursuing ourselves. We believe in the user-supported model and we’re putting as much attention and focus as possible on making that work.

Owen: Where is the money to pay the writers coming from? Is it coming from you, Medium the company, or is it coming from readers?

Williams: Well, it’s a little bit of an arbitrary distinction because all the money comes to us, and we are paying out the money. The budget will be pegged to the subscription revenue because it needs to be. We can’t pay out of pocket for all the writing. We will pay writers from the subscription revenue.

Owen: But, I mean, is Medium the company contributing money to the writers directly as well?

Williams: Like any marketplace, we are going to seed it first. Usually, you need to seed supply before you have enough demand, so there’s something for people to come to. In the beginning stages, we’re not limiting the payouts to subscribers. We are investing more than the current amount of subscriber revenue to seed the market.

Owen: What’ll be the point you have to get to where all of the money is coming from the readers? When can you stop seeding it?

Williams: It’s pretty hard to predict. I look at it this way: If you compare the monetization from the subscription product to a web-based ad product, even at our relatively small price of $5 a month, subscription is a phenomenally better monetization model for a reader. Therefore, there is a lot more money for the content that is engaged with than the content that is available to pay writers from an ad-driven model. So for those who do well in the program, there’s every reason to expect that they can make more money writing here than they could at an ad-based publication.

Owen: You mentioned that there’s a qualification process for writers who want to come on and get paid. What do they need to do?

Williams: It’s not a rigorous review process. We’re not saying you have to have a certain qualification. Our attitude is that great ideas can come from anywhere. We definitely want established professionals on the platform, but we also want to give an opportunity to up-and-comers and less established folks. We’re not putting out a bunch of criteria.

We had to do two things in terms of rolling this out. Eventually, we want it to be as open as possible: There’ll be a set of rules, and if you adhere to the rules, great. But before we open it up totally, we want to test our system. There are probably things we’ll need to tweak.

We also need to balance the market, to some extent. If we were to open it up completely right now, I think we would have too much good content and we only have so many subscribers. If we opened the floodgates of content, we would just have too much content. Again, as a marketplace of sorts, we need to balance the supply and demand side.

Owen: I’m wondering how similar it is to Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library, for instance, where authors opt in to participate and then money is doled out of a set pool each month based on how many reads they get. [This system, by the way, has caused a great deal of consternation among participating authors.]

Williams: That Kindle program is probably the most similar to ours. It’s also not that dissimilar from Spotify or some other subscription services, where there’s a pool of money that is ultimately tied to the subscription revenue and how that’s divided up is based on the subscriber behavior.

Kindle pays specifically on pages read, I believe. Spotify pays on plays. We essentially pay on votes, which we’re calling claps. But in essence, they all work the same way, and it’s ultimately up to the readers and paying subscribers who gets paid, and how much.

Some of the reports on this were really off-base on about what we’re doing, by the way. The behavior that counts for payout is only from subscribers or paying members, so a lot of the assumptions about this being easy to game are not valid. Also, one of the differences between this and some other systems is that the payout is per user. For each cycle, we will deliver a budget per paying member. How each member’s portion of that budget is distributed is according to their behavior.

It’s not that the post with the absolute most claps gets the most money. It’s that: If you engage with one author, in the extreme case, all of the money from you goes to that author. If you engage with a thousand of them, that money goes to a thousand of them. It gives more agency to the member and it allows people who may have a small fan base or be in a niche area to still do well, because the majority of their fans’ money will go to them.

Owen: So if, for example, I am a paying member and I only like reading stuff about cooking and I never read anything about sports — none of my money goes to sports content?

Williams: Pretty much none of your money goes to something that you don’t read. In fact — we’ll have to see how this plays out — but if you read something and you don’t like it, or if you just view something because you’re curious, the author will not get paid. It’s unlike an ad system where just viewing something pays as much as actually reading it.

Owen: How will you know if I am really reading something or just viewing it? The claps?

Williams: Because [all the paying subscribers] are logged in, we know what they’ve read. Some people think the clap mechanism is goofy, but it’s a fairly natural way, once you get used to it, to explicitly signal that this is worth more to you than something else. It’s a choice the user makes after they’ve seen the content, not before, so it’s harder to manipulate than a click or a view or even time spent. It’s also variable, because some things are worth a lot more than other things.

Those two factors combine really allow the user to determine where their money goes, but the reason we don’t give people, like, a dashboard to determine where their money goes is that what we’re trying to do is balance the ability to give that explicit variable input while also not causing people to have to think too much about it. We don’t want to make it too hard.

Owen: Are you also taking things like time spent on the page, or how far down on the page a reader gets, into account?[/conr]

Williams: In all of our documentation, we’ve said payout is based on engagement. We put the emphasis on claps because that’s a very concrete thing, but we’ll look at all these factors. You can think of Google’s quality ranking, which is something that evolves over time. There may be exceptions to their core metrics, and metrics may be gamed, but [overall it works].

I don’t know if we’ll share our exact algorithm, because that makes it easier to game, but we will share what signals we’re looking at, if and when we incorporate more. We’re just going to have to see how people be have. How they’ve behaved [on Medium] historically does give us a lot of data that we’re basing this on, but we know that with money involved people may behave differently, so we have to do a lot of learning.

Owen: I’m just thinking back to the spring of 2016 when Medium rolled out its publisher program, and things are so different now. I’m wondering what changed your mind about this mission, what changed your mind about the way digital media works overall.

Williams: It’s fundamentally about advertising. That’s what I changed my mind on.

Just to be clear, the mission of Medium has always been the same: What we’ve been trying to figure out is how to create an ecosystem that supports the creation and distribution of great ideas and important content. There was a phase in the first couple years when we were really focused on the tool: How do we create a great tool for those who want to write and share things that are not professional and don’t want want to get paid for it? That’s still a big part of Medium and always will be.

As we started to move into the professional realm, obviously, supporting the content and the creators economically became critical. The most natural thing to do was to say, well, advertising is the model — we have an opportunity to do something that we think is better than the traditional display that’s all over the web by doing things native, and we have a lot of brands already coming to us and wanting to use Medium for content marketing. That was the default thinking for me because it was exactly what we did at Twitter. We did a platform, companies started using it very early on for commercial purposes, and if they were already using it, we could make it better for them.

I sort of, probably prematurely, assumed the same thing would work here. In [April 2016], when we were courting publishers and brands to pursue that vision — it wasn’t that we decided that couldn’t work, but we decided it was not as likely to drive the mission that we wanted. If the content was ultimately getting paid for on the professional side by brands, it was eventually going to look more and more like advertising. We were already seeing that brands wanted tracking. There were a lot of discussions about whether content was above the fold that made less sense in the native world, but it was just how advertising is sold.

We extrapolated out. The money can come either from brands, publishers, or users. What we want to do is create the best possible place to support great content. How does the best media in the world work? In almost every case, the best media is supported by those who consume it, whether that’s books or movies or, now, television and music. And traditionally, for magazines and newspapers, an important part of the revenue came from those who consumed it.

The more I thought about that model, the more I realized it was the only way to really create an ecosystem that rewards and supports the best content there is. Once I realized that, it’s when we made the hard decision to switch.

Owen: But — and this is sort of the perennial question, I guess — what about the quality, investigative work that really is important, but that people just may not be as interested in supporting? How do you fund that just with readers? Is there a place for that on Medium?

Williams: Long-term, just looking the industry as a whole, I think that investigative journalism is super important and I’m optimistic about its funding from three sources. One, I think that for the big newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post, a huge part of their brand is built around those pieces — so from a purely business perspective, not even a mission perspective, it’s what helps them get the subscribers they do, and I think they’ll be able to keep doing it.

Nonprofit money helps fund a lot of this type of work, but I also am optimistic that Medium can help fund this type of work, partly because of this idea of explicit action being more important than how many pageviews something did. We’re offering a way for someone to put something out there and for people to say it’s worthwhile and they want their money to go to it because it’s important.

Owen: Is it possible that Medium would have some kind of Kickstarter-ish role with this program, where, say, a writer could post an idea for something they want to work on, and based on the number of claps it gets, they get funding?

Williams: I think that’s a cool idea. It’s not something we are actively working on, but it’s something I would welcome people to do. In the meantime, if they apply to our partner program and write that that’s what they want to do, we are open to discussing it.

Photo of Ev Williams by Christopher Michel used under a Creative Commons license.

via Nieman Lab