Extravagant & Unlikely

CRYING SCREAMING THROWING UP LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO

This is such an interesting post on how misinformation spreads involuntarily! People are sharing it screaming with fannish joy - they're going to have an actual promotional tour for a fictional band?! - but what proof is actually there in the post?

First of all: it's a screenshot without a source.

In the screenshot you have a twitter account called "Interview with the V..." with a blue check, handle @/iwtvupdates. If you check it: it's not an official update account, but a fan account that bought a blue check.

They're posting a screenshot, a link and a summary saying "Sam [Reid] is heading on tour", but since this Tumblr post is a screenshot of a tweet we can't check what's written in the screenshot that was posted on twitter. So now we have to do the homework and look for the original source.

The link in the tweet goes to Adweek, an online publication that is geared towards advertisers.

Let's check the source of AMC's press release that Adweek republished and look at original wording:

These is the paragraph that made people think "there is going to be an actual tour". But if you pay attention, it says it's for advertisers and "[advertising] partners". Not fans. So what are they proposing to the advertisers whose money they want? What are these "variety of stops"?

They're trying to sell them a thing called "Backstage Pass" - which is not an actual backstage pass for an actual tour but "in-show, on-ground and custom media campaigns": various types of ads, both in the show and during events like they did at SDCC. These are the "touchpoints of the tour": types of ads the advertisers can buy.

These are advertising opportunities. There could be events with a "first look of the new season" (premieres? sneak peeks?) called "soundchecks" (because the marketing team likes the rockstar theme), a merch store (like the one they already have but rockstar themed), and "in-world integrated content" (product placement?)

---

So... This was an ad for ads.

Not an announcement for a real life tour for a fictional band. No mention of Sam Reid other than "he plays Lestat in S3", no mention of an actual tour where he plays music in-character. Those things were added by the twitter fan account and reshared by fans.

All there was in the end is a marketing team that got a bit carried away with the music theme and fans got carried away because the thought of attending an actual real life concert of a fictional vampire was just too fun.

Great post, I was also just checking with an Anonymous Source, who corroborates all of this: It is not a real tour, it is just cutesy marketing jargon which does seem very confusing at first glance. False alarm, everybody, calm down LOL

All of this is correct. No notes.

I love how when Daniel is bleeding out, dying on the floor he's still staring almost exclusively at Armand's ass and fingers. That's the indomitable human spirit in action.

I recently got an on-campus job. During the interview process, I requested that I not be scheduled on Friday nights or Saturdays as I am a Jewish student.

My boss immeadiately brightened and rushed to explain - "Of course ! Of course! We want to accomodate you! We have another worker who takes off for Ramadan. Do you need to take off for Ramadan?"

I shook my head, incredibly confused. "Uh. That's. Not my jurisdiction. I'm good." Boss nodded but was sure to add "Let me know if that ever changes. We can help you with Ramadan."

@vangoggles THAT WHAT I WAS SAYING .

And I was finally on a shift with this guy. We were both sitting in silence because we had the ass-crack-of-dawn slot.

Over my coffee and twirling my Magen David necklace around my finger, I say "So. Ahmed. Ramadan.

And Ahmed over his energy drink, sighs - "don't you say shit about that."

#what's the bet Ahmed was just asking for certain shifts during Ramadan and Boss got excited and was like “just take the whole ramadan off!”#“don't even worry about it! we support you! take the time you need!” I'm scheduled to work with him tomorrow morning so will find out then 🫡 .We're both STEM majors who use the early empty hours to study so I will report if I get more than a grunt out of him about it.

another stupid-early morning, and between our respective course loads- him organic chemistry and me pathophysiology- I asked for the full story in how he got all of Ramadan off.

He sighed, and let me know that he did indeed try to explain to our manager that all he needed was to get shifts not around sunrise or sunset. But that in him explaining what Ramadan was, the plot very quickly got lost into this unhinged confusion where our boss was trying to google how people could survive an entire month without food or water.

So halfway through, he decided to pivot and go along with it, expecting less shifts in March because that's a difficult academic time anyway. Then, he had to keep a straight face when the end-product was the entire time off with paid leave.

So, now, he's in a hell partially of his own making where his boss genuinely believes he doesn't eat for a month and is trying to offer all non-Christian workers March off. I offered him time off for Hanukkah. He hit his head against the desk, and groaned.

wait, follow up question, what's he going to do next year when it's not in March anymore?

I was also wondering this, so I asked him this most recent shift together. He paused, considered the question for a moment, then answered- "I'll have to check my syllabus and decide then."

You heard it here first- newest update to the Islamic Calender. Ramadan is dependent on Ahmed's course-load. (He saw this post on a Youtube short and was amused by it, so he doesn't detest the weird tumblr coworker. He also only gets a quarter of his normal paycheck for the month, which is not terrible at all for vacation.)

(Also. My boss is still convinced I observe Ramadan.)

Happy Ramadan to Ahmed and his course load. The Muslim Jewish solidarity nobody could have predicted. 🤣

Tiktok's censorship of words like rape, kill, murder, abortion etc. etc. as well as censoring hard to hear topics, over the past few years has deeply contributed to the sanitisation of the internet and therefore directly resulted in the birth of "fandom purists" and the destruction of old fandom culture (the death of "don't like, don't read", "ship and let ship" mindsets as well as safe spaces for dark and "immoral"/unethical storytelling i.e "dead dove: do not eat") in a way that has fundamentally changed the mindsets of people who are new to fandom spaces and now view these such topics as wildly inappropriate for any social space as well as deeming anyone who is intrigued by them narratively or creatively as "immoral" and a bad person. In this essay I will

Oh for fuck's sake, fandom purists were around LONG before TikTok. They were in the fanzines. They were in LiveJournal. They were in ff.net. The reason ao3 doesn't have forums is that those things attract fandom purists and mass bullying. There were no safe spaces, no "ship and let ship". People tore each other apart over ship wars. They bullied young writers out of writing. They sued each other or convinced authors to sue fan writers they didn't like. They gatekept and flamed and cyberbullied and left entire communities collapsing in on themselves.

I am so, so, so sick of people transparently trying to pretend that fandom used to be a great place where we all lived together in harmony before the Fire Nation attacked. The reason for the "ship and let ship" "YKINMKATO", and other sentiments wasn't as a community rule, it was push back AGAINST toxic fandom. If you didn't see it until now, I'm glad you were lucky to have a good fandom experience. But don't go spreading the idea that TikTok invented purists, or toxic fandom, or ship wars, or morality.

If you need any citations, Fanlore has a pretty good write-up of the origins of purity culture in fandom, as well as disproving the idea that it didn't exist "back in my day". It's also probably worth it to read about Strikethrough and Boldthrough.

The easiest mistake you can make as you get older is to assume that all of these problems are new and that your generation was too good to get involved in it. Don't let nostalgia blind you into thinking you and yours are immune to being toxic fans.

I’m at a sociology conference and just attended a memorial for one of the giants of our field, and one of the panelists told this story…he was at a meeting with this guy, who he got his PhD under and had a long standing relationship with, and he was bemoaning the current state of the world, and he asked this old professor, “how can you be so optimistic? I can’t ever be anything but a pessimist.”

and the old professor said, “you little fucker, I’m going to make a statement and then I’m going to take you out to the parking lot and beat your ass. What good does your pessimism do?”

and that really struck me. not the least because I also knew this old professor and he very rarely swore, so I know this was something he was really worked up about. what good does your pessimism do? What GOOD does your pessimism DO. I’ll be thinking about that for awhile.

I'm dying.

the tragic truth that we all have to accept is that Armand WOULD own a cybertruck

Armand would love to do experiments on a cyber truck. Like drive it on the beach at Night Island every day and see how fast it rusts, throw different chemicals on it, reprogram it to do strange things, see how fast raccoons can break in if he fills the back with garbage, see how fast the original owner can break out if he locks them in the back with the garbage

exaaaaactly. and every time a bit falls off, he recreates one of the "Will It Blend" youtube videos (yes. it will blend)

Okay. Say you ask a small child to draw you a house, and they come up with something like this:

For the purposes of this analogy the child is shit at colouring in, because I only wanted to give the general idea.

So, we can all agree that the child who draws a house probably isn't trying to communicate anything in particular other than “look at this cool house I drew”, right?

Cool.

So… Why is it seemingly in the middle of nowhere, when most children live in houses with neighbours?

Why is the main body a square and the roof a solid triangle when that doesn't look like any house that has ever been built anywhere?

Why does it have a wood-burning stove with smoke actively coming out of the chimney, even though the sun indicates warm weather?

Why is the sun smiling? Why is it yellow?

Answer: because the child has seen picture books, and films, and the drawings of other children, and has on some level absorbed that this is what a house is meant to look like.

Face to face, the child almost certainly wouldn't know where to begin communicating “yellow is a colour culturally associated with happiness and warmth, and two dots accompanied by a curved line symbolically represent a smiling human face, so I have combined these attributes with the sun to convey that it is a very warm and pleasant day”.

Or “historically most houses in my country used fire for heat and cooking, and even though this is no longer the case for the majority of households, most media portrayals of houses are inspired by other, older, media portrayals and therefore include the chimney. I have chosen to follow this trend.”

Or even, “I have poor motor control because of my age, and large, 2 dimensional shapes are easier to draw than anything involving detail and perspective”.

Yet this is all information that you can pick up from detailed study of the house drawing.

Ultimately, it's not about what the writer intended. That's what the whole death of the author thing means.

If you think of literature like as a conversation, then think of all the analysis stuff that your English teacher keeps trying to get you to look at as like body language. It's the stuff that the other person doesn't even necessarily mean to communicate, but that can tell you a hell of a lot about what they mean.

Also, a poem written by a poet who got high is still a poem written by a poet.

People love to say dismissive bullshit like, "oh, that's just the drugs talking" but actually, drugs can't fucking talk! It is always the human being doing the talking regardless of how intoxicated they are. The drugs are not creating the poetry. The poet's mind is creating the poetry. A person doesn't stop being a person just because they took something.

David Bowie said he was so high the year he wrote the album Hunky Dory that he didn't remember writing it (in fact he said he didn't remember anything about the year).

This is the album that includes "Life on Mars?", which many people consider to be some pretty cutting commentary on Marxism and capitalism.

Bowie himself could not tell you what that song is about, or if it's about anything at all. But quite a few people have found a lot of meaning in it.

My teenager is working on a big art project for school and they said their meanings tend to be very surface level

Their work is about flora and fauna is a mix of bone motifs, animal shapes and natural flora intertwining to create one beast that symbolises the land

And when I pointed out that it seemed to me like a commentary on how the ecosystem works and every part is reliant on another and how life and death are two sides of the same coin they didn't go "no I was just doing surface level nature is cool" they went "oh yeah! I can see it now!"

And I've had that experience as well

Sometimes artists don't know the meaning until other people point it out

@ariaste

can we come together in an honest and safe space. season 1 of interview with the vampire was fucking funny like dare i say downright hysterical in many places

greatest philosophical questions of the century: are children's cartoons politically significant? do audiobooks count as reading? is booktok destroying women's brains? are a middle class americans the most oppressed group of all time? who's stupider: children or schools? is sexual inexperience the truest sin? are pad users more oppressed than tampon users? should people eat quinoa specifically if we ignore all other foods on earth? is taylor swift underrated or overrated? is it pedophilia to dress stupid? is intra lgbt community slur reclaiming okay? does autism stop you from going to the club? is being a misogynist actually more progressive than not being a misogynist? france? should people who don't like spoilers be killed on the street or should people who say spoilers be killed on the street? is calling something gross fascism except when i do it? is it more progressive to be bilingual? among others