deadlockedlord

Can they all be anymore perfect?!

ok so yesterday i read jon ronson’s amazing book “so you’ve been publicly shamed”, and aside from being a great book with a lot of good insight on current internet callout culture, there was one specific part that i can’t stop thinking about.

it’s when he’s discussing one of the many cases of people who were publicly shamed he mentions through the book. the person in question is a woman who took a picture flipping off a monument to veterans and who then became the target of a massive harrassment campaign that got her fired as a result. 

because the picture lives on on google, the woman is in constant fear of losing any future job she might get, or of meeting new people in general. so jon puts her in touch with a company that’s dedicated to cleaning up people’s reputations online. what they do is basically to create a vast amount of online content about that person, so that the news of whatever they did that haunts them is pushed back to page 2 of google results, which, of course, very few people actually look.

the thing is that, in order to create this content, they need information about her, and so they start asking her the most inane things she might be into - like cats, disney or pop music. and then jon hits you, the reader, with this:

and this just… really hit a key point about this culture that i feel is rarely ever discussed. contrapoints briefly touched on it on her video about cancelling, when she talks about the contradiction between fans wanting creators to be “authentic” while also dragging them to hell for the slightest misstep, but she doesn’t really go in depth about it.

one video that does go in depth about it is pschyirl’s video on jenna marbles, “Why The End of Jenna Marbles Is The End of Authenticity”. it’s a great video that i highly recommend, and it basically points out how our current way of engaging with media disincourages creators to be remotely authentic, because authenticity requires being a human being, and part of being a human being is making mistakes.

and just… to me that just hits so deeply, and i think it goes way beyond social media platforms like youtube. there’s this contradictory demand that public figures “use their platforms” to raise awareness for important causes, while also holding the ones that frequently do to impossible standarts (jameela jamil immediately comes to mind). the safest way to be a public figure in 2020 is to be as silent as possible.

and this is often thought of as just a left problem, and don’t get me wrong, the “cancellation” aspect does tend to be left-wing leaning, but massive online mobs come from the right as well. and they also benefit from the essentialist discourse the left constantly clings to. in an essentialist world where creators are harshly judged as people by the media they make, it’s a lot easier, for example, to turn “cuties’s way of dealing with the sexualitization of children is not perfect and merrits critique” into “the director of cuties IS a literal pedophile”. the accusations are spearheaded by right wing people who are working on bad faith, but the essentialized version reaches the entire internet, and no one bothers to question it, and suddenly a female director who made a movie partially based on her own experiences growing up has to delete all her social media because of the harrassment she’s getting.

the message this sends to creators is to stay away from controversial subjects, even if those subjects happen to be relevant to you personally. it teaches artists to not take risks. and i can’t help but find it very, very sad.

Watch out, Bok Joo!

Wtf btob😂😂😂

loneliness really does advance and strengthen like once it makes a home in you it's so hard to feel like your place is with others and it's so easy to get out of practice at sharing who you are because by that point being on your own is an integral aspect of your existence and there's just no way to explain that to anybody

Obi Wan….I can’t stop watching this bAwhahaha this man is perfect

It’s that time of the year again :)

Glad I turned audio on for this. 😎

ikr

#THIS IS ANOTHER UNDERRATED MOMENT #GROGU SENSES LUKE THROUGH THE FORCE #HE FEELS LUKE BOARDING THAT SHIP AND COMING TO SEE HIM #HIS LITTLE HAND REACHING OUT TO THE MONITOR #BECAUSE HE’S REACHING OUT TO LUKE IN THE FORCE TOO #THEY SENSE EACH OTHER #GROGU HAS BEEN SO ALONE IN THE FORCE #ONLY BRIEF MOMENTS OF CONNECTION LIKE WITH AHSOKA #AND NOW HERE’S THIS TREMENDOUS PRESENCE #QUITE POSSIBLY EVEN MORE BRILLIANT IN THE FORCE THAN GROGU #WHO IS TELLING HIM ‘I’M HERE.  I’M COMING TO SEE YOU.  I’LL PROTECT YOU.’ #ALL THROUGH THE FORCE #WHO UNDERSTANDS WHEN GROGU REACHES BACK #NOT ONLY DOES GROGU SENSE LUKE #BUT LUKE SENSES GROGU #AND THEY FEEL EACH OTHER REACHING OUT #NOBODY TOUCH ME I’M CRYING ABOUT FORCE-SENSITIVES #AND HOW HARD IT HAD TO BE FOR GROGU TO CHOOSE BETWEEN DIN AND LUKE #AND HOW MUCH HE WANTED TO GO BUT WOULDN’T UNTIL DIN GAVE HIM PERMISSION #I’M JUST WEEPING AT HOW BEAUTIFUL THE WHOLE THING IS EVEN AS IT BREAKS MY HEART #THE WAY HIS LITTLE EARS PERK UP WHEN HE SENSES LUKE #I CAN’T HANDLE THIS

based on a frame from “Pride and Prejudice” (2005) [watercolor - 2018]

FEMALE AWESOME MEME → 5 female characters who are unfairly hated ↳ 4. Beth Greene, The Walking Dead (2010—)

The boy you trained, gone, he is, consumed by Darth Vader.

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All the journalists saying: it's been a long time.. they also miss btob apparently 😭

It almost looked like they were waiting for BTOB more than us 🤭