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e-claire · 1 year

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Misophonia sucks so fucking hard and no one anywhere ever wants to talk about it. Literally the only people I've ever had listen to me about my Misophonia are other people with Misophonia. So fuck it, Misophonia Awareness Post or something, I want to vent.

Allow me to describe what it is first for all the lucky people who aren't fucked over. Misophonia is likely an Audio-Processing Disorder (Potentially some form of Synesthesia) in which certain sounds trigger a fight or flight reaction. Trigger sounds can vary and sometimes after long term exposure it can create a reaction to the visuals associated with those sounds. It is possibly genetic, there is no known cause, there is no known treatment, there is only suffering and ways of generally kind of reducing that suffering. When I hear people chewing I am filled with a rage that can only be described as "Bordering on a primal desire to Kill." and there's nothing I can do about that. A family member or friend takes a bite of something crunchy and I have to sit there and exist with thoughts of pounding their fucking skull into paste with my bare god damn hands and then afterwards I have to go back to "being normal". I have to just pretend that didn't happen, I can't do anything with those emotions, I can't put them anywhere, I can't talk about them with anyone or gain any understanding or sympathy from others for having them.

When I see someone chewing food anymore it's borderline impossible for me to remain in the room with them for any more than a few seconds because the mere sight of them chewing makes me physically ill and inspires in me a sense of deep disgust and panic that I could never ever hope to describe.

I tell people about what it's like and I get one of four reactions :

"Oh I think I have that too" With a weird amount of curious excitement at the concept of having a fun new quirky thing to mention in conversations. This means that they don't have it, and they'll then proceed to list off a couple different things that literally no human being likes to hear and how much that thing "annoys them". This makes me want to kill myself.

"Wow, Yikes." Through a grimace. This means I was too open about how it makes me feel and they now think i'm a either a freak, liability, time bomb, or over-dramatic, and will do everything they can to avoid the subject in the future so that I can't make them uncomfortable. This makes me want to kill them AND myself.

Immediately eats something really loudly to set me off as a "joke". This means that they're an obnoxious piece of shit that I have to try my absolute hardest not to beat to death with my bare hands. This makes me want to kill them, if that wasn't already obvious.

"Oh. So that's what this is called." This means they have it, and we can both engage in a brief period of mutual trauma sharing that helps us know we're not alone, and that our curse is unfortunately shared with others. This makes us both somewhat melancholy, and kinda ruins the vibes until something fun happens.

And then we get into the "How do you make the pain stop", and good news! You can't. There is no way to make it stop. But you can make it hurt less with ✨Spending Unbearable Amounts of Cash✨

You can buy a billion different types of earplugs that will all do great at muting the world but always leave you incredibly unaware of the world around you and leave you fucked in-terms of listening to media.

You can buy normal headphones that will kind of work but never mute the world around you anywhere near enough and vaguely frustrate you constantly, but hey at least you're a bit more accessible! Try combining these with a combination of rain and static noise playing at all times in the background for an extra layer of silence :)

You can buy ANC headphones that cost infinitely too much money and are almost always built to break so that they can farm cash from you in repairs, but the ANC is so useful despite not working perfectly that you can't really exist without it so you're gonna spend 200+ dollars every couple years because you don't have a choice, and spend every single day 24/7 wearing hot heavy over-ear headphones! Use the Rain and Static Noise combo with this as well for the best ANC effect.

And inevitably, all of these options will give you hearing problems, potentially make you aware of new trigger sounds, and always leave you a step behind everyone else when a conversation happens. Pro-Tip : For when the sounds are really intrusive and you're on the verge of a breakdown, Combine ANC with Ear Plugs and the R&SN background audio to basically kill noise in it's entirety for a little while :)

AND NOW WE GET TO THE PART WHERE I SAY WHAT THE FUCK CAN YOU NORMIES DO TO MAKE OUR SUFFERING LESS FUCKING CONSTANT.

Listen to us. Don't ostracize us for experiencing emotions we can't control and don't mean or want to act on. If you can, try your best to do the trigger noises quietly, and try your best not to do the trigger visuals in-front of us. We know it's not something you can control entirely, but if you can make the effort to make our lives suck less, we'll really fucking appreciate it.

And if you try to get back at us during a fight by eating something really crunchy to abuse our disorder for your benefit, I swear to god I will hunt you down personally and subject you to the most violent and painful torture I can manage before killing you and hiding your body somewhere no one will ever find it so that your loved ones never have the closure of knowing if you died or if you're still somewhere out there. Thanks for reading even though I know you didn't because the length of this post is frankly unhinged and i'll probably only get like 2 likes at best.

#Misophonia #Misophonia Awareness #Actually Misophonic #Disorder Awareness #Mental Health

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joesalw · 4 months

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Ok I'm sorry but this is gonna be a long rant.

I am an ex swiftie (also a minor) and I joined the fandom back in 2022 after midnights released. Before that I had heard a few songs but I barely knew anything about Taylor before 2020 and I did not know about the Kimye stuff or anything.

When the bejeweled music video was released I did not realize the easter eggs so thus I thought that I need to become parasocial and I NEED to know everything that taylor has done every minute of the day (referencing Do you really wanna know where I was April 29?)

I went deeper into the hole. I started getting obsessed with Taylor. I clicked on every video , post and podcast mentioning her. I genuinely became a parasocial fan. I only heard her songs and barely cared about other artists. I hated on her exes (Jake Gyllenhaal and John Mayer especially) because I believed that they had hurt Taylor to no extent. I still don't like them/am neutral but I don't hate them anymore. In march I joined tumblr because I heard Taylor was on here and I have no other social media to support her from so I came here to give her my support.

In April , the breakup happened. I was genuinely devastated. Joe was and is an amazing person. I was shocked to see her move on so quickly and date m*tty he*ly . I was even as a child shocked as to how someone can move on so fast. But also move on to someone so problematic after calling herself an activist? Idk what was wrong with her. But IG as long as she is happy.

She broke up with him. We all rejoiced. Speak now TV was also announced! Yay!

I remember so well on 7th July I was in school and I was so fucking excited about it coming so soon I couldn't sit still. I was counting down minutes until it's release even tho I did not have any devices to listen to it on. My friends were so happy to see me happy and excited af.

I went home and heard speak now tv. Amazing experience for me at that time.

I became the person who said shit like : I hate everyone but Taylor and Taylor is a gift to this Earth and etc etc.

But the amount of joe hate and joeover and joebless jokes annoyed me. Why were we hating a person who was in her life at her worst moments? Taylor would never condone or allow this.

But boy was I wrong.

Most of the hate against joe was my #Strike 1 for leaving the fandom.

Then came along Traylor. I was like oh ok as long as she is happy :))

Then she started associating with the nfl people. Br*ttany M*homes and Abuser bitch.

When I heard of this I was like wtf Taylor???

Weren't you the one who was going off about being on the right side of the history and believing victims?

I was like it's fine maybe she doesn't know or maybe she will stop once she knows.

She didn't

Then she won person of the year. I was already very unhappy with Taylor at that time. But I still was like Yay! Congrats! But maybe you shouldn't be the one to win it?

Then the doxxing by a swiftie happened. It was #strike 3

I left the fandom. I still had hope she would change.

Now after seeing her jets emissions (I'm a huge Environmentalist and a feminist so this shit bothered the living helm out of me) and her continuously hanging out with brittany piece of shit and all the joe hate going on, I am beginning to despise her.

I had initally blocked hate pages like yours but Now I open your posts everyday and check them because I relate to them sm.

I went from a person defending every action of Taylor's, being the only one in my entire theatre who knew the lyrics to all the songs of the eras tour movie , having Taylor as my top artist of the year with more than 60 percent of the songs being hers to despising her so much for being fake and stuck up.

I remember after I left the fandom and not many people knew about it , A classmate said something against Taylor and her songs directly to me daring me to oppose it and I genuinely wanted to cry because I thought that I would now always be associated with this fandom.

The ex swiftie in me genuinely wants 2016 to happen again so Taylor will be removed from the pedestal she is put on by so many. She needs to be saved from herself and her parasocial fans.

And I used to say I would love Taylor forever but I suppose forever really is the sweetest con.

TLDR :- I USED TO BE A PARASOCIAL SWIFTIE WHO USED TO LIVE AND BREATHE TAYLOR BUT NOW I'M SLOWLY STARTING TO DESPISE HER.

Sorry this was so long I had to get it off my chest.

Thanks for reading it!

ex swifties are my favourite people in this planet rn

#anti taylor swift #ex swifties

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inklores · 11 months

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miguel o'hara── a study in security

it's really funny how most of my finals this quarter have me reading so many pieces that relate with the fics i'm writing and the characters i have brainrot over. i'm reading chapter 6 of eva illouz's book, "why love hurts," and the section about how love and security can't always co-exist hit me... because that is exactly how miguel o'hara regulates his life and shapes his influence within the spider-society.

"Security is often seen as incompatible with passion, or even as leading to its demise. But I would argue that this need for “security” and/or for “adventure” is not an invariant constituent of the psyche; or if it is, then security and adventure take on changing shapes in different cultural structures. They are also outcomes of the social organization of the psyche. Security derives from the capacity to control and to predict one’s environment; adventure, by contrast, derives from feeling challenged, either in one’s social identity or in the ways in which one knows how to do things." (Illouz, 219).

rewatching atsv and i notice just how locked and authoritative miguel runs his facility. micromanaged down to the knick-knacks hobie swipes. the differences in lighting and color theory with how miles & the gang associate with different spider-people, being lit in white and warm shades... then we meet miguel and he is in pitch dark with reddish and deep blue undertones. his character design is similar to the spot, where the sketch design is still visible amidst the rendering and coloring. this color palette carries with him and it sucks all his interactions in with it. from berating gwen after miles escapes to watching archival footage of his daughter, it's so deeply rooted that breaking out of that sphere will quite literally destroy what little he already has left and what he managed to preserve.

the man is STRESSED. we see that from his design to his dialogue. he believes he is single-handedly keeping the multiverse together and he expresses it multiple times. he thinks he can't have comfort and duty at the same time, believing that is what it means to be spider-man. it takes away his humor too, pointed out by peter b. when he says all spider-men are supposed to be funny. the only time he really shows any sort of wit is when he interacts with lyla and maybe jess, but even then, it's so dry and sarcastic. (save his interaction with baby mayday bc that man is also a father.)

but he's "okay" with this great responsibility. this is his security because it's what he's able to control when once, he wasn't able to control anything and it left him so badly wounded that it isolated any possibility of change or evolution for the order of things. when miles left, he shouted, "ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS LISTEN!" and then a softer, almost baffled and frustrated, "why didn't he listen...?"

illouz talks about how visual stimulations or even the presence of something we can hear or see can shape or crush the way we look at ourselves.

Research on the impact of media images on how individuals perceive their bodies suggests that images of perfect bodies have negative effects on self-esteem and self-concept because watching these images suggests to people both that others can achieve them more easily (competitiveness) and that others view them as important (normative legitimacy). Media images thus become a source of disappointment through the implicit mediation of what we think they say about others’ expectations of us and about their achievements compared to ours. Widespread images of love may instill ideas that others achieve love when we do not, and that achieving love is normatively important for successful life. (Illouz, 220).

hobie mentioned it before we officially meet miguel. he says miles seemingly has it alright with his parents and stable family life. and someone like miguel, who keeps a watchful eye over everything that goes on with spidermen, knows that. and he's jealous of it, i would argue. he believes as spider-man, there is a required sacrifice or weight of loss to carry.

while it is a very recurring trope with every iteration of spider-man that's been watched or read, miles has felt loss and loneliness. but he hasn't felt it in the way miguel has because what miguel went through is so singular and unique to him. the only ones who may understand what that would feel like would be gwen or even pav, seeing their dimension and/or livelihood beginning to crumble.

but miles has everything... and is also spider-man and i just know that burns miguel. it's not what he believes should be the order of the "spider-man journey," even though happiness and responsibility can and has worked together. example, peter b. and his daughter.

it's inconceivable for miguel to think something or someone can deny him or run the other way. because everyone is primed to understand that it's his way or quite literally, the destruction of everything. nobody can suggest another way. nobody can say no. aside from the doomsday vibes, miguel is also objectively scary when he’s genuinely angry. not even irritated or annoyed. irate. he’s also colossal. he’s mr. property damage. this need for control and this ability to maintain it under his thumb fuels his antagonistic relationship with anomalies or things he sees as a threat to his security. he doesn't like to be challenged, he likes to be listened to because he knows how the multiverse works and what can come out of it if even a single spider-person has a foot out of line.

and with all the hints left over at the end of the film of how miguel may be wrong, that there is a way to fix the multiverse while protecting the people they love, there will be some serious fractures to his security and everything will open up once again.

#⁎⋆ ꙳✧∘ gena talks !#miguel ohara #miguel o'hara #spiderman: into the spiderverse #spiderman: across the spiderverse #atsv #across the spiderverse #spiderman 2099

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vampirepunks · 9 days

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Yeah, unfortunately I feel like many got caught up in the scifi-ness of Death Stranding, and missed that much of it is about how we as humans deal with both life and death, and how we approach both.

Amelie/Bridget is very interesting, in that she is simultaneously both very flawed and human, yet also very inhuman, like shes a human incarnation of a force of nature. I feel like theres a lot of parallels between her and princess kaguya, and the more fickle/destructive/harmful kami in japanese folklore. It's why I feel like she's the hardest to empathize and forgive out of all the characters in the game

It's easy to lose that sense of metaphor and abstraction! Death Stranding is a very visceral, cool piece of media with characters that feel almost too real. Sam and Higgs are like close personal friends to me at this point, I can't imagine not having those characters in my life. At the same time, there's value in the big picture perspective.

I took a humanities class last semester called "Death, Dying, and Grief" taught by a grief specialist that's informed a lot of my interpretations about Death Stranding. Never in my life have I been through a more emotionally difficult class, but it was a personally meaningful experience too. The first day, we discussed human mythologies about the immortal man, e.g. Christ, Heracles, and then moved on to afterlife conceptualizations, both things that act as coping mechanisms for our mortality; they're ways to reject our ability to die. Death Stranding examines such notions head-on.

There's a lot of critique surrounding how society thinks about death, altruism, immortality, connection, and the hero's journey. Sam is both immortal and a messiah figure, his story revolves around the burden associated with not being able to die and the under-acknowledged, singular suffering of loneliness that comes with martyrdom. To a degree I've seen in almost no other media, Death Stranding openly states that being the chosen one fucking sucks. Sam's "why me?" attitude reflects the tearful pleadings of Christ in Gethsemane, saying, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me." Sam does not take the hero's journey in the typical sense, he's dragged along almost by force and, just like Christ, was never once given the choice to not be the sacrifice. He was ripped from the grave of his mother's womb, shoved into a BB pod, and then severed from the natural cycle of life and death. No matter you frame it, Amelie/Bridget stole something important from him. There's an ongoing theme about that: "He ain't human." That's one of Sam's dialogues in the final waltz with Higgs, as he rants about how nobody cares if he dies, nobody cares if it hurts, because he'll just come right back. His suffering isn't seen as important or even relevant. It's expected, demanded of him. This comes back to the point about empathy, because the people in Sam's life have shown him very little. They don't really care what he wants, only what he can provide, what utility he serves, what he represents. He's a sacred idea to them, not a person, not the man who used to be a scared little boy who didn't want to leave the Beach every time he went, who developed aphenphosmphobia because touch was neglected in his childhood development. Other characters don't acknowledge his most basic boundaries; Fragile even gets in his face at one point as a social authority flex, continuing to advance on him as he's backing away. His fear of touch is solely treated as an inconvenience and a tool of social control. (Which, as someone with my own phobia, pisses me off, and I was in his corner from day one, shouting "stop fucking touching him!" at the screen.) Only Higgs can touch him in a way that doesn't trigger his fear response, and he's the only one who truly treats Sam like an equal. All of this resonates with the demands people made of Christ throughout the gospels, and it calls out how deification of an individual or character is inherently dehumanizing and destroys basic empathy.

Bringing Amelie into this discussion, there's a stark similarity to the themes in NBC Hannibal; to be divine is to be inhuman, cold, distant, detached, without empathy or remorse. Just as Hannibal deifies Will Graham, making him less human, and Will Graham humanizes Hannibal, making him less than a god, Sam humanizes Amelie and she deifies him. She stole a piece of his humanity and absorbed it into herself ("I had no idea I was alive until you told me") and as such, Amelie exists in a state between humanity and ethereal other-ness. She isn't human, but also she is... but also she isn't, you get me? There's a very Lovecraftian element to it, in that there's aspects of Amelie's nature that can't be understood from a human frame of reference, things about her that are beyond mortal comprehension. The Beach exists on a plane above time, which is one of the most crucial elements of how humans understand themselves and the world.

I strongly believe Amelie is subservient to a larger, more powerful force, whether that's a god-like individual/collective or another force of the cosmos itself, or some in-between intangible, primordial entity. As evidenced by Amelie saying she didn't have a choice, that the extinction has to happen, and that she/Bridget felt like the ha-ka split was the Beach's way of punishing her actions and keeping her focused on her responsibilities as the EE. I imagine DS2 will delve into this.

I'm not familiar with Princess Kaguya but I'll definitely take it as a recommendation, so thanks for that, dear anon. As for the concept of kami, that definitely speaks to Amelie's thematic role and the essence of her being. As a human, her actions are unforgivable to many of us, but it's hard to apply the same judgment to a natural element. A fire is not evil for burning down your house, a tsunumi is not evil for destroying a city, those things just are, etc. Treating Amelie as an exclusively human woman is a sunk-cost, as she exists beyond that. Spite directed towards her is, in many ways, similar to spite directed at fate, nature, or God, she's simply personified in a way that makes her seem human. Schrodinger's humanity, if you will. Bridget was the human side of the EE, and seemingly lost her sense of expected empathy due to her disconnection from her soul; she was the head, Amelie was the heart. There's also all kinds of parallels to draw from other mythologies, such as that of Hel, the fates, and Ammit. Academically, her story is fascinating. I'm fiercely invested in and protective of Sam and Higgs (blorbo disease), but I'm not above acknowledging the narrative intent surrounding her character for what it is. I do not, however, believe she's supposed to be babygirlified (nor is Higgs) and excused of the harm she did. All characters in DS are implicitly intended to be held responsible for their actions, hence why I'd like to see Higgs be redeemed through making amends rather than absolved of his sins entirely. I want a good ending for him, and I want him to be loved and happy, but there's a long path of redemption that he needs to go through for that to happen. I relate it to examples like Sylar from Heroes (my first villain crush) or Zuko from ATLA; he can be forgiven, but he has to prove he can do better to stay forgiven.

This turned into a whole rant but yeah, TLDR: Death Stranding is powerful social commentary on matters like death and empathy, it's valuable to zoom out and analyze its overall messages sometimes, Sam is the best Jesus parallel I've ever seen, Amelie isn't specifically human and can't be treated as such, and DS advocates forgiveness as a powerful force of human connection.

Since I dove down the analysis rabbit hole, tag list:

@goldenbridgessss @pylonium @rubensmuse

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#death stranding #higgs monaghan #sam porter bridges #amelie strand #anon #logan answers

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bcacstuff · 9 months

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Good morning Bcacstuff, first I want to say that I love your blog because it is factual and honest. You share your opinions without being ugly. I saw my pictures on your post last night responding to the anon that stated Sam smiles more with thin blondes than others. I’m not sure how I feel about being an example of a big fat middles aged woman that Sam may or may not have smiled with. Looks kind of in between to me like an I am exhausted smile can’t wait until Austin is done. I shared on Twitter because there are other fans that mutually follow and we are social media “friends”. While I didn’t see any overly negative comments on your blog, I feel open the ridicule because people on Tumbler tend to be more negatively vocal about Sam’s fans. I’m not a shipper or a mommy or someone that follows him around the globe at no expense. I’m just a girl that lives near Dallas that had the opportunity to see him for the cost of gas, a hotel room for the night and a bottle of gin. The little statue by the way is from the Thistle and Roses chess set mad by Beneagles whisky out of Scotland back in the 1970s. That piece is Robert the Bruce. More than likely, it will end up in the trash somewhere but for my part as the giver, I put thought and heart into it. I think I would prefer that you take my picture off your blog. I know that I look a ridiculous sight and would be very hurt to read judgmental comments. Thank you.

Hi, @weebuddycat I want to thank you for your message here and perhaps try to set some things straight. Thank you for the appreciation for my blog. I always try to be as honest and factual as I can, and be clear about where it concerns speculations. I receive a lot of Anons, I can't even post a good amount of them, and don't even want to post a good number either. I do not necessarily agree with the ones I post and sometimes even flat out disagree. I try to keep my wording as respectful as I can, or just stay in the neutral. I keep an eye on the comments, as I do want my commenters to stay respectful as well, towards each other, towards people in the pics I post, and towards myself as well. On some very incidental occasions I might contact the commenter in private and have a small discussion about a comment.

I went back to see, as I was fairly sure I didn't put your picture in the post where this Anon thought he smiled more with skinny blonde fans. I purposely searched out 2 pics from the latest events (one from Houston, one from Chicago) for that post where there was no fan in it and one where there were more people around him. As I didn't even want to put anybody as an 'example' on that post.

To me, and I truly am honest about that, it was in no relation with your picture that I posted in another post with a number of others. I actually hope you would agree to just leave it there, as I think you can and should be proud of it. And anybody with half a brain can imagine standing in line for a long time while it is hot and humid, nobody really would look at their best. Together with that, I say, don't we all look at our own pictures and think ugh.. I wish I had... or something similar. Anyway, to me you look perfectly fine and happy meeting him and gifting the little statue. As do all others.

Yes, someone asked in the comments what that was. And now that you've told us what it actually was (thank you), I think my reply was quite close. I looked at it, and just thought it looked a bit like a knight, and a chess piece and had some association with the chess scenes in Harry Potter. That wasn't meant rude in any way, as well as ending up on his book case shelf, as we've seen a number of times in his home videos that he puts some of the stuff he gets there. Not really sarcasm, if there was any sarcasm in it, it's for what he puts there on the shelf to show when he does these home videos.

Finally, I just want to point out that in the comments of the Anon about him smiling more (or less for that matter). I didn't agree, and I don't think anybody in the comments agreed on it. He's just doing his job, smiling for the picture with the fan. And that's all there is to it.

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hellpupp · 1 year

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if i could convince all my friends, loved ones, and acquaintances to listen to One(1) piece of media that was formative for me, it would be Juno Steel and the Monster's Reflection parts 1-3.

it won't hit as hard without the context of the series up until that point, but it's still such a profound exploration of generational trauma, cycles of abuse, PTSD, and the ways we can understand the ones who hurt us as being complex individuals with a rich interior life. it even touches on how our memories are reshaped (sometimes even completely overwritten or erased) by the trauma we associate with them.

it forces us to grapple with the fact that most abusers aren't 2D cartoon villains who hurt others Because They're Evil- they usually had reasons for their behavior, but it does NOT try to say the existence of an explanation for their behavior absolves them of responsibility for it, nor does it try to say you have to forgive them.

i once saw someone tear the episodes to shreds bc they "humanized an abuser" and i've never seen someone look so directly at the point of a story & somehow completely miss it.

i've listened to the entire 3 part story probably 6 or more times, at least, and it's deeply emotionally impactful every time. it's been hugely cathartic.

anyway, if reading this makes you want to give the episodes a listen, here's a link:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

PLEASE take the time to read over the content warnings.

if you'd like a very brief summary of the most important previous plot points the episodes touch on, so that you have a better understanding of the circumstances, check below the cut:

early in the series, the titular character, Juno Steel, reveals that he had an identical twin brother (named Benzaiten) who died many years ago.

juno almost never brings up his mother, but it's clear that they had a VERY bad relationship. it's implied early on that she may have tried to kill juno, once, & that she was somehow involved in benten's death. juno also blames himself for ben's death.

juno struggles with severe depression, low self-worth, and persistent passive suicidal ideation. he tends to self-sabotage his relationships, and attaches most of his self-worth to his ability to stop crime & Catch The Bad Guys. the likely reasons for this are revealed here.

in a previous season, in order to keep it out of the hands of a dangerous criminal, juno took an experimental drug which caused him to grow an organ that an extinct alien race once used to communicate telepathically. he overtaxes the organ, causing it to rupture inside of his body. because it had attached to his optical nerve, the rupture also destroyed his eye.

juno's main employer in this arc, ramses o'flaherty, "generously" supplied him with a highly advanced, experimental prototype cybernetic eye, called the "Theia Spectrum." it comes with an AI which can help juno do all sorts of neat stuff- he later finds out it also allows ramses to see whatever he sees, and to override juno's nervous system if he does something ramses doesn't want him to.

the eye can't be removed through conventional surgical methods, due to the fact that it's become closely entwined with his own nervous system. in the previous episode, juno has finished a job for a different employer (buddy aurinko), in exchange for being taken to a clinic that supposedly has methods to remove this kind of prosthetic safely. the first episode of Monster's Reflection opens on juno's arrival to the secret clinic, alongside the escort buddy has sent with him ("big guy")

#tpp #juno steel #the monster's reflection #if you're in a place to handle the TWs pleeeeease listen to these i promise it's SO fucking good #i weirdly associate these episodes w/ christmas bc i listened to them on a long plane ride home for xmas with my family one year

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adorablecoats · 1 year

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Healthline’s Content Anatomy: 5 SEO Insights to Learn From

Healthline is one of the biggest health niche websites. We’re talking tens, if not hundreds of millions of clicks every month with fierce competition. It doesn’t get much more exciting in SEO than this.

Healthline is owned by media giant company Red Ventures, which has a whole RVO Health subdivision comprising many domains in this YMYL niche. One of them is also Medical News Today that you can see among the biggest players listed in the chart above.

All of these websites are SEO powerhouses we can learn from, but I found Healthline to be the most interesting one, especially its content and on-page aspects. Let’s take a look at five insights that stood out to me from many hours of analysis.

1. You can perfectly align with search intent using templates

It’s hardly a surprise that you’ll find patterns after publishing tens of thousands of pieces of content. In Healthline’s case, it currently has around 34K pages in its Health and Nutrition article subfolders that drive the vast majority of its traffic:

Screenshot taken from the Site structure report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Certain types of content, like food item overviews, can be templated pretty heavily, as you can see from the title tags and H2s here:

Screenshot taken from Page Explorer in Ahrefs’ Site Audit.

But more often than not, you’ll need some more unique points and headings to align perfectly with the search intent.

For example, here are three SERP snippets that use the same title tag template that tells you the focus of the article.

We have crackling in ear…

Followed by wrist pain…

And ending with contact dermatitis.

Causes, symptoms, and treatment are variables the vast majority of searchers will be interested in when looking up these health problems.

But crackling in ear can be something you may be able to fix easily with home remedies:

Wrist pain usually requires you to do some exercises to get better:

And contact dermatitis is something you likely need to see photos of to confirm if you landed on the right health problem:

All of these articles have huge structural overlaps but are still unique in one way or another, which makes them great for answering all sorts of questions a searcher may have.

Healthline uses the title template of health problem followed by the most relevant combination of words like causes, symptoms, treatment, diagnosis, risks, preventions, pictures, etc., across the board.

It sounds simple. But choosing the right combination that best aligns with the search intent results in SERP titles that are better—or at least on par with the competition:

And this goes on and on throughout different content types. Here, we have a bunch of pages where people are likely most interested in the difference:

While others are positioned toward picking a winner for a certain quality (better, healthier, etc.):

2. Own more search results without cannibalization

Nailing search intent alignment is one thing. But being able to do it with multiple pieces of content that have huge target keyword overlaps is an advanced SEO and content game.

I think most people associate ranking for one keyword using multiple pieces of content with a phenomenon that hurts one or more of these pages. This is known as keyword cannibalization.

But take a look at this:

As someone who’s done a bit of research about creatine in the past, I can see myself clicking on both of these results. They cover the topic from different angles that don’t result in cannibalizing each other’s organic traffic.

Anyway, you can’t even cannibalize your own content when you already rank at the top with one of those pages. Occupying more search results simply gets you more traffic.

There are currently over 40K keywords in the U.S. where Healthline owns the top SERP position and one or more lower positions:

Not all of these keywords have a mixed search intent, though.

In some of these cases, Healthline likely ranks with more pieces of content that serve the same purpose just because it is a huge authority in the space. I didn’t encounter this from examining many of its SERPs. But the following data speaks for itself.

What surprised me the most is the fact that out of the 1K keywords with the highest search volume here, it manages to rank for 994 of them with two or more results in the top 10 search results:

Using Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, I exported SERPs for the first 1K keywords with the highest search volume from the previously shown Organic keywords report. Then I extracted domains from all ranking URLs and created the pivot table above that counted how many times a given domain ranked in the top 10 for each keyword. Lastly, I used the SUBTOTAL function that could count the number of rows filtered by COUNTA of Domain of two or more.

Last but not least, another way of taking more SERP estate is to rank with both written content and videos. You guessed it. Healthline also has a thriving YouTube channel, and it manages to own multiple results in this manner as well:

3. Don’t overlook your visitors’ engagement

Two confessions: I hate the UX of most websites with display ads, and I often refer to engagement metrics like bounce rate as vanity metrics.

Yet I find the experience of browsing through Healthline smooth, with many nudges to keep me engaged with it longer. And I’m sure its team does a great job of doing visitor engagement analysis and goal setting.

There are three aspects worth taking a closer look at because SEO and UX are closely intertwined disciplines.

Keeping ads in moderation

Display ads, pop-ups, and interstitials are usually a nightmare for many browsing experiences without an ad blocker. (Are you really a marketer if you’re using one?)

Healthline seems to have found a great balance between monetization and user experience. Especially on desktop, it doesn’t stuff ads in between paragraphs, which I highly appreciate. I don’t mind seeing the ads at the top of the content or on the side:

The experience obviously gets worse on mobile, as there is no sidebar. But the ads within the content still aren’t overwhelming. It also applies to pop-ups, as I only recall getting one for an email newsletter subscription, which is totally OK from time to time.

Infinite scrolling

A lot of Healthline articles use an infinite scroll feature where you seamlessly “flow” into reading another article related to the one you landed on. The URL changes as you go along.

For example, here’s an ending of a Beetroot 101 article that flows into the health benefits of beets with an ad in between:

I got into reading some Healthline articles and sometimes didn’t even realize that I was already reading another piece of content. It nails down the relevance, making the reader stay on the page longer, which naturally results in more monetization opportunities.

Chances are that it’s also a positive SEO signal, but we’re getting into speculations here. No one officially confirmed signals like dwell time to be a ranking factor.

Truly related content suggestions

The key factor in keeping readers engaged with more content is the relevance of the suggestions. We already showed an example of infinite scroll, but Healthline also employs other content suggestion methods.

There’s a well-known “related reading,” or as Healthline titles it, “read this next” section. For example, these are suggestions at the end of an article with the title “Healthy Eating Is Human: Joys, Challenges, and 3 Things You Can Do”:

Looks good to me. What also looks good are its “related videos” sections to provide content in different formats, like this one in between the list of the “healthiest vegetables around”:

Being able to show video ads in there is just the cherry on the top.

4. Revive meta keywords; they can be useful

The great relevance of all the suggested articles and videos we just covered makes me wonder how Healthline manages to do that. It’s unlikely that it selects these manually at this scale.

I encountered what seems to be a multi-level system of content tagging that could play a big role in creating this content recommendation system.

Healthline uses a combination of different meta tags, like on this page about losing weight:

Screenshot and HTML code taken from Ahrefs’ Site Audit crawl data.

Yes, the long-dead meta keywords can still be encountered. While they don’t play any role in rankings (at least not for Google), they can come in handy for tagging the topics of each piece of content to create an internal topical hierarchy. Some advanced CMSes (like the headless ones) recommend doing it for this purpose too.

The sailthru.tags is a meta tag for categorization and user interest tracking used for a personalization engine. Healthline takes catering to search intent and users’ interests very seriously.

I made an assumption that it’s also serious about engagement tracking and goal setting. Well, there are lots of custom dimensions it sends to its Google Analytics, including these content tags:

Screenshot taken from the dataslayer tool added to Chrome Developer Tools.

5. Get inspiration from this E-E-A-T signaling masterclass

It will hardly surprise anyone that a successful website with 100% YMYL content excels in signaling E-E-A-T. But there are many aspects of this worth bringing up.

Most relevant authors and reviewers

It should go without saying that your authors should be qualified to cover their assigned topics, especially in YMYL niches. Healthline does a great job here.

It has a team of in-house writers and guest freelancers with various qualifications related to health and medicine. These people don’t necessarily need to be experts in a certain topic, but their backgrounds ensure that they can put together great content:

Then the experts come into play in the medical review. In this example, there’s no one more qualified for the job than an ophthalmologist:

Healthline’s medical team consists of four divisions that create a huge professional network with expertise for likely any medical topic you can think of:

Awards, accomplishments, citations, and backlinks of authors and reviewers

We have all encountered a few doctors that left us wondering how they even finished med school. Having a diploma is simply just a prerequisite. Given that E-E-A-T is largely about backlinks and references, it’s likely a good idea to get people with a successful track record.

I asked Gary about E-A-T. He said it’s largely based on links and mentions on authoritative sites. i.e. if the Washington post mentions you, that’s good.

He recommended reading the sections in the QRG on E-A-T as it outlines things well.@methode #Pubcon

— Dr. Marie Haynes🌱 (@Marie_Haynes) February 21, 2018

Everyone I clicked on on Healthline seems to have great professional backgrounds and credentials:

Diving into stuff like h-index or other author-level metrics seemed like an overkill here, so I at least looked up a few authors and reviewers in Google Scholar. Almost everyone returned relevant papers and articles from the Scholar index.

All of these things in academia are basically like backlinks in SEO. I won’t be surprised if all the data we’re showing here was interconnected on the entity level and that Google took it into consideration not only for enhancing the Knowledge Graph but also for rankings.

Speculations aside, Healthline already has all the highly authoritative backlinks that are so needed in this niche. We all expect that. But I took a look at a few personal websites from the Healthline’s editorial team and found some nice backlink profiles that signal E-E-A-T too:

Screenshot taken from the Referring domains report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

The takeaway is that the direct backlink profile is undoubtedly most important, but you can’t go wrong featuring great content from someone who already has a proven track record.

Meticulously describing editorial processes

Healthline has the most detailed and open documentation about its editorial processes, monetization, product selection, integrity, etc., that I’ve ever seen.

You can access all of this from its About page with a click or two.

For example, here’s an excerpt from its “product selection process” page that clearly signals the trustworthiness of its recommendations:

Adding a list of sources and references

Listing your sources is a great way to show the reader that the content is based on trustworthy information. Healthline includes those at the end of articles:

Keeping the history of edits and reviews

Health is one of those niches where almost no content can be considered evergreen. New research can sometimes even flip existing findings and best practices around.

Next to the Sources tab, Healthline also shows the History tab where we can see who has done what with the content and when:

Anthony Machi from Healthline’s SEO team said that they already had a 50:50 split for publishing new and updating old content back in 2022.

I can imagine that they already spend more time on the updates now. The number of new pieces published is significantly down recently when looking at the past five years:

Screenshot taken from Ahrefs’ Content Explorer.

Final thoughts

Even though I spent many hours analyzing Healthline’s website from all sorts of angles, I’m sure there are many interesting SEO insights I still haven’t uncovered.

It’s a website anyone can take inspiration from to improve their own SEO and content game regardless of the niche they’re in.

Got any questions or comments? Let me know on Twitter.

Read more here https://sites.google.com/view/san-francisco-seo

#googlemaps3-pack #localmarketing #seo

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ask-the-lost-flyboy · 1 year